Abandoned

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The darkness is, as Heather Hollister had said, total. I thought some light might come in through cracks in the door, but Dali’s done something with all the seams to seal off any possible ingress of illumination. I hold my hands up to my face and stare at them. This is something my dad taught me when I was girl, when he wanted to get rid of my night-light.

“But it’s dark, Daddy,” I protested, eight years old and using my best little-girl-in-distress voice, the one that never failed to bend him to my will.

This time, he’d held firm. I saw my mother behind it. “It’s never completely dark, honey,” he said. “Look, I’ll show you. I’ll turn off all the lights, but I’ll be here with you when I do it, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, doubtful.

He flicked the switch and everything turned to black. I felt the old panic rise, the same panic that told me to beware, there was something under my bed, something with the voice of a snake and the claws of a beast, waiting to grab my legs when my feet hit the floor.

“D-Daddy?” I whispered.

“I’m here, baby, don’t worry. Now, I want you to do something for me. I want you to put your hand in front of your face, and I want you to stare at it.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me, honey.”

I had no longer been afraid, of course. My father was with me, so the monsters would stay away. I brought my hand up in the darkness and stared.

At first I saw nothing at all, but as the moments passed, I became aware that Dad was right. The darkness wasn’t total. The moon, though only a quarter full and hidden behind a blanket of clouds, provided the barest hint of illumination through the curtains. The street-lamps in the distance bounced off the clouds and sent faint light my way. My hand ghosted into view. Just an outline, but it was there.

“I see it, Dad!”

I try it now. I stare and stare and stare. Time passes. I see nothing. Nothing but blackness.

“Shit,” I say, alarmed at how shaky my voice is already. I lower my hands. The clink of the handcuffs is strangely comforting in the otherwise complete silence.

“Work out your surrounds,” I say aloud.

I picture the room as I’d seen it before the door closed.

“Bed should be to my left.”

I move left slowly, until I feel the metal edge of the cot. I reach down with my hands and run them over the cool metal sides. I find the blankets, which are sparse and rough. A sheet covers a thin mattress, and a lumpy pillow sits at the head. I fumble further and find the bolts that were used to secure the cot to the wall.

“Like a prison bed,” I mutter.

It was apropos. This was a cell, right?

I straighten and turn, putting the bed to my back.

“Toilet should be to my right in the center of the wall.”

I walk to what I think is the center of the room, and then I face right and walk forward. I keep my hands out in front of me and soon touch cool concrete. I hunch forward, searching.

No toilet.

I remain bent over and crab-walk to the left. A moment later I feel the toilet, which is made of metal, not porcelain. Again, like a cell. Porcelain can be broken; its pieces can be made into knives.

“Don’t want anyone slitting their wrists, now, do we?”

I realize that the darkness throws off almost all of my spatial sense.

I was certain that I’d walked to the middle of the room, but I’d been off by almost three feet. My admiration for the blind is rising by the minute.

I decide to pace off my cell. I follow the front wall back until I reach the side wall to which the cot is bolted. I put my back to it and walk slowly, counting as I go. I keep each pace to what I think is a foot. I reach twelve by the time my toe contacts the far wall.

“Twelve feet. Okay.”

I walk the distance between. It’s five feet.

“Twelve by five. Gotcha. Bed, toilet. Blanket, pillow.”

I find my way back to the bed and sit down on it. I stare out into nothing. The blackness is oppressive in its completeness. I cock an ear and hear the low swish swish of air being pumped into the room. There is nothing else. I lay back on the bed and stare into the blackness that leads to the ceiling.

“Jesus,” I whisper, and it’s almost a sob.

I’d judged Heather Hollister. It’s a natural reaction. We see someone sicker or weaker and we’re stronger and healthier and we assume at some unconscious level that there’s an innate difference between us and them. Be it luck or karma or inner strength, we must somehow be superior, else we would be like them.

I sit now in the darkness and the silence and the swish swish swish and I understand. Eight years of this would destroy anyone, anywhere. The fact that she could still string words together into sentences was a sign of tremendous strength, not fundamental weakness.

“I’m sorry, Heather,” I say aloud.

I have no problem speaking to myself. I’ve done it, off and on, since the loss of my former life. I realize it’s not healthy, but it was my original truce with insanity. It’s worked so far.

“We’ll have whole conversations, Alexa, if I’m here long enough.”

Terror shoots through me like an electric shock, strong enough to make me swoon. I’d been thinking about talking to a dead child. What about the live ones? Bonnie can’t lose another mother. I reach down with my cuffed hands and touch my belly.

What’s going to happen to this baby?

An image of the camera in the first room comes to mind, and I jerk my hands away from my abdomen.

What if he’s got an infrared camera going in this room?

It would make sense. I resolve to hide the pregnancy for as long as I can.

We’ll have to talk silently, baby. I can’t chance that he’s listening in.

The silence and the blackness are numbing. I hadn’t realized how much of my sense of self is wrapped up in the visual perception of my body. You walk and see your arms swing from the corner of your eyes. You pass a window and see a shadowed reflection in the glass. You exist. In the darkness there is only thought, touch, smell. It doesn’t feel like enough.

“Then make it enough.” I say the words loud, but the concrete sucks them away, preserving the hush.

I decide to concentrate on why I’m here. Why did he grab me? I’m not particularly surprised that he knows who I am, but why grab me now? What purpose does that serve?

I hear a faint sound in the hallway. The lights in the room go on, and I scream in shock as the world disappears in a sheet of white. I’m blind again, blinded by light this time rather than by dark. I press the heels of my hands to my eyes but see only spots. I register the sound of the door opening, and then I feel something press against the side of my neck. A moment later an electric shock jolts me, causing me to cry out in pain and making my muscles contort. It goes on and on, and I feel my bladder let go a moment before I black out.

I wake up a few seconds later. I’m facedown on the floor. I try to say something, but only a parched moan comes out. I feel a needle in the crook of my arm and get the sense of something being forced into my veins. A great dizziness washes over me, and then I’m blind again, overwhelmed by a whirlpool of warmth and white.

I come to again facedown, naked, bound to a metal table, blindfolded. My head is clearing quickly. Whatever he used metabolizes fast.

I cringe into myself, overwhelmed with a sense of shame about my vulnerability and nakedness that is all too familiar. Though I know rape isn’t his thing, all I can think of is, here I am again, that place I swore I’d never be. A man who is not my husband is looking at my body, taking in both its beauties and its flaws. I want to vomit in despair.

I ache everywhere. My eyes and throat feel raw from the pepper spray. My wrists are sore from the cuffs. The muscles in my neck are spasming from the stun-gun hit. Shooting pains run screaming to the base of my skull, promising to turn into a bad, bad headache soon enough.

“This is just a demonstration,” Dali says.

He no longer sounds bored. The quality of his voice has changed in a subtle way. He doesn’t sound excited so much as attentive. Whatever it is he’s about to do, he assigns importance to it. It deserves his concentration.

I break out into a sweat.

“We’re all meat, you see? We are creatures. Animals. We can fool ourselves, but in the end, Pavlov’s dog lives inside every one of us. If you want a man to obey you, all that’s required is the ability to inflict more pain on him than he can handle. It’s not enough to say it. You have to prove it. Prove it enough and he’ll fall into step. Appeal to his fear, not his intellect. Terror is much more reliable.”

I smell something now. It’s not an unpleasant scent. The odor of aftershave, faint but recognizable.

“The most important thing is to keep your promise. If you say ‘don’t do this’ and someone does it anyway, then you have to provide the penalty. In your case, I told you to stay away. You chose to hunt for me instead. Thus you are being punished, and your punishment will serve as an example to others.”

“That’s crazy, Dali. Do you have any idea who I am? I was just chosen by the director of the FBI to head up a national strike team investigating serial offenders. I’m a federal agent on the president’s radar. People are going to be looking for me, in force.”

The bravado falls flat. I can hear the tremors of fear in my own voice, and I despise my own weakness. Later, if I escape, others will tell me in soothing voices that it wasn’t my fault, but it won’t matter.

“They may look, but they won’t find you. The next time my name comes up, they’ll remember what happened to one of their best and think twice.”

He sounds calm, reasonable.

“Do you really believe that?”

“It’s a universal law. A certainty of fear and pain is the best guarantee of obedience.”

“You’re wrong. They’ll never stop. You’ve underestimated them.”

“Initially, maybe, but an animal with a badge is still an animal. Pain and fear will always eventually supersede belief. You just have to provide it in adequate quantities and make it a certainty. The FBI will look for you, but they will not find you. They’ll start thinking about what that means for you, what you’re experiencing, and they’ll realize the truth: It could just as easily be them.”

The room is far too warm. I feel drops of sweat pooling in the curve of my lower back. The sensation of my damp skin against the metal of the table is somehow grotesque. I’m sweating at my hairline, underneath my breasts.

“Debate is never fruitful in the face of hard reality. Let’s say a man speaks against you. Hit him in the face with your fist, make him eat your knuckles. Splinter his teeth and split his lips. Then ask him to repeat what he said. What do you think he’ll do?”

“Tell you to fuck yourself.”

“You can say what you want, but I’m going to provide you with a demonstration of my tenets regardless. You can make up your own mind about their efficacy.”

“Wait,” I say. He ignores me, continuing on as though I hadn’t spoken. He’s unhurried, patient, like a golem or an automaton.

“I’m going to whip you. It’s going to hurt, particularly with all that sweat that’s covering your body. You will scream and cry and beg, but I will not stop. I never stop. I don’t take pleasure in doing this. I do this to show you what to expect in the future if you disobey me. Do you understand?”

The bored tone is back, which frightens me the most. “Wait,” I say again.

Something thin and leather snaps down against my upper back. The fact that I couldn’t anticipate it makes it somehow much, much worse than it normally would be. There’s a split second of numbness, followed by an unbearable burning pain. I start to scream but manage to bite it back.

“You should go ahead and let yourself scream,” he says. “You will, anyway.”

It ends in silence. I’d been trapped in a haze, a miasma of agony and flashing bright lights, like lightning captured inside a thundercloud. I had screamed, until the screams themselves became too much of an effort, as the brain shut down and all I could do was writhe.

It ends as it began, without warning. I wait for the next crack on my flesh, but it doesn’t come. I continue to cringe anyway, a reflex response to the rhythm he’d set up. I realize it’s over and I allow myself to cry. I hate it, but I just can’t help it.

My whole body hurts. The cuts in my back and buttocks and on the backs of my legs burn as the salt from my own sweat contacts them. It’s like being covered in biting ants, or having a bad sunburn slapped again and again.

The only thing I am thankful for, through my grief and shame and pain, is that he seems to be satisfied with the back of my body. He’s stayed away from my belly.

“You’ve experienced one of the penalties for disobedience. I think you’ll find that it’s fairly brilliant. I’m careful not to completely debilitate you. I’ll put antibiotic ointment on your deeper cuts, and you’ll be very, very uncomfortable for a number of days, but there’s no permanent damage. There’s not even likely to be any scarring, unless you force me to do it a number of times.”

I am filled with sickness at my own helpless gratitude. Yes, good, no more scars. Thank God.

“You have simple rules and a simple life. Follow them, and I’ll leave you alone. Disobey me, and you’ll find yourself back in this room. You should know that I took it easy on you this time, as this was just for the purpose of demonstration. It can get a lot worse. I can make it last twice as long, three times as long, all day if I want. I can dab you with drain cleaner. I can burn you with cigarettes.”

I don’t say anything, but I shiver.

“The rules are as follows. I will provide you with three meals a day. You are to eat the food you’re given. You are to exercise for a minimum of thirty minutes daily. This will include push-ups, crunches, and running in place. You are to use the toilet to relieve yourself. That is all. Once a week, when I am here, I will provide you with dental floss, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. I will watch as you clean your teeth thoroughly.

Try to attack me or harm yourself and the penalty will be severe. This is all I require. Do you understand?”

My mouth doesn’t seem to want to work. He slaps a hand down on my back, making me scream out loud.

“Do you understand?” he asks again, calm and patient as ever.

“Yes!” I moan.

“Very good. Obey these rules and you also remain unshackled in your cell. Disobey them and you won’t just be punished, you’ll be chained. Now, before I tend to your wounds and take you back, I want to show you something. I’m going to lift your blindfold. Turn your head to your left and look.”

He lifts up the cloth and turns my head. I blink at the light. The room is concrete and fluorescents, like everything here. I see another table about four feet away, another naked body bound to it, facedown and blindfolded. I close my eyes and open them again to dispel the blurriness. What I see freezes my heart.

“Leo,” I whisper.

Leo Carnes lies on the table, trembling uncontrollably. It has to be even worse for him; he’s been here the whole time, listening to what Dali did to me.

“Leo, I’m here,” I say.

“Smoky? Is that you? He shot Alan! What’s happening?”

“Quiet,” Dali admonishes, though not angrily.

“Hang in there, Leo,” I tell him. “Do what he says.” Dali replaces my blindfold and then smacks my back again, harder than the first time. I arch against my bonds but bite back the scream.

“Quiet, I said.”

“You killed Alan?”

“The black agent? I don’t know if he’s dead or not. I shot him twice. Now, be quiet or you get another ten minutes with the whip.”

This shuts me up. He proceeds to apply ointment to my back. It’s painful, but I endure it. When finished, he uncuffs me from the table and undoes my other bonds.

“From this point on you’ll be naked. You don’t need clothes in your room. The good news is, you’ll also be uncuffed. Isn’t that better?”

I don’t reply, and this earns me another slap. It’s hard enough that I cry out. I grit my teeth and fight back my rage. “Yes,” I say. “It will be better.”

He maneuvers me into a sitting position.

“Stand slowly. You’re going to be a little unsteady.”

He’s right. I ease off the table, and my knees almost buckle when I try to stand. Dali keeps me from falling.

“Walk forward as I direct you. Do you understand?”

Back to rote and bored.

“Yes.”

He marches me forward. I sense a temperature change against my body and surmise that we’ve gone through a doorway. We go down a long hall, turn twice, then stop.

“Why didn’t you drug me for the trip back to my cell?” I ask.

“Room,” he corrects me. “Better if you look at it that way, trust me. You should be too weak to resist after what you’ve just been through. If you’re not, then I want to know that too.”

I’m surprised that he answered, so I push my luck one last time as I hear the door open.

“How do you see all this, Dali? What you’re doing to us?”

The briefest pause, then:

“Doing to you? I’m not ‘doing’ anything. I’m just storing meat.” He yanks off my blindfold and pushes me forward into darkness.