Locked Doors

6

KAREN Prescott woke, the darkness unchanged.

She sat up, banged her head into a panel of soundproofing foam.

Consciousness recoiled in full.

She felt around in the dark for those familiar invisible objects of her small black universe: the two empty water bottles at her bare feet, the huge coil of rope, the gascan, the blanket.

Her head throbbed with thirst, her jaw was broken, her fingertips shredded from picking glass shards out of her hair. The car was motionless, its engine silent for the first time in hours. Karen wondered if it were night or day and for how long she’d lain in her bathrobe on this abrasive stinking carpet, still damp with her urine.

How far was she from her Manhattan apartment?

Where had the man with long black hair gone?

Perhaps the car was parked in front of a convenience store and he was inside using the restroom or filling a cup at the soda fountain or signing a credit card receipt. Maybe the car sat in the parking lot of a Quality Inn. He could be lying in bed in a motel room watching porn.

What if he had a heart attack?

What if he never came back?

Was the trunk airtight?

Was she whittling away with each breath at a finite supply of air?

He’ll let me out eventually. He promised. I’ll keep calm until-

She heard something.

Children’s laughter.

Their high voices reached her, muffled but audible.

Karen wanted to rip away the soundproofing and scream her brains out for help.

But her captor had warned that if she yelled or beat on the trunk even once, he would kill her slowly.

And she believed him.

The driver side door opened and slammed.

He’d been in the car the whole time. Was he testing her? Seeing if she would scream?

As his footsteps trailed away, she thought, Spending a Friday night by myself in my apartment isn’t lonely. This is lonely.