The Day She Died

Prologue

Inside

She could stand up straight. There was room enough for that. But when she raised her hands above her head, they hit the ceiling. She could reach them out to the sides too. There was room enough for that. But just a step or so either way and her fingertips touched the walls. And all she could see was absolute perfect nothing. Never before in her life had it been so dark. If she kept her eyes wide until they ran with tears, there was nothing. If she closed them, waited, and opened them slowly… nothing. She held her hand in front of her face, but she only knew it was there from her breath hitting her palm.

Quiet too. No sound at all. Blood in her ears, air in her nose. She cleared her gummy throat and spoke. “Hello?” But the sound didn’t leave her mouth. Seemed to hang like fog at her lips and settle back into her. “Hey!” she called out. “Is anybody there?”

She waited, listening, and then she must have slept again, because when she woke the second time-twitching awake-the taste in her mouth was worse than before and she was clear of whatever she’d been under. She scrambled up and put her hands out, feeling her way around the walls for the door, round and round until she was dizzy, finding nothing.

That was when she shouted for the first time. “Help! Help me!” She bellowed it into the dark, only stopping when her throat was raw. Then she quieted again, slowing her breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, like yoga.

Hatch, she told herself, trapdoor. Must be. Just got to find it. Find it and open it and leave. Laugh about it later. And don’t, whatever you do, think about the memory just starting to uncurl from where it was hiding inside.

Kidnapped, she thought. Captured. Adventure words. Incarcerated, detained against her will. Police words. And don’t think about those other words, from stories, not from life. Stupid words. Bricked up, buried ali-

Stop. Find the hatch and open it. Climb out and walk away.

She put her hands on the ceiling and felt her way towards the middle. Her leg banged against something on the floor. She crouched. Plastic. And something else. Cardboard. The cardboard thing moved and the plastic thing stayed still. A light box and a heavy… a tray of bottles, shrink-wrapped, full. Twelve of them. And the box? She shook it. Packets of something inside. That’s when she noticed her knee was jammed against a third object, there on the floor. Cold and solid, this one. She knew what it was. Even before she touched the china of the bowl and the wood of the seat, she knew what it was, and she started to cry.