“I’m not mad at you,” I spoke. He froze. I felt his hands stop all movement on my bound feet. He didn’t answer, continuing to free me from the bed I hoped he wouldn’t tie me to again. The blindfold was kept on, but I wasn’t complaining. It felt good to sit up. I’d been laying on my back for three days, I think. His hand felt warm when he touched the back of my hand, placing a sandwich between my tangled fingers. I didn’t feel hungry at all. I think I did the first day, but not really, nothing animalistic or anything.
I had to hold the sandwich between my thumbs. I lied. I was famished. The cold bologna and cheese sandwich was better than my favorite dish from the food truck in NYC. I devoured it in seconds, wanting more. I didn’t get it. I was pulled to my feet and untied from my ankles. My legs felt weak, like the muscles had forgotten how to work, my mind felt fuzzy, like I might faint. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to walk when he pulled me forward.
Unsure of what he wanted me to do, hoping he didn’t plan on me doing anything too overexerting, I walked. He pulled me by my arm and I shuffled my feet, steps in front of him. Although I was still blindfolded, I fought the urge to jerk from the sudden light beneath the material covering my eyes. I didn’t want him to fix the leak.
What the hell?! We kept walking and walking. I was in a hallway, a long hallway. Where the hell was I? The wooden floor creaked below our feet. He was wearing work boots and jeans. I wished I had clothes. Why was I naked?
“Where are we going?” I asked. No answer. Just a shove to keep moving. I saw the steps before he stopped me. He didn’t know I could see a little. It didn’t help much. All I could see was the floor and the red rings from my ankle restraints. We were in a building. An old building, abandoned probably, but where. Feeling like I was in a hospital or something, I saw a wheelchair wheel. I knew this place was creepy and I couldn’t even see anything but the floor.
“I’m naked,” I protested when he opened a back door and led me to a patio. The concrete was barely visible from the years of neglect. Grass and weeds took over, leaving little concrete. It reminded me of that show, Life After People. We were in an open field, I thought. That is until we kept walking. We were no doubt walking through the woods. I was walking to my death. This was it. All the pain and suffering would be over before long. I felt warm and cozy and a small smile found my lips. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t afraid at all. I was relieved. And then both little girls giggled and ran into the meadow. No. That didn’t happen. There were no little girls. Jesus. Stop it, Mack.
My captor stopped me on a rocky bank, cold mud. Was he going to bury me? I didn’t get it. I wanted to see. Uniting my hands, he placed a cloth in my hand and then a bar of soap. I could hear it then, the sound of water. Yes! He was going to let me clean up. Stepping me forward with a push, I was in ice cold water. So cold it took my breath. There was no way I was going to be able to bathe in this.
The cold water came maybe two inches above my ankles. After the initial shock, it felt good on my sore legs. I bent, wetting the soap and washed away the sticky dry blood. He pulled me down, making me sit. I gasped again from the cold, and moved a sharp rock from beneath my ass. He didn’t stop. He made me lay back in the cold stream, moving my hand holding the soap to my head. He wanted me to wash my hair.
I bathed my entire body with the fresh scent of Coast. I knew it was Coast because of Kyle. Kyle always smelled like that when he was freshly showered. By the time I was finished, I was freezing, and the normal sized bath towel he wrapped around my shoulders did little to warm me. Thank god it was July and I warmed quickly. By the time we made it back to my new living quarters, my feet were dirty and muddy again. I wondered where my clothes and shoes were. I probably lost my flip-flops when he took me, not that I fought him. I don’t even remember it. Vaguely, I remembered the cloth being held over my nose and mouth. I remembered dropping my grocery list with the license plate number on it.
I wondered why this room. I was obviously in some sort of hospital or something. Why the second floor? Why this room? I froze solid, stopping dead in my tracks. I didn’t care if he hurt me. I didn’t care what he did. I knew that scream. I ripped the blindfold from my eyes and froze again. Sure enough, it was him, but it didn’t look like him. I mean it did, but didn’t. He’d aged a lot over the past ten years. He was older with a different look about him. I didn’t peg him to be the happy go lucky Mr. Nichols anymore.
“Gia’s here,” I said more of a statement than question. It gutted me to think she was in a room, tied to a bed the way I was. Mr. Nichols didn’t answer. He hit me. He hit me so hard I hit the wall and slid down, holding my face.
“Shut up! You shut your fucking mouth and don’t you ever speak without my permission again. You got that, Mack?” he asked through gritted teeth, holding his hand back in a threatening manner. Looking down the hall toward the scream, I wondered where she was. We were in some kind of hospital. I knew that to be fact now. The tiny little windows in the rooms held bars. An asylum, an old asylum. I was sure.
Noticing my staring after Gia, Mr. Nichols pulled me to my feet and shoved me hard into my dark room. I stepped on something crumbly and fell to my knees. Hearing the door lock, I panicked. I wasn’t at peace anymore. He had Gia and she was screaming. She wasn’t handling this the way I was. Why would she? She had a life. Her close family, her husband, her kids. She had more to lose than I did. It suddenly became my mission to help Gia. He was one man. I’d figure out something.
I felt my way around the room. My door had a window with the bars, but it was boarded up. I couldn’t see out. Moving on, I felt another door. It opened, but I was afraid to go in. Assuming it was a closet, I moved on. That’s what I was looking for. Feeling the window, I could tell that it was broken. The bars on the other side were also covered by a piece of wood. I could feel it. Scraping my arm on broken glass, I backed up, squatted, and felt my way around. I needed to break more of the glass. Being attacked by flies wasn’t something I wanted to endure again.
I jerked my hand when I felt the hair. I knew it wasn’t human hair, it was too coarse and I felt the small face. It was a doll, but still creepy as hell. I picked her up and used her head to clear away glass. Moving my hands between the bars, they just fit. I pushed hard on the plywood, feeling the give every time. I could see a little more daylight saturate the room every time I palmed it with my hand.
The plywood fell to the ground below me and I shook the bars. I wasn’t going anywhere. Unlike the rotten wood, the bars were secure. Breathing a deep breath, I turned back to my living quarters.
The room was fully lit and creepy as hell, enough to cause a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I looked around the room used to hold crazy people. Turning back to the window, I noticed the field. I was on the side where he had taken me through the woods. It was quite a walk. This was well thought out. Fresh water was being streamed into the creek. That’s why it was so cold. We could scream all we wanted. Nobody was going to hear us. I thought about him leading Gia to the brook and making her bathe too. What was he going to do? What was his plan with us?
Walking back to my door, I tried like hell to push the square piece of wood out of my way as well. The interior blockade didn’t give way as much as the weathered one from the exterior window. It wouldn’t budge. I looked around for something to use. There was a lot. Debris from the falling ceiling was scattered around the floor and years old belongings were scattered about.
I looked for something to use to break the wood out of the little square. I just wanted to hear Gia, find the direction of her screams. Of course, I didn’t find anything. I was in a crazy person’s room, or two crazy people. There were two beds. The bad part about that was the fact that only one had a mattress. The other bed was only bones with some sort of springing bedsprings. There was nothing harmful in the room anywhere.
I did flip the mattress. It wasn’t clean by all means, but cleaner than the other side. I froze when I heard the door unlock. Stepping backward, I wat
ched him slide only his arm in. He left a cold bottle of water. The seal was broken and the label was missing. I assumed he’d gotten it from the spring. I’m not sure why I did it, but I rationed the bottle of water, unsure of when I’d get more.
I hadn’t had my meds in four days, or was it five? I wanted them in a bad way. Mr. Nichols slid a sandwich and another bottle of water in the room while I stared out the window. Bologna again, but I would take it. I still didn’t get it. Why was he just keeping me here like this? Why was I being forced to join a cult full of snakes? No. No. Not that. That wasn’t real. I ignored the voices that kept getting louder and louder, talked myself calm more than once, and caught myself rocking back and forth. I halted that movement as soon as I realized I was doing it.
I spent hours staring out the window from my destruction, listening to sounds I was never aware of before. The wind, the sound of birds, crickets, bugs, and the most terrifying one of all, Gia. She screamed—a lot. I heard an owl at night and a nearby woodpecker during the day.
Standing in the window, enjoying every single morsel of the sandwich that Mr. Nichols slid in, I witnessed a hawk swoop up a field mouse and drop it, only to swoop it up again and carry it away. That’s when I saw her. Gia! My posture straightened as I watched Mr. Nichols lead her though the same field, sure she was going to bathe in the cold stream. She, too, was naked, still blindfolded. Had he not let her see yet? Gia was a bit of a tiger. She always had been. She may have been little, but the feisty persona she carried made up for it.
I spoke to Gia from the window that day, whispering for her to be still, afraid she was making it worse for herself. It broke my heart to hear the wails of her cries. I didn’t move from my spot. She was gone longer than I had been. Did she run? Did she get away? I audibly prayed that she did. She didn’t. Mr. Nichols led her back to the asylum. Her hair was wet and the blindfold was gone. I held my breath. It was Gia. It was really her. I wanted to call out to her, but I didn’t, afraid he would hurt her.
I didn’t understand what was happening. Was he just going to keep us in these rooms? Maybe for seven years, the way he’d been locked up? I didn’t understand the isolation. I felt sorry for Gia. I was use to the isolation. I’d spent a good many years pushing people away so that I could be in isolation. Gia must be crying for her family, having nostalgia that I just didn’t have. I wasn’t miserable. Hungry, maybe, but not miserable. I could live there for seven years. It felt comforting to think I would.
I was even starting to get used to being naked. The filthy room kept me busy, or maybe it was the OCD, the fact that I had never been able to handle clutter. Gia’s bedroom growing up used to send me over the edge. She left everything for the housekeeper. I laughed, thinking about it.
“Jesus Christ, Gia,” I said, moving the cyclone of clothes from covering her laptop.
“I have nothing to wear,” Gianna whined. She had nothing to wear? She had her own boutique, right there at her fingertips.
“Hey, that’s my shirt,” I said, picking up the shirt I had only worn once.
“You can have it. Let’s go shopping.”
“I can’t. My dad took my credit card again, thanks to you, I might add.”
Gia laughed. “Yeah because I broke your arm and told you to buy the ninety dollar belt.”
“It was so cute,” I countered. That was when I was trying to find my identity. I went through a girly girl stage, trying to pick a personality. It only worked for a minute. I moved on to my gothic stage, and then reverted back to the jeans. Creatures of habit I guess.
“My dad told my mom you spent three hundred dollars last month. That’s more than me,” she confessed.
I only heard one thing. “Your dad was talking about me?”
“Your dad must have told him about your spending spree. He was just explaining to my mom that your dad was mad about it,” Gia explained.
“If I spent that much, you did too,” I accused.
“Yes, but I’m careful about it. I have a card my mom doesn’t tell my dad about.”
Three hundred dollars in one month. I shook my head and crossed my arms over my bare breasts. We were teenagers. Spoiled rotten teenagers, being taught the important material things of life.
I watched Gia being led back to the building and disappear, back to the same building I was being held in. She was so close. I just wanted to talk to her, tell her it would be okay, and she was going to get out of here and back to her family.
Knowing it was morning, I felt the sun penetrating the old building, heating it up to a muggy hot temperature. I was hot, sticky, and a little shaky, but nothing like I’d been afraid of. The voices were manageable as long as I stayed busy.
Deciding to make my new accommodations a little more livable, I began my hunt, searching for anything to help my attempt. I started a pile, one with drywall debris, and one with other things. Other things I would have never given thought to. I opened the dark closet, wishing I had more light. A stack of hospital gowns and computer paper with some sort of holes down the side with perforated edges was worn with holes from chewing little teeth, probably mice and bugs. I carried it out and stacked it on the windowsill, too. Maybe I could find a pencil or something. I could find some sort of use for it.
I took the stack of green hospital gowns, neatly folded and forgotten. I shook the top one out, shaking away mice shit. I used that one to dust, cleaning the dirt and grime from the wide windowsill. I used the other four gowns to cover the nasty mattress and slipped one around my shoulders. I tied it just below my hips.
Looking around, I tried not to think about it. My stomach wouldn’t let me. It was so hard and tight. I had to do it. I didn’t have a choice. It had been days since I had gone. My lower abdomen hurt. Taking a deep breath, I spread two sheets of the old computer paper on the floor and squatted. I knew they would come in handy for something. Using another sheet to wipe, I folded the feces in the paper. Snarling my nose, I dropped it out the window. The room smelled bad enough without adding that to it. I found and old tin can, probably a coffee can, it was too rusted to tell. I did the same with it. I peed in it and dumped it out the window.
Wiping off the creepy doll, I sat her in the windowsill. “Cara. I’m going to call you Cara,” I said to the naked doll. I found eight red checkers and seven black ones. I stacked them in a tower beside Cara. I gathered pieces of a puzzle, wondering if I could find all the pieces, or maybe there was more than one puzzle. That would be nice. I gathered my puzzle pieces in an old cigar box. It smelled like moldy chewing tobacco. I left the lid open.
I used a chunk of drywall to sweep the trash to the other end of the room. It wasn’t what you would call homey, but I’d accumulated a pile of things to keep me busy. And Cara. I had her to talk to now. We talked a lot while we spent countless hours in solitude. Mr. Nichols hadn’t seen what I had been doing to occupy my time. He slid a sandwich and a bottle of water through the door at night. I listened for him to come, unlock the door, place it on the floor with a bottle of warm water, and leave, never talking to me.
I was standing in the window, where the quietness was defining. All sounds were silent. The owl, the crickets, and the wind was all still. I couldn’t hear anything but the screams, coming from Gia. My heart broke. I wiped the sliding tear away from my eye. Why was she screaming? Was he hurting her? Was she screaming for her family, her release? I didn’t understand.
“What the hell happened in here? Get away from that window!” Mr. Nichols yelled. I’m sure I was quite a sight, standing in the window of an old asylum, wearing a tattered gown backward. My hair had to be a mess. If there was a picture for crazy, I’d be the perfect model, standing there, clutching my doll in my arms. I turned and smiled at him. He was still very handsome. He aged a little around the eyes and his face had taken on a wiser look, but nonetheless, he was as handsome as I remembered him.
“This is Cara.”
“What did you say?!” he angrily asked.
“I named two bab
ies after your little girl. This one was left behind. She needed a name,” Jesus, I was crazy. I could hear myself talking, but it didn’t really sound like me.
“You little fucking cunt. You don’t talk about my daughter. You don’t say one word about her,” Mr. Nichols angrily ordered, moving toward me. He stopped just before me and drew back his arm, stopping it midair in a threatening manner. I never flinched. Not one blink.
“You can hit me if you want to,” I offered.
He backed away, baffled and sat on the bedsprings. “What the fuck is wrong with you? This is not how things were supposed to go.”
“How did you want them to go?” I asked, tilting my head, noticing I was cradling little Cara and swaying her back and forth. I turned and set her in the window. What the hell was going on with me? I felt disorientated, fuzzy or something, not like I was used to when I came off my meds. Of course, it had never been this long.
I set Cara in the windowsill. I wasn’t touching her again. Maybe I’d put her in the closet where I couldn’t see her. I picked her up and sat her on the floor. I knew she was a doll, a creepy doll, a fake baby, but it didn’t keep me from worrying about how far it was to the floor if she would fall. I was the only one left to take care of her. Nobody else would do it. She’d just be left there for all of eternity if I didn’t help her.
“It’s okay, Mr. Nichols. You can do whatever you want to me.”
“Why are you not screaming to get out?” His face looked very puzzled.
“I don’t want out,” I admitted, looking through the window I had managed to achieve. “I belong in a hospital like this.”
“What the fuck? This is not a hospital. This is a scary abandoned building. A place where bad things happen to pretty girls like you.”
“You can do bad things to me. What do you want me to do? I can take this off,” I said, sliding the gown over my shoulder.