The Waning Read online

  You did not look as I would have imagined a sadistic kidnapper. In my darkest nightmares of abduction, You were never the figure appearing from the shadows. You did not have wild and crazed eyes. You were not unkempt at the distraction of mental illness. You looked like any man. Clean cut in a suit in an office like mine. Capped by a baseball hat coaching little league from the sidelines. Smiling drinking a beer at a bar. You looked alarmingly normal.

  You did not meet the measure of a monster forged in my head.

  As the bars parted, my body was vibrating in a blurred and twisting dance of anticipation and terror. Is it going to be another beating? My very skin trembled at the thought. Is he going to rape me? My vagina itself clenched against the idea. Is he going to kill me? My heart hesitated in a beat to both dread and hope. These would become familiar and stupid questions from a naïve and imperceptive mind.

  Your gloved hand broke into my space. The intimacy I had unfortunately formed with these bars made the square of my cage feel like part of my body, the bars like additional bones. Your intruding limb felt like a violation, causing my face to wrinkle, drawing my lip up toward my nose as my limbs pulled closer to my body. I flinched but also felt myself rising, leaning toward You. Did I want to hide in this cage, or did I want You to pull me from it? It seemed like an eternity with Your fingers hovering in front of me.

  Your grip on my wrist was so stiff and impersonal. I could feel the sticky texture of the thin leather of the gloves. I imagined the fingertips, the skin beneath the gentle pillow of cow flesh. I wanted it to be skin, even Your skin that I so vividly feared. Anything but cold concrete and metal.

  It was a primal desire to feel something natural. The way I vaguely remember craving the warmth of my mother’s embrace, the softness in her palm as it cradled my cheek. The materials containing me were all dead and made me feel all the more removed and deprived. There was no comfort in such hard surfaces; there were only additional sources of pain.

  You tugged me firmly, with resolve. For a split second, my instincts defied, and I leaned back. My muscles tightened instinctually, pulling me away from You. I felt Your grip tighten, calling me back to myself. My cells remembered bumping along the cage and being scraped against the concrete. It was foolish to resist You. I clenched my teeth and forced my resistance aside. I made the deep physical resolve to release, to simply submit in this moment. I cowered and just followed the direction. I ducked my head and crawled out from my cage, keeping myself close to the floor, keeping a safer distance from You.

  My entire body was trembling. I wanted to look up at You, but my muscle memory was only that of our previous meeting. I could feel the lashes; I could taste the blood. So I hunched, and I waited.

  You still did not look at me. You released me to hover at Your feet and tugged the lonely string on the light bulb. I didn’t even know there was a light bulb. Had it been on last time? I hadn’t even taken the time to notice; I was far too distracted.

  With eyes not blurred by panic, I finally saw my prison. I took the time to face more than just the cement box. The walls were hard and blank, broken only by the meticulous hanging of all Your tools. I could not look upon them long without that body-shaking fear rising in me again.

  I chased the sound and found that incessant drip. It was nothing more than droplets sneaking through the ceiling and pooling far below on the equally gray floor.

  It was all so much smaller in the light.

  You moved and pulled a bucket out from the corner behind the door. I had never made it out in the dark; it had been a silent intruder lurking out of sight. You set it at the edge of the light and stepped aside. I could tell You wanted me to do something with the bucket, but what the fuck was I supposed to do with this bucket? I stood dumbfounded for a moment, wanting to look into Your face for answers but only staring sheepishly at the floor. I could feel Your posture stiffen; I could sense Your impatience and displeasure infiltrate the air. My heart was beating faster, harder, but I still did not know what You wanted from me.

  Finally, You stepped forward. I immediately dropped lower and raised my arms protectively.

  What is he going to do with a bucket? What in the fuck will he do with that bucket?

  You reached down, and I felt Your gloved fingers wrap around my shoulders. There was no tension, no firmness in the grip, which was all the more unnerving. It was only guidance as You pulled me to standing and moved me to the bucket.

  I shifted at first, wanting to fight You, yet I caught my disobedience quicker this time and dropped the rigidity from my muscles. I forced compliance through my veins, as bitter a taste as it left on my tongue. Your touch was gentle; what could You mean by this bucket?

  You took my shoulders again and turned me away from the bucket. Then You reached down and tugged my pants and underwear to my ankles. I felt a shockwave slam through my bones at the exposure, as the dank concrete air licked my bare flesh. My hands dropped automatically, futilely attempting to cradle myself back to modesty. My heart began to race again, heightening me to another level of fear.

  RAPE! RAPE! RAPE! The alarms blazed in my brain.

  I wrapped my arms around myself and wanted to die. The fear of Your next impending touch fell as a sickening weight in my stomach. As if thin layers of cloth had been protecting me until now. My body, my privacy was torn down with those meager clothes. Everything that had belonged to Lei, every part of my physical body that I had given to her lay bare and displayed, taken from me. I felt hot and shameful tears starting to wet my cheeks. There was no anger in this violation, no rage against this stripping. I only felt myself shrinking into despair.

  I waited for the next, more traumatic step as I felt anxiety bubble into the back of my throat tasting like vomit. However, You simply stepped back and waited, crossing Your arms and looking expectantly.

  Why is he stepping back? Why isn’t he touching me, assaulting me? What was the point of stripping me from the waist to leave me standing here?

  Yet the distance between us calmed my fright, somehow made me feel less naked and vulnerable. My space was mine, even if nothing else was. Confusion swelled in its place. Then You turned Your back to me and spared me even Your watchful eyes.

  What does he want me to do? He wants me to do something with this bucket. What could he want me to do with this bucket?

  I felt my bladder swelling against my pelvis in the still moment. My bowels clenched as if my body knew what my mind could not discern. The epiphany began to glimmer; the bucket was my toilet. I shifted uncomfortably, bound at the ankles by my own panties. It had been so long; I had forgotten that I did have to go.

  Humiliated, I stared down at the concrete and squatted shakily while You stood stoic and uninterested with Your blank back to me.

  7

  I ran my hand over the landscape of the meager blanket, searching out the plate. My pupils were completely blind plunged back into the darkness, but I gradually noticed You had left the light on the other side of the door on. It was just enough for my eyes to slowly dilate and stretch.

  I heard the crinkle of the plastic water bottle against my fingertip then turned my other hand out until it grazed the curve of the plate. Keeping my hands as markers against my food, I pulled myself from being hunched at the back of the cage and crouched forward over the plate, like a hungry animal, looking back and forth for things I couldn’t see, things that weren’t there.

  I learned this time. I took one stingy sip from the bottle before forcing myself to close it again, even as my parched throat wilted and begged for more hydration. The water swelled slick and warm on my tongue. I felt my very cells rejoice in the sensation. Then they began screaming when I pulled the bottle back from my mouth. My lips were quivering, but I held to the resolve I knew I needed. Ration.

  My eyes had finally adapted enough to give the terrain of the plate shape. I cautiously poked the puddle of paste at its center. It was cool and chunky. My stomach would have turned in other circumstances, yet I put
my finger to my mouth and tasted the glob on the tip. My taste buds were peaked. I could have tasted the metal of the plate itself. Salty, thick. Some kind of beans maybe? My stomach didn’t care; it sang out. This was more food than my previous plate. Had I behaved?

  I slopped some of the beans onto one hunk of bread. The crust was rough against my fingertips even as the paste dripped over it. I took a breath and compelled myself to eat slowly.

  Control was excruciating. Every primal part of me gave no shit for the logic in pacing myself, just as it denied the necessity of bowing to my captor. Yet I had to keep a shred of my mind. I told myself it was the brain that survived, not the beast.

  I placed the tempting remains beside the water bottle and curled up on my side.

  I closed my eyes to shut out the darkness. Lei still danced through my brain. The way she walked on her toes when she was barefoot, betraying her childhood served in ballet. The way she was perpetually covered in flour from the bakery, how it created a paste beneath her fingernails and behind her ears even after she showered. The way she used McAllister as a body pillow, curled up against his back when she went to bed without me.

  These thoughts left my body feeling empty and vacant. Forgotten. My flesh was lonely in a way I did not know how to bear. The emotional cut drawn in their void was far more vivid than the physical torments You had administered. I could only desperately try to escape into what was left of my mind.

  “I missed you today,” she said into my hair. I could hear her fingertips moving over my scalp as they entwined in the short strands. I could feel her skin radiating soft warmth against mine. My nerves tingled and raised up in my skin to meet her; they craved her even when she was here in my arms. I closed my eyes so I could only feel her, read her in the language of her touch. She felt perfect; that was the word branded in my brain from the first time my fingertips brushed her flesh. Perfect. As if my body knew her already, had been missing her all this time. I wrapped both arms around her and clutched her close, inhaling deeply, trying to breathe her in. I could feel, when I held her like this, that she forgot all my bullshit and understood what my body was saying.

  I reached out in my dream, stretching out for her. My hand bumped into the cold bars, rejected. They felt more lifeless and frigid than ever. I felt more alone. If that was possible.

  Why have they not found me? How has she not dug me out of this hole yet? How can she leave me here like this?

  Even in her deepest, most torturous worry for me, she was free to stand, to seek comfort. She was free to live. I felt resentment blossom in my chest, leaving trails of jealously along my heart. I was forsaken here by anyone and everyone in my life.

  The thought crossed my mind like a shadow. I wished You were here in this cell with me. Once the desperate thought registered, nausea instantly seized my stomach. The alien idea invading my brain surprised me and caused me to gag instantaneously. I heaved without conviction and fell instead to confused, open-mouthed sobs.

  How could that thought be in my head?

  How could I even think that?

  How could I want You, the very person who did this to me?

  Did my pathetic desperation know no bounds?

  It felt like another person was inside my brain, poisoning my thoughts, polluting who I was. There was an intruder blossoming inside me, obscured by the multiple turning versions of myself. You planted this betrayal in my flesh with the lash. You did this to me, as well. Yet I felt it resonate at my core.

  And that terrified me.

  I felt the tears rising again, burning behind my eyes and across my whole sinuses. Tears for the cold, empty space beside and around me. Tears for the stranger blooming inside me—Your design gradually starting to take shape inside the gray matter in my head.

  I granted myself another restricted sip of water to match the tears I was losing; then I closed my eyes and tried to shove myself into sleep.

  Any escape would work.

  8

  The bucket changed me. Some part of the civilized or independent or human me died wavering over that plastic cylinder. Some part of me couldn’t endure the embarrassment.

  The humiliation.

  The depersonalization.

  The dehumanization.

  I had been pissing and shitting on my own in normal toilets, some more civilized than others, since I was a fucking child. Since I was toddling around and struggling with English. It was part of what defined me as a functioning person; it was part of my right as a member of society. It was something that was mine.

  This violation was different than being ripped from my heels and my life. It was different than being confined in my miserable cage inside my dismal and dark cell. It was different than the savagely executed beating.

  It was a primal blow, and it planted the seed of my hatred.

  Hatred for You bloomed deep in my chest. It stirred her back from under and behind my fear. The bitch that clawed her way to partnership in five years, the cunt who once attacked a biker in a bar for calling her a dyke. What was I doing cowering to You? What was I doing missing You? You were the impediment between me and Lei; You were the saboteur of my arrival at the promised land.

  You were my captor.

  You were a psychopath.

  How could I have been so weak to waiver so quickly and so easily? One little beating and I was groveling like a pussy. A few days in the dark and I was already longing for Your wretched company.

  What. The. Fuck.

  My next thought was simple, focused: I had to escape. Clearly, no one was coming for me; I had to get myself out.

  But when? How? I convinced myself that I just needed to wait for my opportunity. I fooled myself into thinking You would grant me such a window. At this point, I appreciated that You were not a smash-and-grab psycho, that You had some sort of more intelligent design at work. However, my mind had not even begun to scratch the surface of Your depth.

  Day after day, You moved through my room with abbreviated appearances of Your icy presence, only slipping food inside my cage, only changing out my bucket, denying me even eye contact. Hour after hour being trapped with my rampant thoughts deafening.

  I didn’t need Your attention. I would not be in here long.

  The panic seized and abandoned me in waves, twirling and dancing with a startling apathy. I scoured my memories. I was walking to my car. Just walking to my car like every other night.

  The parking lot was empty, wasn’t it?

  Just dormant cars, weren’t there?

  I dove with both hands into that moment, scratching the nails of my mind down the asphalt trying to grip it. I squinted my eyes shut hard, closed out and ignored my ears until I smelled the twilight on that night. I stood apart, watching myself move through the parking lot.

  Rebecca’s sleek silver sports car lounged in the coveted first spot; often there before I arrived, frequently there as I departed under the streetlights. That car always stole my attention, but there were others. Nameless, faceless vehicles just creating the scene.

  I could not pull details from a focus I never had. I could not scan things I never saw. I only remembered the sun dying in the sky. My eyes were detached, lost in thoughts of Lei, basking in my bullshit success. The memory had a haze around it different than degeneration or intoxication; it was trying to remember something I never experienced at the time in the first place.

  I reviewed waking up in the darkness, that first wave of terror shaking me to my core, rattling my bones deep within their soft flesh, my mind blanking before abandoning me to my primal instincts. Fear began to rise in me again just flirting with the thought.

  I am a fucking kidnapping victim. I am in a fucking cage in someone’s fucking closet.

  And I am going to fucking die in here.

  The overwhelming surreal quality of this reality, the captivity, had my mind reeling, groping at the surface like someone dragged under a wave. I came up for air in the strangest flashes of my rapidly fracturing mind.

>   I woke up to my soft bed enveloping me. I opened my eyes to see Lei’s sleeping face, mouth hanging slightly open. I heard her soft snores pluming against my face as the daylight invaded our space. I smiled to myself at the warmth, at the comfort. Then I stretched as I eased out of bed. I stumbled, still half dozing, across the room and opened the bathroom door.

  And walked into my cell. The cold concrete greeted my feet, jarring and harsh. I felt the chill climb my throbbing skin and sore muscles, making me curl tighter into myself. I felt that constant, nagging, guttural fear lapping at the base of my brain. It began to crush me again, and I collapsed to my knees, dropping my face into my hands so I could feel my tears.

  And I felt a warm hand, soft and heavy, rest on my shaking shoulder. I snapped my head up to make out my mother’s shape beside my small bed. My Rainbow Bright comforter was wound tightly in my tiny fists. Her hand swept over my hand and down through my hair. Just a nightmare, my baby. I’m here. I’m right here. I got you. I reached out to touch her face.

  And my fingers bumped into the metal bars.

  I always resurfaced in my cage, in my room, in Your possession. As the lonely days began to blend together and my floundering mind swallowed the world, I throbbed for human interaction. Anything more than Your momentary appearances in this place. First, I ached for her. I imagined the feeling of her warm skin, the way it lit my own on pleasant fire, the way she circled her fingers around my shoulder blades as I held her. Then I tumbled farther back, longing for my mother’s warm embrace, the way she would envelope my child body, the way her body heat would just cradle me. I even lamented not having McAllister’s stinking breath pluming into my face. I missed them all. In every cell of my cold and starving body.

  Lei was plaguing my every thought, pounding harder and harder in my brain by the hours ticked off by the drip. Her smell, that warm aroma of rising dough and sugar, snaked through the cold air around me. I felt her fingers swirl and grip the back of my neck the way she did when she kissed me with purpose. I heard the awkward way she stifled her roaring laugh in front of people she didn’t know well echoing at me from the concrete.