Shutter: The Complete Series (26 page)

The hardest part was knowing that I slept as you robbed me away. Took me from everything I’d ever known and all I did was sleep. You forced me to sleep with that sweet smell, always forcing it into my mouth and nose. I don’t remember it, the sleep. There were no dreams, nothing startling me awake — just sleep and that lingering bitter sweetness.

But when I woke again, the pounding in my head immediately told me I was still alive. The burning in my chest rose into my throat as pins and needles assaulted every inch of my body. I was alive, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.

I sat straight up and tried to look around. But my head was overcome with whirling. My arms and legs were free to move but they refused to acknowledge that they were still connected to my body. I told them to jump, to leap from this bed that was surrounding me but they wouldn’t. One arm shot up and the other stayed limp. One leg moved left and the other right. The fire in my throat finally erupted from my thrashing and spilled its contents down the front of a plain white shirt that I saw was covering my body. Not my shirt though. Maybe it was no longer my body either.

This time I heard you before my body knew you were there, I think it had already grown accustom to your presence. My mind had not though, it had been sleeping.

“It’s just the medicine,” I heard your soft, sickly voice declare. I tried to find you but my eyes were lost, blurred in whiteness.

I tried to move again and felt the fevered pounding in my chest increase as I finally gained some control over
this
body. I fell, landing with a thud that reverberated through my body onto the hard floor. Hurried feet appeared in front of me as nothing more than white socks. I watched as some of the hot liquid covering the plain white shirt dripped onto the plain white socks.

“You’ll be okay, just take it easy. The medicine is leaving your body.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it, closed it. It felt foreign and would not do what my brain was commanding. My mind was racing everywhere all at once. So many emotions streamed through me that I couldn’t decipher them from one another – fear, hate, panic, pain – I felt them all in a rush of confusion at the unknown.

Legs bent in front of me slowly becoming knees. Your hot touch ran across my forehead, I felt nothing. No desire to sway into your touch as I had the times before, yet no strength to flinch away either.

I forced my eyes to rise to your face. I didn’t want it to be you that I saw. I didn’t want those icy blue eyes to look back at me, with those worry lines etched so deep. Someone else, I longed for you to be someone else.  Not the man I had yearned for. But there you were, the last face I’d seen on that night under those bright, clear stars.

“You’re safe, Annabel, you are home.”

I woke again, in the same room as before — I had no idea how long I’d been there or where you were. The space between pizza at the mall and that day was muddled, all twisted together in a haze of dreams. But at least I’d had my dreams again, at least they were there to tease me with a life outside of this white room. Your face was ever present though and I remembered food and water, but the memories were all flashes of bright light and blue eyes.

But I was growing more alert, eyes opened to a stark whiteness that made them burn and fill with tears. White everywhere — walls, ceiling, bed, covers, door — nothing but pure brightness with a single light bulb hanging from a cord centered directly over me. I was covered with a thin sheet with nothing on my body underneath; I could feel the fabric rough against every inch of my body, every cell acutely aware of my nakedness. What had you done to me? That question screamed in a rush of blood that blared in my head. My fingers pressed against my inner thighs and ran over my bare center. I closed my eyes and exhaled in a slow and steady stream of relief when nothing felt different, I would have felt different — I knew I would. If you’d taken that part of me while I was unconscious, I would have known and my fear would have turned to loathing. 

A white chair to my right had a neatly folded, clean white shirt resting on it. That shirt called to me telling me to rise, clothe my bare body, and escape. My arms and legs instinctively jerked expecting to meet resistance, but they merely flew into the air and crashed back to the bed — you hadn’t tied me down. I thought everyone that was taken was tied down like it was a main teaching point in Kidnapper 101. Maybe I should have guessed there was a reason you trusted my captivity enough you felt no need for restraints, but at that time I took it as a blessing.

I set straight up, eyes rapidly searching the room. Calming my breath was harder than it should have been.  Pulling air in and pushing it back out was involuntary, but controlling the speed so I didn’t pass out again took effort from my whole being. Digging the heels of my hands into my eyes blocked the bright white that was surrounding me, just enough that I felt momentarily safe. A small, dark cocoon within myself — that’s all that brought me comfort right now.

Home.  You’d said I was home. I knew by the chill in the air and the musty, damp smell that this was not my home. The place I’d called home since I was four years old was varying shades of brown and smelled like food, it always had. Apple pie, baked bread, chocolate cake, chili, spaghetti sauce — my mother cooked more than she did anything else. It brought her solace, and until this day I never realized how much comfort it brought me.

Air filled my lungs and I held my breath while I listened for you.  A footstep, a clank, a toilet flushing — I listened for anything that showed me a sign of life, yet heard nothing. I stood and expected my legs to be able to hold the weight of my body. I knew I was wrong when my kneecaps crashed into the bare floor below causing a puff of dirt to float and dance around me. The entire room made less sense to me than even my presence in it had. The floor, merely dirt that had been packed down to make it hard as a rock, was a sharp contrast to everything else in the room that was stark white. All white, except for a dark metal stove in the far corner. The red and orange flames snaked back and forth through the tiny window in the front door of the stove.  A single rusty pipe led from the top of the stove and out a small hole in the wall that had been boarded over.

My fingernails dug into the hard earth as I fought to maneuver my legs for support to stand.  As I felt the remaining cobwebs disintegrating, my mind was more conscious of where my body was attempting to move. I could feel the intrusion of dirt colliding with the delicate skin underneath my fingernails, but I didn’t care. My hand finally landed on the white shirt resting on the white chair and streaks of brown soiled the threads. I saw my arms tremble from the strain as I pulled to stand. The chair almost tipped with my weight but I was able to catch myself before everything tumbled back down.

I lifted the shirt and shrugged it over my head and shoulders.  It was soft and smelled like you, which made bile rise in my throat and threaten to spill over again. My breath caught, refusing to take in your scent, but if my inhales were small and deliberate the sweet-smelling stench did not reach my nose. My mind worried over why I’d been given a shirt with no other articles of clothing.  The hem reached the middle of my thighs so I was covered, but the coolness in the room still invaded my skin through the thin material and bareness beneath. The only reason I could conclude was easy access to parts you planned to claim and that sent a shiver up my spine that had nothing to do with the drafting air on my uncovered parts.

My attention turned back to taking in the room, to finding an escape, and for the first time I noticed a second door. The one just beyond the foot of the bed was wide, making me believe it led from this room into the house — probably straight to you, but this other door was smaller and more narrow. I tried to pick my feet up and move forward but my legs were stiff from nonuse.  Finally, I made it across the room and to the door with effort-filled shuffles. My hand tightened around the handle and twisted. I closed my eyes as a rush of air washed over me and then finally peeked through my eyelashes hoping not to see your bright blue eyes staring back at me.

Pure darkness was on the other side of the door, darkness and the stench of death. Not that I’d ever truly smelt death, but that’s the first thought that streamed through my head. For the first time I knew you were going to kill me, that’s what the smell was — the girls who’d come before me. I hadn’t allowed myself to think it until that very moment, but I felt the tears burning my eyes as my throat clenched closed from the visions whirling through my head. I knew I had to get out of there, I had to escape you.

I slammed the door shut and ran across the room to what I thought was a way out. I grasped the knob and turned with all my strength but you’d locked it. My hand jerked, pulled, and shook until the whole room blurred into a jumble of white as sobs wracked my whole body. There was so much unknown – Why had you brought me here? Locked me in this room? I didn’t know what you had planned for me.

Through my weak sobs I heard a gush of wind. It was a sound that was familiar to me. I’d grown up on the plains of Oklahoma.  My dad used to joke that if he could bottle the winds of Oklahoma, he would use it to blow up the skirts of all the pretty dames that crossed his path. The sound had been coming from the boarded-over hole where my only source of warmth was.  My sobs choked off in my chest as my mind churned out a possible escape plan. If I could hear the wind, I could reach the outside.

Cautiously I approached the wall, running my hand along the edge of the splintered board covering my escape. Since you hadn’t tied me down, I had wondered if you’d done an adequate job of covering all other possible escapes. The top of the board pulled away from the wall slightly, just enough that I saw daylight poking through to say hello. I pried my finger under the edge of the board hoping the entire thing would easily dislodge – it didn’t.  You had put a nail about every inch along the bottom, but the top was only secured on the edges.  I stood on my tiptoes, lengthening my small body as much as I could, but my fingers could not reach where I needed them. 

The chair crept into my mind and for a wretched second I had been thankful that you’d given me the step up that I so desperately needed.  The chair was heavy but I found the strength to push and pull it just far enough to position it next to the stove. The worn seat cushion sank as I climbed onto it, but as it grew nearer to the floor, I was still able to reach the very top of the board. My fingers ached as I dug them under the edge and pulled as hard as my arms were willing. The board gave way surprisingly easy and sent me tumbling backwards. I struggled to catch myself and felt my body falling toward the stove.  I lifted my right leg and it came down hard on the hot metal. A scream ripped from my throat as it cooked the sole of my foot.

The thud as the weight of my body hit the floor echoed through my ears but I didn’t feel pain. I pulled my knees closer into my chest and my eyes moved over my crumpled legs. I felt nothing from my seared foot; the limb didn’t even look like mine. I felt only numbness within it. Just as my vision faded to black, I saw the door fly open and your scared eyes searching for me.

Then the darkness took me again.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” I heard your calm voice speak no more than a whisper as I slowly became conscious again.

I didn’t reply.

“I know you’re awake,” you stated. “Your breathing has changed.”

I still didn’t open my mouth to grace you with my voice.

“I fixed the hole already. You have no idea how cold it would get in here if I hadn’t done you that favor.”

“Favor?” I shouted and sat straight up. My head spun with the change in position and the adrenaline that flooded my veins. “You think you did me a favor by locking me down here in the first place?”

You were sitting in the chair that you had moved back to the exact spot it had been previously. I could only see the side of your face as you stared at some imaginary beacon in the corner of the room. White shirt and white pants covered you. I wanted to scream at the sight of more white, I wanted to scream about everything — so I did.  A blood curdling scream ripped through my throat and within a second I could feel it becoming raw – but it felt right.  No words came from my mouth, just a simple, instinctive scream. I screamed because you’d stolen me away, because I didn’t know why, for my family and how much I knew they were worried, but most of all I screamed because I wanted to frighten you as much as you did me. I turned my head toward you, my movements feeling jerky as all my strength was put into holding the animalistic scream. My body leaned toward you and I could almost see the vibrations of my voice bouncing off your skull.  But you didn’t look at me, you didn’t even give me an ounce of the defeat I hoped you were feeling. Sometimes that is all you have, a scream to tell whomever is listening in the world that you’re still there — a heartbeat amongst the millions.

My arms began to flail as I took in rapid breaths to refuel myself. The air streamed in and out as quickly as my lungs would allow and then the scream started again. The rhythm of your chest rising and falling had remained the same, my tantrum obviously not affecting you in the least. My legs bent, seeking to join my rebellion, but you’d tied them down.  Although my arms were free, you’d forced my legs to become one with this bed, it joined forces with the white room to keep me prisoner. The racing of my heart picked up at this realization and I began to punch wildly at the open air surrounding me, finally grabbing the pillows and blankets and tossing them at you. Yet, you still remained steadfast and calm — I hated you more than I ever thought I was capable of hating, your unfaltering resolve reinforcing the ice that had plated my heart.

As my screams grew ragged and were replaced with frenzied gasping, you finally stood and faced me.

“You need to calm yourself or I will leave.”

Your choice of words made humor tickle at my heart. “Leave? And you think that would be punishment?” I choked out with a strangled voice.