I wakeup in my old bedroom. It takes me a minute to recognize it. The walls are the same pale blue my mother painted when I was nine. The bed is the single with an iron frame. There are the dresser and the faded curtain with the little flowers. Everything is the same except the window has been sealed shut, a metal plate bolted over the glass from the outside. The door handle has been replaced, and it looks like I can’t turn it from the inside. My phone is also gone, as is my bag.
I scramble off the bed and try the door, it’s locked. I slam my fists against it. "Storm! Dad! Let me out!"
Nothing.
I try the window, the bolts look industrial. I can't even get my fingers under the edge of the metal plate. I try the dresser drawers, looking for anything I can use as a tool, but they are all empty. They've cleared the room of everything, no hangers in the closet, no glass in the picture frames. Even the lamp has been unscrewed from the nightstand and taken away.
They planned this.
"Let me out!" I scream, beating on the door until my hands are red and throbbing. "You can't keep me here! Let me the fuck out!"
Nobody comes.
I sink to the floor with my back against the door and pull my knees to my chest. My childhood bedroom, the room where I used to read under the covers with a flashlight, where I cried myself to sleep after my mother died, the room I grew up in, dreaming about the day I'd be free.
And now it's a cell.
Hours pass,maybe days, I can't tell without a window or a phone. The room gets darker, then lighter through the cracks around the metal plate. I curl up on the floor because the bed feels too much like giving in. A scraping sound wakes me, the cat flap at the bottom of the door, the one my mother installed for our tabby cat when I was eight, swings open. Items are pushed through, a bowl of chicken and rice, then a bottle of water, before the flap clicks shut. I stare at the food, my stomach feels hollow, but I don't trust it. I don't trust anything in this house anymore. But hunger wins.I eat.The rice is bland, the chicken cold. I drink half the bottle of water and set the rest aside.
I spend the next few hours trying everything, pulling at the metal plate on the window until my fingers bleed. Kicking the door until my foot is bruised. Screaming until my voice is raw. I try to unscrew the hinges with my fingernails. Nothing works, and I wish I had never left the island.
My mind wanders, wondering if Kairo is missing me as much as I am missing him right now.Probably not, you broke his heart.I close my eyes and think about Kairo’s strong arms around me, and honestly, it’s the only thing that keeps me going.
I’m awoken by another meal sliding through the flap. This time, it's pasta, I eat it because I need to keep my strength up if I'm going to find a way out. Unfortunately, halfway through the plate, the room tilts. I set the fork down, and my hand starts trembling. The edges of the room are going soft. Did they drug my pasta?
"No," I whisper, gripping the edge of the bed. "No, no, no …" The ceiling spins above me, the pale blue walls blurring into a smear and then darkness.
Noise.
That's the first thing I notice when I come to. Noise and light, there’s music coming from somewhere above me, muffled, a bass line vibrating through the floor. Voices, glasses clinking, laughter.
A party? Are my family hosting a party?
I open my eyes slightly and notice I’m upright. Someone is holding me upright by both arms. When I look down, I’m wearing a white evening dress, and my feet are sliding in heels as they help me across the floor. My head is full of cotton, my tongue is thick, and my eyes won't focus while my legs are doing what the hands on my arms tell them to do, not what I tell them to do.
Left foot. Right foot.
A corridor. Dim lights. Side door.
I try to speak. "Where …"
"Keep walking," an unfamiliar voice says. They take me through a door and down a flight of stairs. The air changes, it’s colder as the music fades to a dull thump above my head.
A basement. Is that where I am?
My eyes focus on the gray surroundings as I try to work out what is going on. They then dump me on the concrete floor, my knees hit first, then my palms, then my face. The cold shocks some of the fog out of me. I try to push myself up, but my arms feel like Jell-O.
“Don’t get what the big deal is with this one,” a voice says.
“Boss said she was important,” another voice adds.
What are they talking about? Suddenly, I’m yanked from the ground, and metal cuffs are closed around my wrists. I try tofight them, but I have no strength, then my hands are placed over a hook, and I’m strung up like a piece of meat.
No. No. No.
What are they doing to me? They jiggle me around, but once they seem satisfied, they chuckle and walk out of the room, slamming the door behind them.
Then I'm alone.
