Day 21: If I don’t write, he punishes me. The first time I stopped, he took the chair. That may sound small until you’ve spent twelve hours on your knees at the desk. My knees still burn when I sit down.
Day 29: The second time, he took the lights. He left me in the dark for what felt like a whole night. The clock stopped ticking. The air felt wrong, like the room was breathing but I wasn’t.
Day 46: The air feels heavier in the afternoons. He says humidity softens the mind for revision. It tightens my chest.
Another volume. Full. A third. Also full.
Her hands shook now. She sank to her knees, robe pooling, journals opening around her in a pale arc.
“Oh God, Lauren,” she whispered, and the name folded in her mouth. “How long were you here? Where are you now? Are you alive?”
A square of sunlight slid down the white beam and crossed her hands like a benediction, then withdrew.
She turned a page at random.
Day 53: I think he’s drugging the water. Or the coffee. Or both. I drink, and then time unhooks. Whole chunks of the day go missing. I wake up sore in places that don’t match what I remember doing. The pages move forward without me, but I don’t remember writing them.
Day 54: The missing time scares me more than the hours I’m awake. At least when I’m writing, I know what he’s doing to me. It’s what happens when I can’t remember that makes my hands shake.
Day 58: I woke up with my hair braided—three perfect plaits pinned back from my face. I don’t braid it like that. I don’t remember doing it. I drink, I blink, and the next thing I know, something’s changed—my hair, my clothes, the angle of the chair. It’s the way the room is different when I wake that scares me now—the braid, the clothes, the chair. Proof he’s been here when I wasn’t.
Day 72: He likes the desk. Says the chair is part of the practice. I sit on the floor sometimes to remember I can choose something.
She pressed her palm to the paper, as if warmth could cross years and wood. A thin index card slipped free from the back pocket of the cover and landed face-up on the rug, handwriting precise.
The skylights track the sun. Time is a seam.
She stood with both journals—early and late—and carried them to the desk. She sat, because he wanted her to and because it steadied her spine. She slid a blank journal beneath the others and opened to the very last page near the back cover. If he read the front, let him. She would hide where she could.
Deputy Sara Anne Parker — Day 1 (assumed)
Status:Alive. Drugged, moved, dressed (flannel pajamas, socks). Hair brushed. Clothing hung (jacket on hook; jeans/sweater pressed; bra and panties on rod). Door locked; hinges internal; no handle inside. No windows except twin skylights at vault—white beams, angled glass; snow slides; light shifts. Hidden speaker—male voice, calm, rehearsed: Eat. Rest. Write. The story is your freedom.
Room:Curated writing suite—desk/typewriter; white chair/ottoman; antique radio (three stations); analog clock (ticking, steady).
Assessment: Not ransom. He’s holding me on principle. Comfort arranged as compliance. Prior contact with subject via abduction: Highway 73, pre-dawn. Radio failure targeted. Chemical agent usedvia cloth over mouth/nose. Time gap: unknown. Bruises/tenderness, upper arm—evidence of physical restraint during loss of consciousness. Evidence of post-abduction handling: clothing removed, body washed, dressed in provided garments.
Actions:Conserve strength. Map light across rug by hour; map whistle times. Log voice intervals. Read Lauren.
She paused and listened.
Nothing.
She drank half a bottle of water, then set it down because obedience and survival weren’t always the same thing. The voice returned so quietly she almost missed it—sliding in beneath the tick of the clock.
“Good.”
Not praise. Confirmation.
She didn’t look up. She kept her eyes on the page, pen resting but unmoving.
“You’re following instructions,” he said. “That matters.”
“You’re drugging me,” she said. Flat. “You’re holding me against my will. You think writing changes that?”
A pause. Longer this time.
“I think resistance costs you energy you’ll need later.”
