“Am I allowed to make requests, or is this a fixed menu?”
“Do I get a name, or should I just keep calling you Tall, Dark, and Murdery?”
Nothing.
He never answers. Not even a look that saysshut up. He sets the plate down and leaves without so much as a glance in my direction. The door closes behind him like it’s a vault sealing shut, deciding I’m part of the contents now.
At first, I thought the silence was a tactic. An intimidation thing. Interrogation 101: let the captive talk himself to death. But a week—or fourteen meals—later, I’m starting to think he just doesn’t talk unless he has to.
Or unless I’m getting into trouble.
Admittedly, I’ve done that on purpose a few times.
Or maybe he’s still pissed I got him hard.
I’m still a little surprised about it myself, to be honest.
If I run it back enough times, maybe I’ll find the version where I was smarter. The version where I didn’t test him. The version where I didn’t see a loaded gun and think,You know what this situation needs? Sexual bravado.
It’s not like I planned to grind my ass against his dick while he held a gun to my head. I can admit I was fucking terrified.Desperate. I reached for the only kind of control I could find.
But when I felt him getting hard?
Yeah, I got hard too.
And that made it even more fucking confusing.
I’ve been trying not to think about it more than necessary.
I’ve also tried not to think about my mom too much, but I can’t help it. She was supposed to leave for North Carolina by now, and I keep wondering if she’s already gone. If she packed up the last box and drove away without knowing what happened to me. Or if she’s still around, delayed, waiting, thinking I’m just not answering my phone like that could keep her here. The not knowing gnaws at me, and I don’t know which is worse—her not knowing, or her knowing and leaving anyway.
Everything eats at me because I spend too long just lying on the bed all day with nothingelseto think about, staring at the ceiling. It’s blank. No cracks to trace, no stains that look like continents or constellations or crude images if you squint hard enough. Just gray, smooth, insignificant.
Every now and then, I’ll do some sit-ups or push-ups or jumping jacks. Mostly out of spite.
After a week without a shower, I fucking stink.
Maybe he’ll open that door one of these times, be hit with an assault of my worsening body odor, and be forced to let me out of this godforsaken room.
And the silence.
And the boredom.
When he’s not here, I talk anyway. To the walls. To myself. To the camera I know is watching me. I crack jokes because that’s what I do when things get unbearable. Humor as a flotation device. If I keep my head above water, maybe I won’t notice how deep I am.
But no one laughs.
No one tells me to shut up.
That might be the worst part. Not the room, not the locked door, not the fact that my life has been reduced to sandwiches and surveillance. It’s the silence that stretches between meals, elastic and unbroken, giving my thoughts all the room they want to turn feral.
I don’t know what he’s planning. I don’t know who he is. All I know is that every time the door opens, I hold my breath without meaning to, and every time it closes again, I let it out like I’ve survived something small but important.
Twice a day, I’m reminded that I still exist.
That reminder comes early this time.
The door unlocks, and I jolt upright on the bed, my spine stiffening with the dread that comes from the door opening earlier than it should.
