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“That a girl. I always knew you were a quick learner.”
Ok, so he knew her, but how?
Think. She studied her surroundings. The room was dark, damp, and cold, and the walls were made of stone. The smell alone overwhelmed her senses. It was pungent, with a variety of aroma. A mixture of urine and alcohol stood out most. Likely a basement. Maybe an old warehouse.
Suspended in the air, naked,
tired, and weak, all she could think about was closing her eyes and pretending she were somewhere else. Anything to escape this hell, where she was bound and gagged, suspended in the air, and locked in a cage. Yet, she never took her eyes off his, knowing better. She watched him as he toyed with his whips and spikes, his tools of the trade. This was a form of intimidation, Addie knew. But how? How did she know this?
“I know you’re probably thirsty. Hungry. But since you haven’t learned to follow the rules, you get nothing.”
Addie nodded.
After maybe an hour or so of tinkering, he turned and walked up the dark stairs. It may have been an hour or mere minutes. Addie couldn’t be sure. She had no concept of time. She had no idea what day it was or whether it was day or night. Worse yet, she wasn’t sure how long she had even been here. It was with this thought that the tears came again. Addie didn’t sob this time. She was much too weak. Instead, silent tears ran down her checks, falling on to her bare breasts. She tried her best to fight off sleep. When she caught herself dozing off, she recalled a memory of her boys and replayed it over and over in her mind in order to keep herself alert. Addie knew she had to get through this, knew that she needed to stay alert if she wanted to get out alive. She had to get out alive. There was no other option. Her family needed her. Her children needed her.
Throughout the time that the man was away, Addie dozed on and off. When she allowed herself to close her eyes, she made sure her sleep was light, just as in the early days when her boys were first born and she felt that she had to stay awake to check on them, to make sure they were still breathing.
After what felt like hours, she heard the door creak. Her heart raced as she listened to his footsteps on the stairs. Her stomach churned, unsure of what to expect. When the man saw that she was awake, he chuckled. Though Addie still couldn’t put a name to his face, this time he looked more familiar. As he walked towards her, she noticed a glass in his hand, yet she didn’t take her eyes from his. The closer he got, the more Addie squirmed. She didn’t want to have this reaction, but it was somehow innate. Her body was deceiving her, as her brain screamed at her to be still and remain calm.
He walked over to her and held a straw to her lips. “There. There. Easy does it.” Trailing his cold hand down her cheek, he whispered, “I’m going to remove this gag. Don’t bother screaming. No one will hear you.” Addie tensed. “If we don’t get some water in you, I’ll have gone to all this trouble for nothing.” He ripped off the duct tape. “Now, be a good girl and take a drink.”
She did as he said, looking him in the eye. She took a sip and kept drinking, realizing just how dry her throat was. Choking, she sucked the water down. “Ok, I think that’s enough,” he said, replacing her gag.
He took a step back and walked around her. “You look so beautiful. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen anything more beautiful in my life.” Eventually, he shut the door to the cage and sat in a metal folding chair just outside it. He unbuckled his belt and removed it, placing it at his feet. Her pulse quickened as Addie continued to meet his gaze. As he undid his pants, Addie noticed he was erect. “It’s my turn to give you a show,” he said as he began stroking himself. It took everything she had not to look away. Swallowing hard, she willed herself not to be sick. It seemed to go on forever as the man stared a hole through her with his dark, empty eyes.
When he was finally finished, he stood, picked up his belt, and unlocked the door to the cage. The hairs on the back of her neck stood as he walked around her. He circled slowly a few times and then finally paused behind her. She heard him raise the belt as she prepared for the blow she knew was coming. The belt struck across her rear, forcing all the air from her lungs. She gasped. He struck her once, twice, three times until she lost count, each blow worse than the last. Addie hung her head. She couldn’t help herself.
“You’re a bad girl, watching me like that. You should be ashamed,” he said, exiting the cage, placing the lock back on the door.
After dressing, he walked towards the dark corner. Addie flinched when she heard the cranking sound. She stiffened as she felt herself lower. Slowly she was descending towards the cold concrete beneath her. She sighed at how good it felt against her wounded backside. The man turned and walked up the dark stairs without looking back.
As Addie lay there on the cold, hard pavement, wounded and bleeding, she began to think back, trying to recall the events of her life and how she could have possibly ended up here. She began drifting, unaware of whether she was dreaming or awake. It all seemed the same as the images came; a movie of her life began playing before her. It was so colorful, so vibrant, that she wondered if she was dying. Isn’t that what everyone said happened before death? Yet, she watched, mesmerized, hoping it was answers that were coming and not death, as she feared.
Two
Addie was six the first time she thought about the man she would marry. She imagined what he’d look like, how they would meet, and how their happily ever after would be the happiest of all. Although she had never been to Disneyland, she had seen enough on TV to know that was exactly what it would be like. And God knows she watched enough TV. It seemed sometimes that was all there was to do. Addie lived with her grandparents in an upscale middle-class neighborhood in Austin, Texas. She could imagine that their home was once a happy place, although she’d never known it to be so. Her grandparents rarely spoke to her, and while they cared for her enough to keep her alive, that was pretty much the extent of it. Addie was almost invisible, it seemed. Her grandparents were so sad she didn’t want to make it any worse for them, so the older she got, the smaller she tried to become. She learned to keep her head down, and the longer she did, the less everyone suffered.
Addie’s parents were seventeen when her mother got pregnant. While she didn’t know the full story, she had gotten bits and pieces of it over the years, most of them coming from her great-aunt Sara, who loved to tell Addie stories of her mother. Addie’s mother, Constance, was an only child, the apple of her parents’ eye. She was smart, kind, and beautiful, the kind of child that parents dream of having. Constance was on the fast track to Princeton when she met Addie’s father at a soccer game in her last year of high school. Her parents insisted he wasn’t good enough for her. He would steal her dreams, they warned. Against her grandparents’ wishes, Addie’s parents had secretly been dating for a few months when her mother found out she was pregnant. Coming from a strict Catholic family, Addie’s mother knew abortion was not an option. And when Constance finally got the nerve to tell her parents, they insisted that she give the baby up for adoption.
Addie’s father, Michael, begged her mother not to give her up. He proposed marriage and tried his best to prove that they could build a life together. With time quickly running out, at seven months along, Constance finally agreed to marry him. Together they concocted a plan to forge the parental consent form required and cross state lines, where they would get married. But that was where everything went terribly wrong. Two hundred miles from home, a drunk driver veered into their lane, forcing them off the highway and into a tree. Badly injured, her mother made it to the hospital where doctors delivered Addie, who weighed exactly three pounds and, aside from being premature, was mostly okay. Addie’s mother on the other hand succumbed to her injuries shortly after they delivered her.
Even from the day she was born, Addie was a dead ringer for her mother, which she guessed was why her grandparents decided to keep her. Her grandmother had even told her as much once, that they had lost the one and only thing they loved, and since Addie was the only piece they had left of her, they couldn’t bear to let her go, too. Addie had always sensed that it was the guilt that drove the decision to keep her. Her upbringing certainly proved that it wasn’t one made out of love or concern for her.
Her father, Michael, had wanted to keep and raise her. But her grandparents hired a team of attorneys who quickly solidified in his mind what he already knew, that there was no way that an eighteen-year-old boy w
ith nothing could win the case. Addie’s grandparents had told her through the years that they hoped her father had learned his lesson. He had taken their daughter from them, and the least they could do was return the favor. And though her grandparents spent a small fortune trying to prevent it, a fact of which they boasted proudly, Michael was granted visitation. Addie remembered fondly the time she spent with him until she was around six or so and he moved to Colorado, where he started a new family. He had a new life there, one without so much sadness, Addie guessed, because after he moved, the phone calls and letters seemed to grow further and further apart each year, until, she rarely heard from him.
It was an unassuming, chilly, overcast fall morning the day Addie met the man who would later change her life, become her husband, and father her three children. While it was just another ordinary day, in retrospect, the moment Addie met Patrick, though she would never admit it to anyone other than herself, she knew he was the one. It would take him a little more time. But Addie knew she wanted him and would settle for nothing less.
She had broken up with her boyfriend of three years the summer before, because, while he was the perfect boyfriend for high school and the perfect boyfriend for her grandparents, she knew, had always known, that he was not the one. That was the thing about Addie. She was confident, certain. She knew what she wanted and she went after it. Her friends continuously gave her flack for seemingly having her whole life mapped out. And she did. She knew she would graduate, get married, and have two kids and the white picket fence, perhaps even a dog. Her home would be a happy one, with dinner parties and lots of friends. It was the life she’d always wanted, and she intended to have just that.
In the meantime, though, Addie was enjoying college and having the time of her life. It was the first time in as long as she could remember that she didn’t feel lonely. A prisoner who had escaped her captors, she finally felt free. Always the life of the party, she had no shortage of friends. And while everyone else her age seemed not to take life too seriously, Addie was known as a popular overachiever who had a list of goals, on which she was promptly ticking things off. Next up on that list was to find a good man, which didn’t exactly happen in the way she envisioned it, but it made for a great story nonetheless.
On a crisp fall Texas morning, lost in thought and staring at up the sky, Addie was walking from the library to the cafeteria, when her phone rang, startling her. Flinging her book bag around her shoulder and reaching around, she dug blindly until she lost her footing, slipped, and nearly toppled over. Trying to prevent herself from landing flat on her face, she dropped the books in her hands in order to catch herself. As she bent down to retrieve her things scattered among the lawn, she bumped heads with someone. Dazed and a little shaken, she blinked, wondering if her eyes were deceiving her. There before her was perhaps the most beautiful man she had ever seen. He looked familiar, but Addie couldn’t place him.
“I’m sorry. Do I know you?” Addie asked, blushing.
He smiled and extended his hand. “Don’t think so. I’m Patrick. Patrick Greyer.”
