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Moments later, my eyes started rolling to the back of my head and I gasped for air which made him chuckle.
“Not so tough after all, are we?” he asked, letting go of me suddenly and letting me fall to the bare floor. “We’ll see how you’re faring three days from now. I won’t be in to see you, little one. And your food will be limited. Think you can handle it?”
I growled at him like a wild animal. I felt feral and angry. Like a completely different girl than I used to be. I was going to fight for my freedom. I realized how important it would be to be independent and to know how to fight here. If I didn’t I would fall prey to someone far more foul than the man standing before me.
“Well, I’ll see you eventually, I’m sure,” he winked at me, his smirk evil. “Goodbye, little one.”
“I have a name!” I screamed at him, and he turned around, his eyes filled with amusement as he looked at me.
“Oh, I know,” he said perfectly sweetly. “Harlow Granger. I know who you are. You just don’t know who you’re about to become.”
He shut the door and locked it behind him, and suddenly, I was in complete darkness, blacker than the night and inescapable.
That was when the fear started to creep in.
The room was designed as a prison cell for a reason, and within hours, I started to feel the effect it was having on me.
It was making me claustrophobic. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the walls started closing in on me, and I started to have trouble breathing. I wheezed, feeling panicked and frightened, my senses on high alert for any sound, smell or appearance. But it was peaceful in there, almost artificially so. As if every sound coming from outside had been blocked purposefully, to make me truly feel how alone in the world I was.
I started to tap my left foot against the floor in rhythmic, slow motions. That provided some noise and calmed me down a little. Being a big city girl and living in London, I’d never experienced silence like this. It felt like true isolation, and it sent fear into my bones.
Time passed painfully slowly. I tried counting the seconds and minutes like I had in the car, but as the numbers grew, I felt angry and even more scared. I knew I needed to stay strong. All my instincts came out to play now, the primal need to survive at any cost standing center stage just like I had been not long ago.
God, had it really only been a day and a half? It felt like a lifetime away, standing on that stage holding bouquets and having roses thrown at me. Now, I was a prisoner. A captive. And just two days prior I was an innocent girl with big dreams and my head in the clouds.
I started exploring the room a couple of hours into my imprisonment. I looked at the bucket, which I’d already realized was meant to be used as a toilet. The mere thought grossed me out and I winced at the thought of having to use it. There was the chair, but other than that, the room was empty. I felt around the walls, finding the door the man had used. There was a smaller part of it on the lower half, kind of like a hatch. But it was locked from the outside as well.
The hours kept passing, and the overwhelming need to pee made me sit on the bucket, cringing the whole way through. The smell of ammonia filled the room and I dry heaved. It was gross, but instead of despairing over my fate, it made me even more driven to get the hell out of there and leave that godforsaken little cell.
What felt like years later, the hatch opened and I scrambled to get to it. A small tray was pushed inside. There was only one thing on it – a metal jug of water.
I felt angry as hell, my stomach complaining loudly as I contemplated throwing the jug across the room. But I knew I needed to preserve my strength, so I drank the water in slow gulps, deciding to save some for later. God knows how long they were going to keep me without it. They were already withholding food.
I looked at the jug from all angles. It was light, two small screws holding the handle in place. My fingers gnawed at them, and my heart jumped when one of the tiny screws moved a fraction.
Retreating to the corner where there was the most light coming in from under the door, I got to work on the screw. My fingernails were bleeding in moments, still hurt from when I tried to escape the trunk. But I kept working because I knew it might be my only chance. I worked and worked that screw until it finally came loose, and when it did, I cried out happily. Now there was the problem of hiding it.
