Coming Back (11 page)

August 2013 (Before)

Christie

I'd been feeling sick to my stomach for hours by the time
He
started showing signs of food poisoning too.  He gave me the pills a little earlier than normal, the pills that sedated me and made sure I didn't try to escape when he was asleep or unable to keep an eye on me for whatever reason.  Then, gripping his mid-section with an uncomfortable expression on his face that I could easily relate to at that moment, he rushed out the door, locking it behind him.

A few minutes later I heard a dirt bike start up outside and tear away at great speed, leaving me with a head that felt like the next throb might be the one to make it explode, hot and cold flushes, and a gurgling stomach that felt a little bit like a volcano waiting for its time to shine.  It could only have been a few more minutes, but my sheets were already soaked with sweat when it happened.

The remains of the Kung Pao Chicken, which had been unceremoniously thrown at me in a takeaway container with Chinese writing on the outside, came back up with a vengeance.  My throat was raw by the time it stopped.

I never thought I would be thankful for undercooked chicken but, when I saw those two little spots of color in the messy puddle on the floor, something told me I should be.  One white, one orange, I had just vomited up the pills along with dinner.

For a minute, I couldn't quite comprehend the significance of what I was looking at.  My mind was still well preoccupied with the nausea, but there was a voice somewhere in there, the part that still had any fight left, that said this was important.  Really important.  Then it hit me.

For the first time in… how long had it been?  I had no idea. The drugs made me lose days.  Weeks.  Months.  Sometimes I felt like I was living underwater, struggling for air, for weeks at a time.  I didn't have anything reliable to judge the passing of time with.

I felt dead, more so than usual, but something was alive in me too, sparked by the sight of those pills in the middle of that ugly mess on the floor.  Tonight, for the first night since I was taken, I was alone and undrugged.  I was awake, and every second my mind seemed to get clearer, pushing at the fog of a long captivity and new illness.

If somebody, at that very moment, had asked me what I had to live for, I couldn't have told them in any succinct way.  Nick was gone, my future was gone, my family and friends had said their goodbyes.  Everything good was gone.

No.  The only answer I could have given wouldn't have made much sense.  It would have been almost gibberish, a flow of images and sounds that came from the most basic survival-oriented part of the brain.

The closest translation into English might have looked something like
fight, Fight, FIGHT, BREATHE, FIGHT, KICK, PUNCH, SCREAM, CLAW, BREATHE, SCREAM, RUN, RUN, RUN YOU BITCH, RUN, GO, GO, HATE HIM, HATE, HATE, RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN
.

Adrenaline was flooding my system.  Tonight was my chance.  Even without a clear reason to live, my hatred for
Him
was enough to want to escape.  He said I was nothing but an item of stock, an All-American girl-next-door for him to sell to the first bidder to meet his price.

That was reason enough to get out or kill myself trying.  I would get out and go as far as I could.  Maybe I could find where they had buried Nick, say my goodbyes, then I'd go somewhere, curl into a tiny little ball, and wait for the end.

I wondered if they ever even found Nick's body.  Did they bury him next to 'me?' Or create a memorial next to mine?  I doubled over and heaved again, a fresh splash adding to the swill on the ground.

I reached for the bottle of water
he
had left and rinsed my mouth out.  I wished I could see his face when he came back to find nothing but this mess and his stock, his meal-ticket, gone.  But how to get 'gone?’

Looking around the room didn't offer any obvious solutions, and I fought down the raw panic.  I wanted to see his face when he found I had escaped, not when he found me undrugged but still right where he had left me.

There were no windows, the door was locked and far too heavy for me to break down.  The sinking feeling of hope snatched away made my head spin, and I sat on the edge of my bed with my forearms resting on my knees for a moment.  Tears blurred my vision as much as that spinning sensation until the fighter in my mind emphasized one of its go-to words.

Kick
.

Next to the treadmill and exer-cycle were my running shoes.  He liked to keep his stock in good condition.  I'd need those if I got out.

Rising to my feet, I stumbled around the puddle on the floor and retrieved my shoes before returning back to the bottom end of my bed to put them on.  After reaching down to tie my shoelaces, I almost passed out when I sat up straight again.

No, no, no.

I fought with everything I had to stay conscious until a new sheen of sweat stood out on my face, but the brown mist that had been encroaching around my field of vision did eventually recede, and I stood up with one hand on the wall to steady myself.  When I went to the door, I almost cried again at how solid it looked.  What good would kicking it do?

Think harder, Christie
.

But it was so tough.  I hung my head and my shoulders slumped, a band of hopelessness beginning to tighten around on my chest.  My eyes were drawn away from the door to the wall next to it.  Sheetrock.

The external walls were solid logs of wood, but this one was sheetrock.  Strong enough to line a wall with... but I remembered when I was six years old and riding my bike inside the house despite my mom telling me not to.  I crashed, of course, because what else would a tomboy do, and my handlebar had put a good hole in the sheetrock.

I slowly crumpled down to the floor, my butt on the ground, one foot braced against the wall and the other cocked up and ready.

Kick
.

“Please.  Please,” I whispered and lashed out with everything I had.

Thump!

Not a hole, but a dent.  The effort made my head swim again, but the sight of the damage brought another surge of adrenaline and I kicked out again right in the same spot, laughing maniacally when I saw the first hint of fluffy pink insulation from inside the wall.

I scrambled forwards, slipping my fingers behind the sheetrock and pulling with all my might.  It was a move that required altogether too much flexing of my abdominal muscles and brought forth the last contents of my stomach, some bile.

The dust and debris from the broken sheetrock mixed with the puddle as I tore larger and larger chunks off, turning around and kicking again if it was too stubborn, until the area around me was scattered with it.  I vaguely remembered that you weren’t supposed to handle insulation with your bare hands for some reason but ignored that little tip as I ripped it out easily, flinging it behind me to reveal another layer of sheetrock.

I turned around and kicked out again, seeing my foot crash right through the wall into the next room on my first attempt this time.  I felt the sting of cuts on my ankle as I dragged my foot back through the hole I had made but paid them no mind at all.  That voice inside of me was getting more focused.  It was screaming.

Run!  He’s coming back! Run! Run!

I kicked and kicked and kicked until I thought the hole was big enough for me to squeeze through, and I was crawling forward before I paused and went back to my bed, the voice in my head screeching in disbelief.  There were things I might need, though.

The bottle of water, the blanket.  He had warned me that the house was in the middle of the woods.  I’d die if I ever tried to escape.  Well, I’d die that much farther away with water and warmth.

I pushed my meager supplies through the hole and crawled through after them, feeling cuts and scrapes on my back and sides that only made me push harder.  For the first time in… a lifetime, I stood outside my prison.

A crippling fear shivered up my spine and made me press my back against the wall I had just broken through.  He would be so angry if he came back right now.  So angry.  Death might not be the worst fate he could unleash on me.

If I just went back in my room, he might understand.  He might even be pleased at my display of obedience, might take pleasure in the idea that he had finally broken me.  I seriously considered it.

Then I thought of what he had taken.  He'd stolen my time of grieving, my family, my future.  I thought about Nick and felt the memory of his love.  What would Nick say if he ever heard I stopped fighting?

"No.  You don't get to win.  Even if I lose, you don’t fucking win." I said to a vision of my captor in my mind.

On a messy desk was a block of chocolate.  I grabbed it and shoved it in my pocket after gathering my blanket and water from the floor and dealing with the hot flush and loss of balance that accompanied the maneuver.

There it was.  The front door.  I walked up to it with a fear and reverence no less intense than if I was walking up to the pearly gates themselves.  In a way, that’s exactly what I was doing.  I grasped the handle.

I almost screamed when I twisted the door knob and the door wouldn't budge, then I spotted the deadlock and turned it with the hand holding the water bottle all wrapped up in the blanket.  When I tried the door again, it swung open easily and silently.

Something cool... wind, hit me full in the face, and I stood there for maybe almost a full minute in shock, savoring the rush of air on my feverish skin.  It was hard to believe it could be real, but this was outside.  I remembered it.

Laughing and crying at the same time, I ran out of the door and into the woods to meet my fate on my own terms.

April 2014 (After)

Christie

Dean dropped me off at home mid-morning before he started his shift at work.  I kissed him goodbye and walked inside on a cloud of air.

Amber was the only one around and looked like she was ready to go somewhere.  She gave me a sly look that said ‘I know what
you’ve
been doing.’  I had to cover an ear-to-ear grin with my hand for a moment.

“What are you up to today?” I asked.

“I’m heading up to St. Louis to see about starting up at college again in August.  I was planning on becoming a professional chaperone but, as we can see with what’s happened with you, perhaps it’s not my true calling.”

I nodded.  “It’s thankless work too.”

“That it is.” Amber shouldered a bag and picked up a piece of toast for the road.  “See you tonight, sis.”

I pulled her in for a hug, holding her so tight that she made a choked sound, and then I squeezed her just a little bit more.  She didn’t have much of a filter on that mouth of hers, but she had a heart of gold and when I finally released her, I could see the happy little sparkle in her eye.

“See ya,” I said.

There’d been times when we were growing up that I wanted to throw her down a well, but I loved her more than she’d ever let me tell her.  Seeing her taking her life off hold was so uplifting.  I hated that she’d had to drop everything because of what happened to me.

Come to think of it, she had the right idea.  If I was going to be part of the real world again, I had to give some thought to the future.

I tracked down a pen and a pad of paper and got myself good and comfortable on the couch.  At the top I wrote in big capital letters ‘WHAT TO DO WITH MY LIFE’ and sat staring at the otherwise blank lines for a long time.

It was a lot harder than I expected it would be.  Control over my own destiny had been out of my hands for so long that I hardly knew how to unpack it from that part of my mind labelled ‘irrelevant.’  Thoughts of Dean kept intruding too, in the best way.

Most of the things I’d envisioned for myself before being held captive didn’t feel ambitious enough anymore, but it was a struggle to think of anything better.  After going as low as I did, I couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm for slowly working my way up some corporate ladder.

By mid-afternoon my list consisted of only a single entry.  It was one of the survivors from my life before, slightly modified by circumstances, but I thought it was a good one.

*Love all the way or not at all

I put a big tick next to it, and for a brief while I managed to convince myself that was the truth.  Dean had performed a miracle, and there was nothing I wanted more than to spend my life repaying the favor.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was sexy as all get out and that last night had been the most sensual moment of my life.  Visions of Dean’s hard body were first and foremost in my mind when my phone beeped.

I smiled and fished it out of my pocket, thinking it was probably Dean with a sweet message.  When I saw the name on the screen, I suddenly felt like one of those cartoon characters that were walking along fine, then looked down and found they’d walked off the edge of a cliff and started falling as soon as they noticed.

The text wasn’t from Dean.  It was from Nick.  I could see my hand shaking when I pressed the button to read the message.

Thinking of you.  Hope everything is going OK.

Tears welled up, and I dropped the gadget on the cushion beside me before burying my face in my hands and sobbing.  Just like that, I felt like the worst person in the world again.

Among other things, I felt like an adulteress, like I was betraying Nick or the memory of what we had by not only getting physical with another man but getting emotional too.  I was trying to let somebody else into the place in my heart I’d once promised to be his forever.

My phone beeped again from the very spot where Harper had sat when I met her, the woman who replaced me.  Nick had moved on, so why did I feel so… guilty?  I didn’t read the new message.  I couldn’t.

I wanted to hate Nick and Harper, but I couldn’t do that either.  I wanted to look back on the time I spent with Nick and say it was awful, but it wasn’t.  That would have made things easier.

There had been a time in my life when I had enjoyed the attention I got from men, and I now wished I could go and tell that girl I used to be how stupid she was.  Attention like that will get you a broken heart at best, kidnapped for human trafficking at worst.  Both if you were me.

My chest felt crushed with some unmovable weight, some burden laid on me by a simple supportive text.  The highs of last night felt so distant so quickly and I almost felt like I was back to square one.

I dried my eyes on the back of my hand and picked up the pad and paper, scribbling the little check mark off like the lie it was.  Clearly I had unfinished emotional business with Nick if a quick note could send me into a tailspin.

When my phone rang some time later, I was ill equipped to deal with the sheer chirpiness of Dean’s tone.  He still sounded the way I had felt this morning.

“Hey, did you get my message?” he asked.

“Oh.  No, I heard it come through but then I forgot to check it.”

“OK, well now you’ve got no time to think about it,” he said.

“About what?”

“I asked Rusty if he could cover the last half of my shift tomorrow and he said he could.  So what I was thinking was, I heard there’s a Chinese restaurant that just opened in High Ridge that’s supposed to be pretty good, and if we take him up on his kind offer we could make it there for dinner.  What do you say?”

I thought back to the last time I’d seen Chinese food, in a mushed-up puddle on the floor of a house of horrors in the woods mixed with my own bile, and fought off a wave of nausea.  My jaw was clenched shut and the side of my fist pressed against my mouth until the urge passed.

“Hello?  Christie?  You still there?”

“Yeah.  But, no.  The last meal I had before I… got out was some bad Kung Pao Chicken from a Chinese restaurant that gave me food poisoning.  I doubt I could stand going to one yet, if ever.”

“Oh.  Right.  Well… something else then?  I can’t wait to see you again-“

“Dean, I’m sorry, yesterday was amazing and last night was… well, you know, but could we leave it a few days?”

When he didn’t respond for a few seconds, I had a vision of me throwing Dean’s heart on the floor and grinding it under my heel, and I hated myself in that moment.  I wished I had a magic wand to make everything perfect.

“Is everything OK, Christie?  You sound… uh… not so good.”

“Yeah, I’m OK.  Ish.  I really am sorry.  I meant everything I said, everything I did, yesterday, but today it all just feels too fast.”

I heard Dean take a deep breath at the other end of the line.  “Are
we
OK?”

“I think so… or we can be.  I’m a mess, Dean, but I
do
love you.  I need you.  Can we take things a little slower?”

“I waited my whole life for you, Christie.  We can go as slow as you like.”

“Thank you.  Plus, you know, I need to recover my strength from last night.” I added hopefully, trying to take the edge off any disappointment for him.

“I was good, wasn’t I?  You may be a mess, but you’re a hot mess, Christie.  I guess I’ll look forward to working tomorrow instead.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s OK, but we’re still on for this weekend, right?”

“For sure,” I said.

“Great.  I Love you.”

“Love you too, bye,” I tried to put all the conviction I felt in my voice so he could feel it too.

“Later.”