Page 15 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

I was too young to remember anything else. During my life, there were only these walls as if they were the center of the world. His world.

For years, I wondered what was out there; how the air smelled in the streets, how the sun felt on your skin, or how a laugh sounded.

But I will treat Lou differently than he treated me. I’m not putting her in a windowless closet. She will live under the blue skies of the Yukon, in green, expansive pine forests. She can dress however and eat whatever she wants. She can feel what she wants. I want her to be happy with me, I definitely don’t mean to harm her. I merely want her to be with me and one day she will understand why I abducted her.

I look at the back of my hand, at the pale scar left from my failed attempt to escape my handcuffs.

I know it will take a long time for Lou to realize that the Yukon is her bliss. And the wilderness is a dangerous place. Sometimes more dangerous than L.A.

“I’ll also need double-lock handcuffs,” I say out loud, mentally scanning the interior of the RV. “Eight pairs, no, better ten. All made of hardened steel. And iron chains. Also ten.”

I hear Ramon’s footsteps behind me. He stands next to me and clears his throat awkwardly. “Iron chains?”

I close my eyes briefly, feel the hard pull of the unyielding bonds on my arms and shoulder blades. During the drive, I thought I might chain myself up during a blackout. That seems to be the best solution to not endanger Lou, either. So the chains will be for both of us. “They can’t be from the hardware store, most of them are too heavy.” They shouldn’t hurt Lou unnecessarily. “Is Dexter still alive?”

Ramon nods.

“Get some of his and I’ll try them.” I have no idea what Ramon is thinking and I don’t care. Luckily, he’s someone who doesn’t ask questions.

Again, I stare at the walls, which now glow as white as the pompous mansions of Beverly Hills. The curtain with the fire engines billows in the wind behind the tilted window, the teddy bears on the mobile bobbing up and down as if they were rocking. A child’s laughter penetrates my ears. Definitely a boy.

Perhaps he has the perfect family. Mother, father, child.

Something about this image makes my heart heavy as lead. It pulls me down, down into the depths of the basement, into the dark, somewhere I don’t want to be, never again. I don’t want to feel this. Not this weight of millions and millions of tons. A sharp pain explodes behind my forehead, becoming a crimson fog that seeps into every cell of my body.

For seconds, I feel like I’m getting lost in a haze as if my thinking is being flooded by another consciousness. Images of Lou float past me. Handcuffed Lou, held captive by an iron chain on the wall of the RV. She pulls and tugs at the bonds but cannot free herself. And the longer and harder she tries, the more desperately she cries. I try to put myself in her shoes, but there’s a wall. I feel nothing. No pity, no regrets. Just satisfaction that she’ll be mine. I have the right to abduct her. It will never be as empty and cold as it used to be. Never. I’ll make sure she’ll never leave me. And if that means that her initial time with me is going to be in chains, then so be it.

“Bren?”

The red fog inside me disappears like someone pulled a plug. I watch the rocking teddies. What was I thinking about just now?

Mother, father, child. Lou in chains. Why was I so indifferent? Why didn’t I feel anything?

I mechanically shake my head. I do not want to do that. But it will be necessary. A part of me knows. A part of me can do it. No regrets, no pangs of conscience. Maybe the part that never left the basement of this house.

Everything’s kind of easy for you, isn’t it?

Of course!

She’ll get over it, Bren, for sure. She wants an adventure.

My heart is no longer heavy and that’s a good thing.

Once Ramon leaves, I return to the RV and search for a parking space in front of a Walmart where I can park for free. First, I close all the curtains, then I sit down on the two-man bench, a pen and a blank sheet of paper on the table in front of me. For a moment, I do nothing, just let my thoughts and images flow. I can’t get the renovated house out of my head. It seemed so different, suddenly everything seems somehow wrong. He shouldn’t be gone. He should be locked in that house forever!

With a sigh, I pull my phone out of my pocket and look at Lou’s screenshot. Nothing seems wrong with her, on the contrary. All is good.

When I feel better, I pull out my grocery list from last year and make a new one. I calculate how many canned goods remain from my winter storage, double everything else, and add another winter ration for good measure. So the supplies will definitely last until Lou is out of the woods. I really don’t want to go back to civilization before then. Lou is supposed to adjust to life in the wilderness. Obviously, it would be best if we never had to go to another place and live on what the forest has to offer.

I feel myself becoming more and more relaxed as I follow my train of thoughts.

I spend the next few days exclusively in the RV so I don’t have to go out among people. Every other day, I change parking lots so that nobody notices the mobile home. Once, I even drive past a dump station. With a tingle of anticipation in my stomach, I jot down many more things I hadn’t yet thought of: fake license plates for the RV, double rations of medication, pads, tampons, and all that girly stuff I have no clue about. And of course lots of extras of the stuff Lou likes: lemon cookies, chocolate donuts, pancakes, waffles, lots of sugar for coffee, pine nuts, pasta, sundried tomatoes, and pickled garlic.

After a week, I purchase the materials I need to attach the chains on an early morning in a hardware store that is not busy yet: metal plates, screws, eyelets. I’ve seen it all for so many years that I don’t need to make a list for them. For the assembly, I drive to a parking lot in a large commercial port where nobody will notice the noise. I distribute the mounts fairly evenly, only adding more in the sleeping area. Sleeping in chains can be torture, especially if the chains are always in the same place—and especially at night, I will not be able to do without imprisonment for a long time. For the day, I bought some cable ties and bells from the hardware store to make bracelets out of them, a kind of signal so that she can’t escape unnoticed. Finally, I exchange the mirror in the bathroom for a shatterproof version—to be on the safe side.

Once I’m done with my tasks, I have no choice but to wait for Ramon and research chains. Only when I have decided on a model do I start shopping.

In order not to attract attention, I visit malls and supermarkets all over L.A. one by one. Three times, I black out, twice I make it back to the RV just in time to chain myself in the sleeping area. I’m less fortunate at Trader Joe’s. The flash catches me as someone smelling of varnish and wood oil walks by. I don’t know exactly what I did, but when I come to, the organic apples are spread out on the floor and a shelf has toppled over. The only way to appease the owner is to pay him more money than he’s probably made in the last two months. At least I didn’t hurt anyone.

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