Page 85 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

A mixture of lake and black water drips from my hoodie. I rip it over my head, throw it into the lake and walk a few steps to the babbling waterfall. Directly underneath, I spread my arms and let the ice water beat my hair. For seconds, I hear nothing but the powerful rushing, smell the cool freshness of the mountain, feel the jets of water on my bare skin. It feels a bit like when I laughed before. Lou suddenly pops into my mind and I glance over my shoulder.

It’s like déjà vu. I know that facial expression, eyes round, lips parted. She stares spellbound in my direction, just like she did in the alcove with the camping utensils.

What does she see in me right now? The young man, the adventurer? Or is she contemplating the moment to run away from her captor?

Not knowing gnaws at me and has made me restless for days. I return to the curious feeling of no longer knowing anything for sure.

“You can wash Grey by the waterfall over there,” I call out to her. “There’s a warm spot.”

She doesn’t respond.

“Lou? Are you listening?”

“What did you say?” She looks at me like she’s never seen me before.

“You can wash Grey in the waterfall if you like. There’s one spot where the water is a little warmer.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure!”

She gets up, fishes Grey off the ground, and stiffly walks like a stork to the back of the lake all the while holding Grey out as if he were infested with parasites.

“Left! Further left!” I shout twice before she understands.

If only I knew what she is thinking or feeling. If only she would talk to me about it. It makes no sense to address it, I already tried that today. Maybe I was too direct. Maybe she simply needs more time, that’s all. After all, we’re just beginning to get to know and understand each other better.

I think back to earlier when I had to laugh so hard. Even now I can still feel the reverberations inside me, the trembling in my chest, the shaking, the tightening of my stomach muscles. In a way, it’s just like crying, just the opposite. Absent-mindedly, I wade after my drifting sweater. Laughter and crying may also be two sides of the same coin, of the same emotion, so close together, yet so far apart.

I feel strangely alien.

Too bad you don’t want to know who you truly are.

Maybe Lou can help me figure that out. Maybe with her I can become the best version of myself.

I fish the hoodie out of the water, which is now almost clean, and wade back. Lou watches me and I impulsively wave the sweater at her. She doesn’t laugh or splash water around herself, but the way she stands in front of the waterfall comes close to the images from my imagination.

Chapter

Twenty-Two

The sun beats relentlessly down on the clearing, leaving noxious black water sludge behind. The heat makes the stench so much worse. We have to tie cloths around our noses to be able to work at all. I insisted that Lou rests, but she wanted to help. So, I gave her a bucket and now she eagerly follows me into the forest to fetch fresh soil.

She’s working like a maniac, maybe because she had the mishap, I don’t know. Every now and then, she gives me a look I can’t read. It could be sadness or pity, but it definitely doesn’t fit the situation and confuses me more than I care to admit.

After ten excursions into the forest, she is too weak to shovel earth into the bucket herself, so I fill it for her.

“You look like a bank robber,” she says as she watches me. “Like a bank robber digging a tunnel to a bank.”

“As long as I don’t look like a shovel murderer, fine with me,” I mutter through the fabric. “By the way, you don’t exactly look like the lovely girl next door, either.” She’s wearing long jeans and a black T-shirt, both of which should be washed, but we didn’t want to wear clean clothes for the dirty work. The dark cloth she has pulled over her mouth and nose gives her a slightly criminal look—so I can imagine what I must look like.

Lou grins feebly, wipes a few dead flies off her forehead with the back of her hand, and runs her fingers over her jeans. Together, we carry the buckets to the clearing and pour the dirt into the black-water channel in the gravel. Sweat runs down my back and my white shirt sticks to my skin. I feel like a steaming pile of manure and I think Lou must feel the same.

Eventually, the entire hole is filled with dirt—it looks a bit like a fresh grave. The sight makes me shiver and I look away.

“It still stinks,” Lou says dryly, picking up Grey, who’s been following her all day. “Well, little one…you’ve been glued to my heels all day,” she scolds affectionately.

“Maybe he thinks you don’t like him anymore, now that he’s turned into a skunk.”

“Nonsense!” Lou lifts him to her cheek and Grey happily licks it. When she wrinkles her nose almost imperceptibly and sets him down quickly, I grin. Grey bolts away, swerving like a rabbit, before sniffing at the heaped earth as if a dead animal was buried there.

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