Page 9 of To Have and to Hold

My life was all about routine. Like how every day, after long hours of work, I’d hop on the old, rickety, Brooklyn-bound B train, just for the sake of coasting over the Manhattan bridge and catching a rumbling glimpse of New York’s urban kingdom, lights on fire against the starless night. Brakes would shriek and we’d often stall on the bridge, the reflective East River silently lapping below all the metal, and finally, in the brief mechanical quiet, I’d hear the rush of cars continuing their commute over the arc connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan. It was a glittering reminder of why I moved here, what drew so many to this city, somehow inducing determination in those who saw their future in bright windows and silver skyscrapers. Or my Sunday mornings, when my fiancé would put on the Food Network, more for background noise as we went about tidying and listing errands, but I’d hear about balsamic-braised meat or a cheesy stuffed oven thing and I’d have to emulate the recipe that very night—always pretty good, because I’d inherited my father’s knack for instruction, but never the saliva-inducing deliciousness the chefs crafted on television. He’d regularly ask for seconds, commenting that anything made by his sweetheart’s hand had twice the taste of a stranger’s. And then there was my inexplicable Wednesday midnight cravings for black ’n white milkshakes, my love of wearing red on Fridays, and the everyday will to achieve the dream of decoration.

All in a predictable, happy week. Every building block of who I was came to me within five minutes of captivity. What I enjoyed, who I was becoming and who I’d loved, those I’d been with and wanted to see again. At twenty-seven, there was still the potential to reverse mistakes and carve a different path, or commit to the one already paved out through all the years of work. Family, degrees, diplomas, relationships, movement—I took these shifting mechanisms of life for granted, forever available, until a stranger’s crawl space became not a temporary segue, but a binding interlude.

Now words like endure, defense, weapons, oxygen—syllables and sounds that existed but were never thought of as I went about the regular day—took on all-encompassing importance, for without them I would never feel sunlight again. I would never reach for his hand. My parents’ voices would never again hit my ears. Life in New York City would continue, but I would never be a part of its pumping arteries. I knew this. Some part of me awoke in this cage, that sleeping amphibian aspect responsible for ancestral survival uncurling from the base of my neck and growing scales, because hell if I would die stupid.

Footsteps sounded above, unhurried. Heavier the closer they came but not quicker. I scurried back against the wall with my knees protecting my chest. My arms, as they came around my legs, were shaking. I would hide in this corner, outside the edges of the single bulb of light and become as small as possible. If I willed it, it had to be so because my throat was too dry to swallow and my vision too sharp. His noises, the rustles and thumps, brought this situation too much into focus.

A piece of furniture scraped on the other side of the door. The knob turned. When the door cracked open a noise escaped me, too quiet and cracked for him to hear but it contained my entire soul and the sheer terror that this was my new world.

His leg came first, a column of black, then the rest of him, monochromatic, blended with darkness, as intimidating as I figured he would be, until he stepped all the way in and I recoiled.

He heard what ripped from my throat this time before I ducked my head and blinded the vision. I squeezed into a tighter ball, my lips moving in automatic, silent “please, please, please,” but the after-image wouldn’t fade.

He wore a mask underneath his hood, white as a skull against the black clothing. Minor decoration was carved into the blank face. Black, soulless eye holes, teeth carvings, and ebony paint emphasized the haunting curvatures of human expression: sockets, jaw bones, a sliced-off nose. It offered nothing human for me to grasp onto, no chance of hope.

“Stand,” it—he—said. There was no opening for him to speak, and the voice possessed deadened, venomous thickness.

I pretended I couldn’t hear, that I was simply a piece of furniture, so insignificant as to be passed over. My face, hidden by my arms and knees, scrunched tightly with this wish.

“I said, get up.”

My hands turned into fists, my breaths heavier, but I did as I was told. The warning in his muffled command was impatient, and the reptilian part of my brain told me not to make him angry so early.

“Do you need the bathroom?”

I shook my head, unwilling or maybe even unable to voice an answer. Every tissue inside me was raw, sinew exposed as I stood in front of this man, unable to look up and attempt to read his motives.

“Thirsty?”

Again, I shook my head. I asked, with tremulous purpose, “Why am I here?”

A few precious seconds passed between us. He didn’t move from the doorway.

“Take off your clothes.”

My bones locked. I had the sudden urge to tear through these cemented walls and run. Yet I stood still. There was barely any room to exhale.

“Strip.”

“N-no.” Strands of hair tangled with my lashes as the croak of my denial was followed with a continuous shake of my head.

A loud exhale, hot and wet behind his disguise. “You want me to come over there and cut the clothes off you myself?”

There was no knife in his hands, no other threat than the one that came from his throat, but there didn’t need to be. How long was I going to maintain control? How many nos would be entertained before he proved to me he never required a yes to begin with?

He stepped forward, one foot, and I yelped and fell against the wall behind me, the sobs I’d contained gushing out in dribbles and then fits. More hair clumped into my vision as my neck kept up its belief in denial until I was nothing but a seizing marionette slumping over in the corner, hands protecting what I could as I prepared for the blows I was sure would follow.

But he did nothing. Only stood in the same spot, hands at his sides, head cocked as he looked upon me through holes rimmed in porcelain.

Fingers soaked with my tears hooked the bottom of my shirt, and I peeled it off and over my head, stumbling once, twice, before the red blouse pooled silently onto the stained floor.

I covered my chest with my forearms, clutching. As if I somehow still had a chance.

“All of it.”

Hitches of breath and choked back screams were the percussion to the unzipping of my black skirt, the unrolling of my tights. They were discarded with my blouse, still warm but now lacking the shape of a person and instead becoming the melted remnants of where a woman once stood. Any other time they could be found at the foot of a bed, at the entrance to a shower, the prelude to making love. All things I’d done without thought, without fear, before I truly understood how priceless wearing clothes could be.

“P-pl…I can’t…”

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