Page 15 of Torment

4

Jolie

I wokeup tied to a wooden chair. My head throbbed as if it would burst, and I could feel a feverish flush in my cheeks.

Groaning, I blinked and looked around. My surroundings were quite dim, lit only by a small dirty bulb above my head, but I could see that I was in a medium-sized room with thick gray curtains covering every wall. Or window. I had no way of knowing what was behind them, really.

The floor was solid gray concrete. On my left was a stainless steel toilet. To my right was a thin mattress, and above that was a tiny TV perched up on a small corner shelf. It was off. Directly ahead of me, there was a set of iron bars dividing part of the room from the rest. Behind the bars, I could see steps leading up to god knows where. No matter how far I craned my neck, I couldn’t see.

I tried to focus on what I could hear instead, but that amounted to nothing other than the sound of my own breathing. There were no bird calls. No music. No voices. Nothing to give me the tiniest hint as to where I might be. This room could be in the basement of a modern office block, or a cabin way out in the woods. Anywhere.

“Hello?” I called out. I mentally kicked myself a second later as a cold shiver ran down my spine. Obviously I’d been kidnapped. I didn’t want to attract the attention of whoever took me.

Then again, I wanted some sort of explanation. Who tied me down here in this spartan room? Why did they take me? What were they going to do to me? Nothing good, that was for sure, but still… I wanted to know.

I felt a sudden wave of cramps in my stomach, followed by a wash of sickness. It had to be an after-effect of the sedative my captor stuck in my neck earlier. At first I thought I might vomit on my own lap, but the pain and nausea slowly subsided.

I sat in silence, tortured by my own thoughts and fears. How the hell did I end up like this? A captive yet again, despite my promise to myself. When I found the note earlier, why didn’t I call the cops right away instead of deciding to wait until after my sunrise walk? At the time I’d decided it was too early, but in hindsight, that was a ridiculous notion. The police had twenty-four hour hotlines. I could’ve called and asked to make a report, or I could’ve gone down to a district station and reported it in person. But I didn’t. I thought a few short hours wouldn’t make any difference.

I was a fool.

I swallowed a hard lump in my throat as I tried to figure out who would miss me first. Probably my new boss at the library. I was due for a shift there tomorrow morning. She might just think I was flaky, though, given my colorful job history.

Tears spilled from my eyes as I realized Buddy might actually be the first to miss me. He needed to be fed once a day, and without me there, he would starve. I choked back a sob at the thought. Some people might think ‘it’s just a fish’, but Buddy was more than that to me. He was my beloved pet, the first one I ever got, and he’d always been a comfort in hard times. He didn’t deserve to starve, listlessly swimming around the tank until his tiny body gave up.

Once the crying started, I couldn’t stop. Hot tears coated my cheeks, dripping all the way into my mouth, and my nose leaked at the same time. I didn’t care how disgusting I looked. I just wanted to mourn Buddy, considering what would likely become of him if I remained trapped in this place.

I tried to comfort myself with a new thought. I’d already fed him today, so he would be nice and full till tomorrow. Then, when I didn’t show up at work tomorrow morning, the librarian might call Lauren to find out where I was, seeing as my own phone would go straight to voicemail now that it was wrecked on the edge of a road somewhere. Lauren would realize something was up, and she’d probably stop by to check my apartment. If she was able to convince the building owners to let her in, she would notice and rescue my gorgeous little angelfish.

That was the only hope I had left to cling to. Not for myself, but for another life, small as it may be.

Somewhere around an hour later, I heard a scraping sound. On high alert, I sat up straighter in the chair. Someone had opened a door somewhere, and they were coming down the steps.

A man appeared behind the barred partition. It was the same one who’d taken me earlier. This time he was wearing a dark mask instead of a balaclava. The only visible part of him was his hands. One of them was covered in silvery webbed scars.

He stood and stared at me without saying a word.

“Who are you?” I asked timidly.

Silence.

“Please tell me why I’m here.”

Silence.

“Please… whoever you are, just talk to me. Tell me what I’m doing here.”

Yet more silence.

I sniffed back another round of tears, trying my best to stay as calm as possible. The last thing I should do was start screaming and crying hysterically, because that might aggravate my kidnapper into hurting me.

“Why won’t you talk to me? You talked to me in the car,” I said. My voice broke slightly, betraying my terror.

The masked man stared at me a while longer. Then he left his side of the room and marched back up the steps.

He returned around five minutes later with a large black bag and a wide silver bowl. It looked like a dog bowl, only it was filled with what appeared to be soup.

My mysterious captor set the bowl and bag on the floor before pressing several buttons on some sort of keypad to his right. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear the beeping as he pressed different numbers.

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