Page 44 of Torment

“On the other hand, it nearly took a fucking month to get you to tell the truth,” he growled, malice filling his gaze again. “You’ve made things very difficult for me, and I don’t think you deserve a reward for that. Besides, I need to know you won’t try anything stupid when I’m away from the house.”

My shoulders slumped. He was going to put me back in the underwater cell after all.

He marched me down to the awful place and threw me onto the thin mattress before locking me behind the barred partition. “I’m going to leave first thing tomorrow to check out these leads you gave me. They better not disappoint me.”

I swallowed thickly. “They won’t.”

“Good.”

With that, he was gone.

* * *

Something buzzed loudlyin my ear, stirring me from my sleep.

“Go away,” I mumbled, wearily swatting around my head. There must be a fly in my bedroom, or perhaps a bee. They tended to fly in whenever I left the window open to draw in the floral scents from the garden below.

With a stark shock, reality came flooding back to me, like it did so many other mornings after my brain finally slipped out of its foggy, half-dreaming state. I wasn’t at home. I was still in this horrible cell, trapped in a swampy lake. The buzzing sound was coming from a morning show on the TV in the corner.

I sat up straight, my chest aching from the heavy pounding of my heart.

On my side of the bars, there was a metal tray with a bowl of cereal and a glass of water. A note was attached. Not sure how long I’ll be gone. I’ve left supplies again.

With a yawn, I looked to my left to see a stack of boxes. They were filled with canned food, bottled water and books, just like last time. This meant Mason planned on being away for quite some time, checking up on all the false information I gave him.

I breathed a sigh of relief and dug into the cereal. Even though I was trapped down here, I had time on my side now. I wasn’t going to give in to hysteria and confusion like I did when I first arrived in this terrible room. I was going to find a way out.

I pulled back the curtains and tried to ignore the rising panic in my chest as I assessed the glass and the murky water on the other side. Mason said the glass was impenetrable, but that might not be true. If I kept on bashing at a certain spot with the metal tray he’d left my breakfast on, or perhaps a stainless steel part from the toilet, I might eventually be able to crack it. That would weaken the entire structure, and if I kept at it for long enough, it would break.

If and when that happened, I would have to act fast and swim my way out, fighting against the pressure of the water as it gushed into the room. I was strong and resilient, though, and I knew I could do it. After all the painful torture I’d endured in my life, a bit of water wasn’t going to stop me.

I picked up the tray and slammed it against the glass. Nothing happened. I didn’t quit, though. I was determined to make this work.

After two straight hours of hitting the glass, my arms began to tire and my mood began to sour. The tray hadn’t done anything, and neither had the heavy toilet seat after I managed to wrench it off the toilet. Not even the tiniest of cracks had appeared in the glass wall.

Don’t give up, a scrappy little voice in my head told me. Don’t let him win.

I took a fifteen minute break to rest my arms, and then I resumed the glass-bashing.

“Winter has really hit the state with a bang,” a weather reporter said on the TV as I hit the glass for what was probably the millionth time. “Severe weather warnings have been issued yet again for every parish. Expect high winds and thunderstorms lasting until tomorrow at the earliest.”

Crash. Crash. Crash. I hit the glass again and again. Finally something happened, but it wasn’t what I expected. The glass was still intact, but the light and the TV suddenly switched off. The water outside looked like it was churning, too. It had to be raining quite heavily for that to happen, so it seemed as if a storm had knocked the power out again.

I waited for the backup generator to kick in, and sadly, it did so thirty seconds later, just like last time. With a sigh, I began to hit the glass again.

Suddenly the light went out for a second time, along with the TV. My pulse began to race with excitement. If the storm was bad enough, could the backup generator have died too?

I decided to wait and see. If I tried to get out and the power came back on within a few seconds like it usually did, I could wind up trapped behind the bars on the other side of the partition without any food or water, unable to get through the door to the house. Mason might not return for a week, and I would die of dehydration before he found me.

When ten grueling minutes had passed without anything turning back on, I realized the power definitely wasn’t returning anytime soon. With a wide grin, I leapt up and wrenched the bars open before dashing up the passage that led into the house. Thank god for this storm. It was making my escape about a thousand times easier than it would have been otherwise.

Like I suspected, the door between the passage and the house opened instantly when the electronic lock wasn’t functioning. I crept out, carefully checking to make sure Mason was really gone. When I was sure I was the only person in the place, I raced into the spare room and hurriedly dressed in a pair of black jeans and a gray top.

After that, I checked around the house for a phone so that I could call 911 and let them know what was going on. Unfortunately, I didn’t see one anywhere. No one had landlines anymore, and Mason had obviously taken his cell with him.

Undeterred, I grabbed some food and water from the fridge and shoved it all in a plastic bag I found on the counter. Then I headed for the back door. It was locked, but I was on the inside, so all I had to do was move a little latch near the handle before… freedom.

Real, exhilarating, heart-soaring freedom.

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