Page 91 of That's Not My Name

DAY FIVE

I think I might be dead.

Again.

The same impenetrable dark wraps around me, and I wait it out. Wait for another wall of pain, or…something else. Something more permanent, maybe. But the limbo drags on. The darkness presses in, holding me down.

A throbbing in my face demands my attention. My hand moves to my nose and comes away wet. I realize a few things at once. One, there’s no blood or throbbing noses in limbo. Two, I’m not dead. I’m not even unconscious. I’m lying in an extremely dark place. Three, I think my nose is all the way broken this time.

And four, I’m fucking freezing.

I throw my arms out to try and gather my bearings and smack into something near my cheek. I splay my fingers against it and feel the porous cold of a concrete wall. My breath rasps in and out so quickly it hurts the muscles around my lungs and my head swims. I might pass out again. But I can’t do that. I have to get away from—

Wayne.

Terror sends a chill down my back that rivals the cold, and I try to roll over. I’m not on the ground. I reach down and feel something like canvas under me. I follow it away from me and wrap the tips of my fingers around something tubelike. A metal frame. I’m on one of those camping cots. The kind you use to keep yourself off the ground in a tent.

Where the hell am I?

I sit up a little more, and shards of light catch my attention as my eyes adjust to the darkness. Thin bands of daylight make a rectangle.

It’s a door. Set into the wall to my right. Rain beats against this side of the house. I turn to the other side of the room and find the outline of a set of stairs that ascend into shadow and now I know exactly where I am.

I’m notinthe cabin anymore.

I’m under it. He put me in the basement.

My breath comes heavier and heavier. I have to get out of here before he comes back to finish what he started. My hand comes up to my nose, and pain spikes through my face. My neck aches where he tried to squeeze the life out of me until I passed out.

I can’t let him get his hands on me again.

I move to swing my legs off the cot, mentally mapping out where the house sits and which direction will get me under the cover of the forest fastest—what direction he’ll expect me to go—when something twists into the skin on my ankle. Metal rattles when I move. I lean forward, and in the slivers of light from the door, I see a thick silvery chain coiled on the floor. One end disappears into the shadows, and the other end is attached to a set of handcuffs, one of which is fastened around my ankle.

Panic pools in my stomach. I’m going to throw up. I yank at the chain with desperate hands, but it pulls taut on something farther intothe room. No matter how hard I yank, it won’t come loose. I’m trapped in here.

Hot tears slide down my face. I let go of the chain and kick the links off the cot. I want to scream. I want to beat down these walls with my bare hands. I want to break this cot over his head.

A light flickers on above me, and I jump, slamming my back into the concrete wall. A lone lightbulb hanging from a loose wire dangles above my head, illuminating the rest of the basement. Cracked concrete walls. Dirt floor. A long workbench, empty except for a few boxes stacked on top, is straight ahead of me. The silver chain shackled to my ankle winds across the uneven floor and wraps around a metal foundation pole by the stairs. My heart sinks. No way can I break that.

The stairs creak and I look over. Wayne’s sitting at the bottom. I see the light switch right by his face. I didn’t hear anyone come down the stairs. Which means he’s been here this whole time.

Watching me.

He sighs and puts his head in his hands. Like he can’t believe this is happening either.

“I’m so disappointed in you,” he says, after a long minute of silence. “I thought we were making so much progress. I finally got you onto the right path, and you werelistening. Things were going back to normal, like before when you were little. Then you had to fuck it up again, like always. What’s the matter with you?”

I don’t say anything because my mind is churning. When I was little? I remembereverythingbefore this, and I don’t rememberhim. Before he snatched me, I’d never met this man.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” he continues. “How am I supposed to trust you when you’re so determined to run back to all your mistakes?”

He glares at me, like he’s waiting for a response, so I say the first thing that comes to mind. “What do you mean?”

“I mean your whore friends, their nasty parties, and inappropriate behavior. I’m talking about your disgusting music and your hooker clothes, and the sneaking out. The drinking. The boys. The sinning. Why won’t you leave that behind? Why? Why do I have to take such drastic measures to save you?”

Music and drinking and sneaking out?

What the fuck is he talking about?

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