The Bond That Built Us

by KK Bauer

  I veer my eyes away so as not to give them suspicion. The room is a square, and one corner of it is a raised platform that looks like a shower. The tiles around the wall are cracked and mildewed, clearly from lack of cleaning and care. Beside us, next to the door is a hospital-like cart and a cabinet beside that.

  They rip off our clothes and throw us into the large communal shower. They turn on the showerheads and tilt them so they hit us. This is much better than the last time when they hosed us down like animals. Carlos comes to me and holds me down. I squirm and flail as much as I can, but he smacks me in the face and yells, “Stop! I’m trying to help.” What’s with the face smacking? It hurts and every time they are near me they do it.

  He holds up a tiny disposable razor. He presses it to the skin on my legs and begins shaving them. I’m at a loss for words, I can’t speak or move. I watch in bewilderment as he carefully runs the razor up my leg, over my knee, and up my thigh. He repeats the process multiple times and does the same with my other leg.

  He grabs my wrists and lifts up to shave my armpits. I am so disgusted and confused about this approach that I still gawk at him, just like I have for the last ten minutes. He takes his time doing it, which is making me wonder what is going on. Maybe we really are going to get out!

  I break out of my reverie and look over to Kellan. Andres has untied Kellan’s wrists and is watching as Kellan washes his body with soap. Andres has his arms crossed in front of his chest and I can see the gleam of a knife in one of his hands.

  Kellan glances at me and I see just the tiny nod he gives me. No, he wants to do this now? I widen my eyes and faintly shake my head. I veer my eyes over to the knife and back at Kellan, who finally sees it. He sighs in defeat and continues to wash his body.

  Even though I’ve been violated and don’t think I can ever have sex again, the sight of Kellan’s naked body causes tiny thrills to course through my own. My heart speeds up and when I see the enormous bruise covering the side of his abs, I gasp. It is in the stages of healing but it looks like it will be a while before it is completely gone.

  Carlos grabs the soap and begins washing me. It doesn’t take long but as soon as the suds flow down the drain and the water shuts off with a clank I wish it were longer. He pats me dry with a ratty white towel and slips a strapless top over my head. My arms feed through the neck and the blue dress is tight around my breasts and flows so it covers just above my knees.

  Carlos turns to a bench in the corner of the room and I hear plastic being ripped open. He turns and has a small piece of white fabric in his hand. Behind him a package of underwear lay open on the bench. He bends down and unties my ankles and leg by leg, slips the underwear up.

  I snap my head to look at Andres, then Kellan. Andres still has the knife and Kellan is already in a new pair of boxers and is struggling to get some mesh shorts up with his hands tied together. They shredded our other clothes so all we have is what they give us. They don’t hand Kellan a shirt when they escort us out the room.

  Physically, I feel amazing when we walk back into the room. Mentally, I’m crushed. We had multiple times to try and escape while in there and since we didn’t plan ahead, we were both afraid.

  “Did you see out the window?” I ask when we are alone and locked in the room.

  “Yeah but there wasn’t much out there. It all looked deserted.”

  “I saw an old gas station and some place called ‘Manny’s.’ Maybe we can meet there if we get separated. Or use it as a landmark and go, like, two blocks to the left or something, so it’s farther away.”

  Kellan nods his head and furrows his eyebrows together. “That might work. But we were so close. My hands were untied,” he grumbles. “Dammit!”

  “Kellan, you wouldn’t have gotten very far. I was still tied up and so were your feet. Plus you saw the knife Andres had. It wouldn’t have worked. And I don’t know how great it would have been to escape and run around Mexico naked.”

  “Okay,” he says with determination, “so if we do get out and get split up, we meet two blocks to the left of that building. I want you to hide somewhere, and I’ll find you. Now, can you flare your nostrils?”

  “Um.. I don’t… know?” I ask in a question, a little caught off guard with his complete one-eighty. I look down at my button nose and feel my eyes cross as I try to see it. I wiggle my nose but can’t tell what I’m doing.

  Kellan laughs in front of me. I try again, but can’t do it, apparently. “Okay, we’ll try something else. Just… wiggle your nose like you just did. That can be a secret sign. What should it mean?”

  I close my eyes and imagine what we would need to tell each other in secret with Carlos and Andres near us. “What about… in the clear? Like, there are no weapons or anything. That would have worked great before.”

  “Alright, that’s great. What else?” He looks down at the ground puzzled. We come up with only two other signs. Since we are kind of going by the seat of our pants on this one, there isn’t much to plan for. We do go through a few ‘what if’ scenarios, like what would we do if our hands were tied but our feet weren’t and vice versa.

  We spend all night going over it. So in the morning when I hear a loud garbling yell echo through the hallway, I feel ready for anything. I assume the yell was because the money still wasn’t in their possession.

  “Why don’t they just give them the money? I don’t get it.” I sigh heavily. “Do they not care about getting us back?”

  “You don’t watch many thriller movies or TV shows, do you?” He asks with a smirk.

  “No. I watch mind numbing reality shows and slapstick comedies.”

  Kellan chuckles. “Well, think about it. Once they have the money, we are expendable. Even if they told them that they would give us up, most kidnappers never intend to do so. They must be desperate for this cash. I’m positive our parents are working with people that do this kind of stuff every day. Just let them do their thing, don’t overanalyze it. They are doing everything they can to get us back.”

  “And you learned all that from watching TV?”

  “More or less,” he says with a shrug. “So, the question is, do we wait until they shower us again and hope it’s like today? Or just whenever the opportunity presents itself?”

  “I don’t know how much longer I can be down here. It’s been, like, five days. What if we have to wait another five days for that shower?”

  He sighs and drops his chin to his chest. “Yeah. Okay, whenever we think we can get away, let’s do it.”

  14

  Kellan

  Carlos and Andres don’t come at all that day. In the morning when they found out the money wasn’t there, we could hear them in a rage. Glass shattered and wood splintered. Aubrey and I sat there in the room, preparing for them to come and take their wrath out on us.

  But they never came. Our stomachs were getting accustomed to dinnertime when the food came. So when they didn’t deliver our food that night, it was obvious. Our stomachs rumbled and tightened. It has only been six days but I can tell Aubrey has lost a lot of weight. I’m sure I have, too, but she looks so fragile. It might be her spirit that is already broken that makes her look that way, I’m not sure.

  The next night, we get dinner. Carlos and Andres come in and set cheese sandwiches in front of us. The bread looks actually fresh and my mouth is watering just thinking about it. I devour mine in seconds. But Aubrey just looks at it and then slides the plate over to me. I shake my head and slide it back. She refuses to take it.

  “Dumb girl, eat!” Carlos yells.

  She just glares at him defiantly. When they come in with bottles of water, she refuses to take that as well. I want to curse at her and throw a fit but wait until they leave before interrogating her.

  “What the hell? You need to eat and drink, Aubrey.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “What? Yes you do. You’ll starve to death.”

  “Then so be it.”

  I open my mouth to a
rgue again but finally see what she is doing. If she is near death then they might take drastic measures and do something stupid. “Okay, I see what you are doing. But you aren’t strong enough to do it. Let me.”

  “No,” she says disobediently. “You’re disposable, remember? They came after me for some reason.”

  “Because you are a girl and they can rape you like the filthy scum they are.”

  She flinches when I tell her this, but she pushes through and says, “They were going to kill you the first day. It has to be me.”

  I don’t argue with her. We both know she is right. But that doesn’t stop me from pouting. “There’s got to be another way to do this.”

  “I’m already weak. It won’t take long. We could spend more time waiting for something. I have to be proactive.”

  So on the following day, marking a whole week, she refuses the food and water again. There are dark circles under her eyes and her face and lips are freakishly pale. She hasn’t peed in a good twenty four hours, all the fluids in her body depleted.

  Her whole body is shaking and she can barely keep her eyes open during the day.

  At night, as I am laying on the floor and she on the cot, she whispers something to me that I can’t hear.

  “What?”

  “I said, I miss my dog.”

  “You have a dog?” I lift my head and turn toward her, though it’s dark and all I can see is a faint outline of her frail form.

  “At my parents’ house. She’s a boxer. Her name is Penny. We’ve had her since I was eleven. She’s an old hag now but I still miss her. More than my mom and dad. Is that horrible?”

  “No. Not at all. I definitely miss my mom more than my dad. My dad is… well, let’s just say he’s not someone you want to disappoint.” I never talk about my dad to anyone, not even Josh. I think Josh suspects the kind of father he is, but has never brought it up.

  “Does he hit you?” Her voice is so small, it sounds like she is a mile away.

  “He hasn’t in a long time, actually. The last time was in high school, when I skipped practice to go to a bridge and get drunk. When I came home smelling like whiskey and my coach and my dad were sitting on the porch, I knew I was in trouble. Had a black eye for a week, and haven’t skipped a practice since. When I was little I would always blame the bruises on sports or playing rough. It was hard to do it then.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a while and I think she has fallen asleep. But when a small sniffle comes from her, I curse at myself. “I had a good life growing up, Aubrey. He only hit me a few times, when he was really angry. He mostly yelled, a lot. I don’t wish it was different, or expect a pity party or anything. It happened, it made me stronger and a better person because of it, I think. It could be a lot worse.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she whispers. “Kind of makes my stupid drama with MJ pretty superficial.”

  “Maybe not. Everybody goes through things. Just because it wasn’t physical pain that you went through doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”

  She repositions herself so she is on her side facing me. She tucks her hands under her cheek and looks at me. “You’re a great guy, you know that? I know we aren’t supposed to apologize to each other, but I want to take back the bad things I said to you. Can I do that?”

  I smile and say, “Absolutely.”

  “Aubrey? Aubrey!” I shake her, but she doesn’t wake up. “Shit. Aubrey!”

  I shaker her harder and her eyes flutter open. Her eyes won’t focus on anything and finally they roll to the back of her head.

  I can’t do this; I can’t let her kill herself. I fumble over to the bucket and dip a water bottle in it to retrieve as much water as I can. I make it back over to her and pour it into her mouth. She sputters at first then finally swallows a gulp. She sips some more and though I want to give her a whole gallon, I know she can’t handle it. I stop giving her the water and let it settle in her.

  She’s gone three days without food and water and it pisses me off that I let her go through with this. We had other options.

  She is way too weak to even try and escape. Why didn’t I think this through? I will carry her if I have to. I yell out as loud as I can and in a few minutes Carlos and Andres come into the room.

  Andres’ eyes widen in alarm. He starts spewing Spanish to Carlos who rushes over to her and picks her up. He leaves the room with Andres close behind, still griping about something. I sigh in relief, hoping they will help her. But dread still sits in the pit of my stomach. It all happens so fast that I don’t even have time to try and help.

  I look out into the hallway and… the hallway. They left the door open. Holy shit! What the hell do I do? Do I leave and come back for her, once I find help? Or do I try to find her now? I can’t leave her here, that’s for damn sure. I step out into the hallway and listen intently for any noise. I hear them down the hall to the right, where the shower is. I tiptoe down and slip into the shower room and hide behind the open door. They are in here and have Aubrey on the bench. They untie her wrists and ankles and Carlos yells at Andres, who nods and runs out the room.

  Carlos runs his hands through his hair and mutters something I can’t understand. Beside the bench is a cabinet and sitting right on top is the knife. My breath hitches and I automatically start to gravitate to it. I’m so close. I itch to take the few steps forward and grab it. It would only take a minute or two for that to cut through the bindings.

  I tentatively take a step forward just as Andres flies through the entrance. He is holding an IV bag and has a handful of other things in his hand. I stand there and watch as the two of them hook her up to the IV and Andres holds up the bag of clear fluids as it slowly drips into her system.

  Both of them have their backs to me and are fussing with Aubrey so I take initiative and step forward and grab the knife. I hide back into the corner behind the door and start to saw away. I’m hoping the sound of it isn’t loud enough for them to hear.

  Just like I thought, the ropes snap at the last swipe and break away from my wrists. There are red burns all around them and I don’t even stop to take the time to rub them. I start on my ankles and am free within minutes.

  I wait while the two of them attend to Aubrey. Carlos is constantly touching her which pisses me off, and Andres is holding the bag up with his arms, watching as it drips down the small tube and into her arm. I can’t believe this is happening. It all seems so surreal; I’m just waiting to wake up from this nightmare I’ve been in for a week.

  About thirty minutes go by before the bag is empty. She is coherent now but still very weak. They don’t rush to put her restraints back on and I wonder if now is my chance. Carlos expertly pulls out the needle and wraps some tape around her elbow with a cotton ball pressed against the needle wound.

  I wonder briefly how Carlos can know how to do an intravenous drip like that. Is he a doctor or nurse? I don’t have time to analyze it because Andres pivots and turns to the cabinet to throw away the trash. He cocks his head to the side in thought and purses his lips together.

  He asks something to Carlos who barely turns his head and says something back. I know he is looking for the knife. The one I hold in my hand. Andres turns back to Aubrey and I stride forward and lunge at him, grabbing him by the shirt and tossing him to the ground, away from Aubrey and the door. He hits his head on the side of the shower tile and his eyes roll back.

  Carlos jumps up in alarm and nearly knocks over Aubrey.

  “You escaped?” He asks breathlessly.

  I nod and narrow my eyes to him. “Give her to me.”

  His rage overpowers his shock and he says, “No.”

  I step back to Andres who is still unconscious and hold the knife to his neck. Aubrey whimpers a little and tries to sit up and escape Carlos. He grabs her by the upper arm and she whines. My nostrils flare as I evaluate the situation. Andres is pretty much out like a light. I wish he was dead but I can faintly see his chest rise and fall. Carlos has Aubrey, and for the last week I
’ve noticed that he seems to be the brains of the operation. He’s smart but I have the upper edge. He has what I want and I’m not leaving without her. I leave Andres on the floor, but not before I kick him hard in the gut. He doesn’t even make a sound.

  I walk purposefully toward Carlos with the knife in my hand. I think about all he has done to us. The vivid memory of when he forced himself on Aubrey and made me watch comes to me and I don’t even give him a chance to change his mind. I lunge at him and stab him in the side just below his ribs, making sure to keep the blade away from Aubrey. I want to stab him over and over again until I give him his last breath, but I just can’t. I want him to feel all the pain we felt. But there is no way.

  Carlos groans in pain and his hold on Aubrey loosens and she slips down to the floor. I hear her body smack down on the concrete. I want to tend to her because I know how much she needs me but Carlos is hunched over with his hands covering the wound. I take the opening and punch him as hard as I can in the face. He flies back and the back of his knees hit the bench and he trips backward and falls over it, landing on his back on the floor with his feet up in the air.

  I take whatever strength I have left and pick Aubrey up and whisk her away. I run down the hall and stop short. There is no stairway on this end, only a few doors. I open one and it is a closet. The second one is locked, and the third door is our room. I backtrack slightly and come to a tiny hallway that has two stairs leading up. I somehow hop over both and when I push on the door at the landing, it bursts open and sunlight assaults my eyes. It is bright and significantly hotter out here than in that building.

  “We’re outside, Aubrey. We made it,” I tell her, though her eyes are closed and her head is resting against my shoulder.

  I run down the street, but the further I go, the further into poverty I get. Soon I am in a desolate area where the houses are shacks with cinderblock walls that are crumbling and I doubt they will last much longer. I spot a young family outside and I run to them, hoping they’ll help me.