Comfort Food

by Kitty Thomas

  Okay.

  “Please tell me why you're doing this.” My voice was stronger now. Maybe it was the captive/captor alliance we seemed to have formed. He didn't seem the kind to lash out with no planning. He instead seemed the type who could wait multiple eternities for everything to work to his desire.

  No reply.

  He placed his fingers on my lips, gently silencing me. He had no intention of answering the question, and I had no power to make him do so. He knelt on the ground beside me and I heard the knife as it cut through the ropes binding my legs to the chair.

  I had the urge to kick him in the face, but I didn't. If I kicked him, I was escalating the situation to real physical violence and he would no doubt retaliate. This wasn't someone with gentlemanly scruples. Before I could make a solid decision against kicking him, my chance slipped past me, as he moved behind me.

  He sliced through the ropes around my wrists. I hadn't realized how much they'd cut into me, but they burned now that the air hit them. He came back to stand in front of me, bringing my arms around with him, placing my hands primly on my lap like I was a posable doll. I could barely feel myself breathing.

  I have a deep and abiding fear of knives. Honestly, I don't know many people not afraid of knives. For most, a knife is scarier even than a gun. If someone kills you with a gun, it can be quick, painless. Knives don't offer that possible luxury. They are intimate and violent in a way a gun could never hope to be.

  Despite my hands and legs being free, I still didn't fight back. He had a knife, and I was blindfolded. It didn't take a mathematician to work out those odds. Before I could reach up to remove the blindfold, his hands were encircling my wrists, rubbing them, as if he were actually concerned he'd hurt me.

  But I knew that wasn't the case. Anyone who drugs you, kidnaps you, and locks you in a cell doesn't care if they hurt you. Maybe he just didn't want to hurt me, yet. In one quick movement, he ripped the blindfold away.

  Although the scrap of dark fabric hadn't been pleasant, it had acted as a sort of safety, a filter. Now there was nothing between us. I looked into the coldest, blackest eyes I'd ever seen, fathomless pools of something I couldn't quite recognize as human. There was an otherness about him, something that made him different from me, from anyone I'd ever spoken to before.

  I expected him to start the verbal threats now that the mystery of my captor was over, but he didn't. He just stared. I was his science project.

  In another situation I would have found him attractive. He was muscular, had a firm jaw, great hair, not an ounce of body fat. I imagined this was what Ted Bundy's victims felt at some point, that it was utterly impossible he could want to hurt them and be so beautiful at the same time. The unbelievable shock someone so attractive could be a predator.

  Why would he have to be? Didn't women just fall at his feet automatically? I had the sudden bone-chilling terror that this man wanted something he couldn't get from a date, perhaps my body chopped up in little pieces and arranged in neat white paper in the freezer. I shuddered at the thought and quickly tried to block it out.

  Monsters aren't supposed to be beautiful. It's the rule. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was ugly. Frankenstein's monster was ugly. Nosferatu . . . ugly. Ugly was in the rulebook. And yet the man kneeling calmly before me wasn't ugly. Not on the surface. Look anywhere but into his eyes and he was the man women fantasized about from puberty onward.

  He stood and backed away from me then, his gaze pinning me to the chair. He wasn't holding the knife in a threatening way, but he still held it. He started toward the door, then thinking better of it, he turned, came back to me, and pulled me out of the chair. I was almost to the begging point again, but he wasn't interested in me.

  He stacked my chair on top of the one he'd been sitting on, folded the card table, and took the bowl and spoon.

  I could have spent hours, days even, berating myself for not at least trying to run past him for the door, but I was glad I didn't. There was a combination keypad on the wall. Leaving required a retina and thumbprint scan. Whoever had me, had some discretionary funds. Maybe I was part of a secret government study.

  The door shut loudly behind him, and I was alone in the cell with nothing but the clothes on my back. Concrete floor, concrete walls, unknown ceiling composition, all gray. A toilet sat in one far corner with no lid and there was an odd drain in the floor a few feet from the toilet. It was like prison without bars, or windows, or a bed.

  I didn't know what time it was or why this mattered to me, but there was something disconcerting about not knowing whether it was day or night. When would I sleep? Not that it mattered. There was nothing to do but sleep.

  In the movies, there's always a way out. It doesn't matter where the bad guy traps you, there's a way out. You can pick a lock, or use some kerosene, a match, and some sort of fuse and make a bomb to blow the door off. You can crawl out through the ceiling tiles, or smash a window, or find some weak point in the wall and start chipping away at it with a sharp tool you just happen to have in your pocket.

  My cell was a fortress. It made the movies seem very contrived. It really isn't that hard to create an inescapable fortress if you stop to think about it. All you need is a solid floor, walls, and ceiling, and one exit using fingerprinting and retinal scans.

  Two

  I once read somewhere that predators conduct something called the interview with their potential victims so they can determine if their intended prey is worth the risk. Of course they don't call it the interview, that's criminal profiler talk.

  I wondered if I'd been interviewed. I was known to give several talks a month. Had he been at one of them? Pulled me aside? Asked me charming, disarming questions? Pegged me as a lamb? A Red Riding Hood?

  I didn't know. But surely I would have remembered those eyes. And if I hadn't seen him for the predatory animal that he was, I would have noticed his good looks. Would I have gone to dinner with this man? If he'd looked at me a fraction less coldly?

  I wondered how long he'd stalked me and how easy I'd made it. Had I been careless with door locking, thinking no one was watching and just this once it was okay? Had he been in my home, rifling through my underthings? Making a checklist of all the items in my cupboards?

  I had a lot of time to think about these things but not that first night. After being left alone in the cell, I escaped to dreams. I could feel the drugs still swirling around in my system, so despite the circumstances, it hadn't been that difficult.

  I dreamed about the luncheon, that he'd been there. We'd made eye contact, and he'd flirted with me. I don't remember if in the dream I flirted back.

  When I woke, it took me several minutes to separate fact from fiction. Waking in the cell was the real nightmare. The dream had been so vivid. Colors, sounds, and smells more alive and immediate than I'd ever remembered them in life. I drank them up to hold onto them, somehow knowing it was the only sensation I would get for awhile.

  The cell was kept at a steady temperature, never too hot or too cold. There was a vent in the ceiling, but it was too high to reach even standing on my toes or jumping. I stood under it a few days in a row, just waiting for some temperature fluctuation, anything that felt like something.

  Everything was too constant here. The vent existed only to taunt me over what I couldn't have: a simple brush of air on my face.

  The second day set up what was to be the routine. I'd been up for what felt like several hours, pacing back and forth. Part of it was the fact that I had no idea what was in store for me. This man held the power of life and death and everything else in his hands, and he wouldn't even make verbal threats I could psychoanalyze.

  I decided this was by design. If he'd stalked me for any length of time, he knew how I craved social interaction. To speak to me would be to give me something he didn't want to give. Toward what purpose, I didn't know. If his intention was to drive me insane, he had a winner of a plan.

  It wasn't until the second day that I noticed the lig
hting. It wasn't bright or super dim; it was this monotonous low illumination that stretched evenly over the ceiling. Like fluorescent lighting, but not quite bright enough for that. Maybe fluorescent lighting that had dimmed some. I couldn't begin to guess at the psychological makeup of someone who would buy lighting and run it constantly til it had dimmed to just the right level to torment me. Maybe that part was all in my head, and I was already going crazy.

  Finally, I drifted to sit in one corner of the room, farthest from the exit. I pulled my legs up against my chest, resting my chin on them, and watched the door like it was going to do a trick. It was. Eventually it would open. Some part of me wanted it to because then at least whatever fate awaited me could happen and then be over.

  When the door opened I changed my mind, silently begging for more time alone. My heart hammered in my chest so hard I was sure it was going to burst out. I took slow, measured breaths, trying to keep a level head. I'd considered rushing the door, but I had no chance of getting there quickly enough.

  The door shut behind him with finality. That was it. Game over. That shot was gone. Not like I had any real shot, but when you're in no-win situations, you have to play this imaginary game in your head, the fantasy where you beat the bad guy and escape.

  The bad guy stood watching me with a metal tray in his hands. For a moment, I imagined beating him to death with it. But then I was back to how I would get his finger and eyeball up to the keypad. Plus there was the combination. I could starve to death trying to figure it out.

  He smiled at me, not a friendly smile, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. He probably did. I'd always had an incredibly expressive face; it's hard for me to mask my emotions even under the best of circumstances. If I have a nice fantasy, my lips curl up in a smile. If I'd done that, I was sure he knew what it meant, that I was running through various grisly murder scenarios that didn't feature me as the victim.

  He crossed the floor and sat Indian-style across from me on the very edge of what I'd always deemed my personal bubble. Chicken noodle soup. Again. I stared at the bowl trying to determine what his game was. If it was time for breakfast, shouldn't he be feeding me something breakfast-like? Or was this another effort to confuse me on the time of day?

  Did he seriously think soup was going to make me forget he had me locked up in what was basically a sensory deprivation tank? Or was this just a way to deaden the sense of taste so it was as deprived as my other senses?

  He crumbled the crackers and lifted the spoon to my mouth. I'm not sure where my courage to speak came from. I was far past scared, but I was also angry, probably as much at myself for sitting and doing nothing as I was at him.

  “I can feed myself!” As soon as I'd said it, I flinched. So much for bravery. I guess I expected him to hit me. Your average psychopath isn't known for his restraint. I braced an arm over my face as if it would stop any blow he decided to deliver.

  Nothing happened.

  With slow wariness, I lowered my arm. He sat mildly waiting with the spoon in his hand. I looked for anger in his eyes, but all I saw was calm, and the slightest tinge of amusement. I amused him. That made me angry enough to stop being scared again.

  I wanted to lash out, fight. At that moment I didn't care if he killed me. I'd gotten it into my head that whatever he had in store for me would be worse the longer it took him to mete it out, and I saw no escape. If he killed me quickly, that would be better.

  I was also more clear-headed than I'd been the day before. The drugs had worked their way for the most part through my system, and I wasn't so hungry I'd do anything. I cringed as I remembered letting him touch me through my clothing just to eat. There would be more of that and much worse if I didn't act now.

  I slapped the spoon out of his hand and threw the bowl across the room. The glass shattered against the wall, breaking the silence. My mouth followed suit, “I don't want fucking chicken noodle soup! I want you to let me go, asshole!”

  I was sure that would do it. Someone as anal as he appeared to be would snap under the strain of my rebellion. I was adorably naive. He stood with the tray in one hand, picked up the spoon, and left the room.

  That was when it occurred to me how unbelievably stupid I'd just been. Yes, he was anal, and yes my little outburst would likely make him angry. But the amount of restraint he'd shown so far made me realize it was unlikely he'd offer me a quick death no matter how many outbursts I displayed. He'd spent too much time on this plan.

  He was only gone a few minutes, but during those few minutes, I ran through at least twenty possibilities of what he might do next. He might starve me was one option. I'd managed to get some bravery due to the fact that I'm not usually that hungry when I first wake up, but starving wasn't something I wanted to do. I was reminded of this fact because I'd just the day before allowed him to fondle me once for each bite of soup.

  He could kill me. A part of me wanted him to. It would be easier than living with what I would no doubt become if he kept to the same MO. He could have gone to get some dramatic implements of torture, or just the knife he'd used the day before to cut my bonds. I shivered at the last option and scooted back into the corner as if I could press myself through the wall to freedom on the other side. Maybe he would be quick about it.

  The door creaked open again and my eyes shot up to meet his, terrified to see anger, but afraid not to know the status of my situation. He still had that calmness. He shook his head and grinned. If he hadn't been a sociopath, he would have been appealing. He had one of those boyish lopsided grins that tried to inch a little way up his face and made him look safe. It didn't fit with his eyes.

  Instead of knives or guns or a million other nasty options, he had a broom, a mop, and a pail. He dragged a small trash can into the room behind him, and the door slammed shut again. I watched as he swept up the solid pieces of the soup and the glass from the bowl and dumped them into the trashcan. Then he mopped the floor, and without a word, took everything he'd brought into the room out again.

  A few minutes passed before he returned to the cell; this time he wasn't carrying anything. He strode too fast across the floor toward me, causing me to cower in the corner like a wounded animal. He stopped just short of reaching me and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked like a parent disappointed in a child, as if I had been petulant and not within my rights and the bounds of normal human behavior to react in the way I had.

  His cold gaze compelled me to speak, “I'm sorry.” My voice trembled and sounded foreign to my ears.

  Could this weak, helpless creature really be me? I'd spent the past five years giving speeches on empowerment and self-improvement and here I was, reduced to this. And so quickly.

  I looked up at him, and he continued to regard me with something like interest. I could practically feel the violence curling within him, waiting like a viper to strike, but it never did. Instead, he stared at me as if he expected me to continue speaking. So I did.

  “Please talk to me. Why won't you speak to me? Are you going to hurt me? Are you going to kill me? Please . . . ”

  He smiled. I don't know why I asked why he wouldn't speak. I knew why. It was becoming increasingly clear. I didn't know exactly why me, but I had a good idea why he wasn't talking.

  He'd studied me, stalked me, knew everything about me. Human contact, speech, words, music. I needed stimulation. And he wasn't giving any of it to me. I was pretty sure he was trying to break me, and considering my lack of escape options, I was pretty sure he was going to succeed.

  People always think they'll never break. They'll never give in. CIA operatives somehow crack, but not them. We live in this world where everybody watches so much TV, it makes them think they're superheroes. I'm strong, but anyone can be broken. I knew this. It's only a matter of opportunity, will, and persistence.

  What prevents it from happening most often is most people sociopathic enough to break and condition someone properly don't have the level of self-control required to do it. Most wi
th the control aren't big enough sociopaths. This was why I feared this man so much, not because I was his prisoner, but because I saw in him the blending of these qualities which made the possibilities of what could happen endless.

  He continued to watch me, cruel amusement curving his features, as if this was so much more fun than he'd ever anticipated the long nights he'd probably jerked off to the fantasy. Then he turned and left. The room felt quieter without him in it, as if his presence could somehow equal words for me.

  Several hours passed, during which I paced the floor, and danced. I know that sounds insane. It is insane. It was day two, and I was flitting across the floor like a prima ballerina. But you don't understand how desperately I needed sensation, any sensation to make me feel like something rather than nothing.

  When I was a little girl, I took ballet. I was pretty good, going all the way to acceptance at a major dance academy in New York. But in the end I decided against it. A ballerina's career is often over by twenty-five. By the time I was imprisoned in the cell, it would have been over for five years already.

  I was glad I hadn't made a career of it. It would have ruined my feet. Although, I couldn't help but think ruined feet was better than being the prisoner of a sociopath.

  So I danced. To distract myself, to move myself out of this plane of existence and into another, one where I was free. The cell was a perfect stage, plenty of room to pirouette and tour jete across it.

  Even though the room was a static seventy-something degrees, I could feel the air move on my face as I whipped around and spun in circles. I felt my feet touching the floor with precision I'd never lost since giving it up. I heard the music in my mind as memories of old skipping records from the dance studios of my childhood played inside my brain.

  I believed I'd won a round. I'd beaten the system he'd so carefully set up. When I couldn't dance any longer I sank to the floor. I was thirsty and getting hungry, but I wouldn't scream for him to feed me.