Chained

by Escalera, Tessa

  I must be starting to hallucinate.

  “I'm Rachel.”

  “My name is Sarah. I guess you're the appointed midwife today.”

  Rachel hugged the bundle of blankets she was carrying tightly to her chest. “I don't know anything about this stuff.”

  I gripped the sides of the cot and breathed through a contraction. “It doesn't matter. Just come here.”

  Rachel walked over and stood uncertainly next to the cot.

  A sudden contraction overwhelmed me and I cried out, reaching toward the other girl with one hand. “Help me!”

  Rachel dropped the bundle and knelt by the cot, grasping my hand in her own. The feeling of another human being's touch gave me a surge of strength. I had forgotten how warm people were. Oh, it felt amazing.

  Feeling renewed, once the next contraction had passed I started giving what directions I could. Rachel placed a cloth, dampened with water, on my forehead. She held my hand as I groaned through the pain.

  After a while I began to shake, even though I wasn't cold. I started feeling nauseous, and panicky. It was all I could do to keep from begging Rachel to go get me some medicine. The pain was almost constant, wave upon wave with very little break in between.

  My stomach heaved and I turned away from Rachel to vomit over the side of the cot. I was shaking so hard that my teeth were chattering. Misunderstanding, Rachel placed my blanket around me. I growled and pushed it off, turning away from her.

  The pain gripped my whole body and I sat up, my groan changing to a scream.

  I felt as if my mind was separating from my body. My brain couldn't stand the pain, so it was escaping. I watched myself from the outside, watched the screams change into a sort of low growling as I vaguely felt a pressure growing, deep below. I dimly realized that I had stopped breathing. I gasped in, and growled again. There was an incredible burning, and the pressure was unbearable.

  I curled around my belly and bore down, pushing Rachel toward the end of the bed.

  “Baby!” I panted, the rest of the breath coming as a shriek. “Baby's coming!”

  I ignored Rachel's hesitation and pulled my gown up around my shoulders. I no longer cared about modesty, or anything except relieving the incredible pressure that gripped me. I pushed against it, only pausing to gasp in a quick breath when my oxygen began to run out.

  My heart was failing. A slow pounding was resonating in my body, and my pushes were losing strength. I cried out as the fire intensified, and drew in a deep breath before spending the last of my strength on one last, giant effort.

  There was a sudden release, and the pain was gone. The baby slithered into the world, greeted by Rachel's shocked cry. I fell back against the pillow, panting and gasping for breath, my heart stuttering madly. Spots swam in front of my eyes.

  For an agonizing moment, all was silent. I fought for breath, unable to move. Nothing moved, not me, not Rachel, not the babe that lay still between my legs.

  Then the baby twitched, and the echoes of those first, beautiful wails echoed from the concrete walls.

  I laughed. For the first time in months, I laughed. I reached down and Rachel handed the baby to me, loosely wrapped in a towel. He was bloody, and messy, and indescribably perfect. I held him to my chest, kissing him desperately. I held him as if I would never, ever let him go. I cradled him in my arms, crying with a joy so exquisite it was something akin to pain.

  Oh, God. This is why you kept me alive. This is why I had to live. This is my son...my baby...my perfect little one.

  The baby cried, and I laughed. So this was what it felt like to be a mother. For a single moment, everything was perfect. Everything was right. I was happy.

  Then the door to the cell opened, and I came crashing back to reality. Master's hulking form stepped through the door, and my heart sank into my feet. Travis, who had followed behind, stepped forward and cut the cord tethering the baby to me.

  “No.” I shook my head, clutching the protesting baby tightly. “No, he's mine. You can't have him.”

  Without a word, Travis reached forward to take the baby from my arms.

  “No!” I screamed. “You can't have him!” Despite my efforts, my arms were weak and Travis took the baby from me. “No! Travis, give him back! He's mine! Don't take him!”

  Travis handed the towel-wrapped baby to Master, who looked him over as I watched in horror. With a grunt, he nodded to the younger man, who took the infant and left.

  “No!” I cried, pushing myself up on shaking arms. “Please! Please don't take him! Master! Please don't take my baby! Travis! Travis, come back!”

  But nothing helped. The men ignored my desperate pleas. As my weakened muscles failed me and I sank back on the bed, Master turned and followed Travis out of the cell. The door closed with a clang of finality, and I listened with a frantically beating heart as they carried my crying baby down the hallway.

  “No, no, no,” I sobbed, the pain like a knife in my chest. “No, they can't take him. He's my baby.”

  God! You can't do this! Bring him back! You can't let them take my baby! God, don't do this to me!

  But no one answered. It was only then that I realized that Rachel was gone too. I was left alone, with only the deafening silence and the echoes of my baby's cries ringing in my ears.

  I was left alone, with no baby and all the blood and mess of childbirth. Rachel had left the scissors. For a long moment I held the sharp metal implement in my hands, blade set against my wrist, and I seriously considered ending everything right then. I pressed the blade to my skin, sobbing as the edge pricked my wrist and a single drop of blood beaded up.

  Then disgust overcame me and I threw the scissors away. They flew through a gap in the bars on my door and clattered against the hallway wall before falling to the floor.

  My baby. My baby is gone. He's gone. God, why? God, give him back. Please, God. I can't lose him.

  Oh, God. My baby.

  I stumbled to the sink and the toilet and cleaned myself up as best I could. Blackness floated at the edge of my vision, and I fought to stay conscious. I was so tired.

  Just before the darkness claimed me, I climbed back onto my cot and collapsed on top of my blanket.

  I am holding my baby. He lies cradled in my arms, nuzzling against my chest. He is perfect. His skin is pink and his hair is dark and curly. His tiny toes are long and skinny. His little fingers curl around one of mine. He cries, and I hold him close to me. I whisper my love to him, my eternal devotion.

  For an eternity I just stare at my baby. He's mine. I grew him inside me and he's mine, and nobody will take him from me. Travis comes, and he congratulates me. So does Master, Rachel and Tanya. They exclaim over his perfection. They touch his little head. They hold him, but then they give him back to me. And then he sleeps, perfect as a baby angel in my arms. I cannot stop looking at him. I am memorizing every detail of his tiny body. I will never let him go. I don't care whether I am still a captive, or whether I am in a hospital. I don't care if I ever see the sun again. I don't care about food, or water, or air. All I care about is that my baby is in my arms. And the world is right, and nothing can take this joy away from me.

  Chapter 17: Movement and Change

  When I woke, I was alone. My baby was still gone. I laid on my cot and cried, not bothering to respond when Travis brought me fresh towels and took the blood-stained ones from beneath me. I didn't even try to choke down the bowl of fresh fruit, the scrambled eggs and the bacon. Apparently giving them a baby meant I deserved special treatment. It was just another reminder that I was a mother with empty arms. I ignored the food, I did nothing but lay on my cot and stare at the ceiling. It was all I could do. My baby was gone.

  Eventually, Travis came and forced me to sit up and eat. I was very weak, and my vision danced with spots. He finally convinced me by telling me that he wasn't going to leave the room until I ate the food. I desperately wanted him to leave, so I ate as quickly as I could. I hadn't realized how hungry I was. Ev
en when the plate was clean, my stomach ached for more. But I wouldn't give Travis the satisfaction of knowing this.

  Once the food was gone I lay back down and closed my eyes. I heard the rattle of the tray being gathered up, and Travis left.

  As much as I could, I slept. In my dreams, I still had my baby. I named him Patrick, after my father. I cradled him and nursed him and kissed his tiny face. I slept, because in my dreams I could be happy. It was only the real world that caused so much pain.

  After a couple days, I woke from a deep sleep to find that my milk had come in. For hours after this discovery I cried, my hands clasped to my chest as if to stop the flow of liquid that was meant to nourish the baby that I would never hold again. It was the worst insult added to injury that I could imagine—that my hormones were still preparing my body to feed a child I no longer had. The pain in my chest only added to the pain in my soul.

  I was exhausted beyond imagining. My blood flowed to cleanse my body and my womb of the remnants of childbearing. My milk flowed to feed a baby that was gone. And my tears flowed in wordless protest of it all.

  I don't know how many days passed in this haze of pain. I sought sleep, and only ate when forced. I didn't move from my bed except to answer the calls of nature. The coppery scent of blood penetrated the cell, and I couldn't get it out of my nose or off of my tongue.

  So gradually that I can't be sure when it began to fade, the pain lessened. My milk dried, and the flow of blood slowed. I could stand without almost passing out. I slept until I could sleep no more, and after that, I lay silently on my cot, trying to imagine that I held my baby in my arms. Travis brought me food and took trays and towels away. Neither of us spoke, and that was the way I preferred it. The only sound to break the unbearable silence was the sound of Tanya's TV and the cries when Master came to visit her or Rachel.

  I learned not to think. If I tried hard enough, I could turn my mind as blank as the concrete walls. I had never considered how difficult it was to not think. Thinking comes naturally to the human brain, and the absence of thought is difficult to maintain.

  ***

  I woke from sleep to Travis shaking my shoulder. “Wake up!” he said loudly in my ear. “Sarah!”

  I sat upright and rubbed my eyes. “What? What's going on?”

  Travis stood and gathered a pile of clothes from the foot of the bed, which he threw at me. “Hurry. Get dressed.”

  I just stared dumbly at the strange clothing. Jeans, a pink t-shirt, white socks and turquoise tennis shoes. It had been nearly a year since I had seen normal clothing. I had almost forgotten that any women's clothing existed besides ancient white nightgowns.

  “Put it on,” Travis ordered. When I didn't move, he grabbed me by the arms and lifted me from the bed. “Put it on, or I put it on you myself!” he shouted in my face.

  I was startled out of my stillness by the emotion in his voice. Fear. Travis was afraid?

  I held out a hand. “I can't, with this chain on my wrist.” Travis grabbed a set of keys from his belt and unlocked the band. The chains clanked to the floor. I could have cried with relief. My hand felt light as a feather without the heavy metal pulling my arm down. My entire wrist was white with scar tissue.

  I pulled the gown over my head and tugged the jeans on. Despite being a size 4, which would have been small on me before captivity, they were hanging off of my hips. The t-shirt was loose as well. The socks and shoes were the only things that came close to fitting.

  Travis didn't wait for me to lace the shoes before he took me by the arm and propelled me out of the cell door. I balked when I saw where we were going.

  I'm not allowed to go there. The thought crossed my mind, even as I realized it was insane. If Travis was taking me out, then I wouldn't get in trouble.

  I was pushed quickly, and my weakened legs caused me to stumble more than once.

  “Hurry up, or I will carry you!” Travis urged. He pushed me up the stairs, into the kitchen. It was dark outside...the middle of the night.

  We went through the living room, then out the front door. I blinked in the sudden light from the headlights of the white van in front of us. Travis directed me toward the van. The side door slid open and Master jumped out. “Hurry!” he barked.

  I was shoved forward, and I clambered into the van. Travis slid the door shut, and climbed into the front seat. A wall of metal with only a small window in it separated me from the front seats. There were no other windows in the van, and no seats.

  As the van engine rumbled to life and we began to move, I realized that Rachel and Tanya were back here with me. Each was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, much like me. They were huddled together on the opposite side, clutching each other tightly.

  I crawled over, pulling myself up against the side of the van next to Tanya. The van bumped and skidded over rough ground, crunching gravel beneath the wheels. We slowed at the end of the driveway, and then turned to the right. The opposite way I had gone during my escape attempt with Sophie.

  “What's happening?” Tanya asked. Her eyes were afraid. Her blue shirt had a picture of a unicorn on it, and it barely covered the swell of her belly. She was even tinier than I remembered. Dressed in what looked like children's clothes, if she hadn't been pregnant I would have mistaken her for a girl barely into her teen years.

  “I don't know.” I leaned my head back against the van wall when a wave of dizziness hit me. This was the most I had moved in many months.

  This time it was Rachel who spoke. “I heard them talking,” she whispered, barely audible over the rumble of the van. “I couldn't sleep. They were talking to each other as they came to get me and Tanya. They said something about the police. I think the police are coming to the house.”

  For a split second my heart soared, before I realized that we weren't at the house anymore. Even if the authorities found the basement dungeon and all the signs of what Travis and Master had done, we were already gone. They would take us somewhere else...somewhere that we could never be found.

  Moment of crazy hope over, I thought. I was so dizzy. I laid down on the metal floor. It was growing quite warm in the van. It must be late spring or even early summer by now. I was so used to the cold that the heat seemed oppressive.

  I had no idea how long we were jostled around in the back of the van. I dozed fitfully. At some point I woke and crawled to the front to look through the window into the cab of the van. We were on a real road now, the four lanes divided by a grassy median and winding upward until it vanished from sight between two hills a few miles ahead. The sun was beginning to rise off to the right.

  North. That meant we were going north.

  The sun burned my eyes, but I couldn't stand to leave it behind. I stood there on my knees, gripping the edge of the window with my fingertips, pressing my face against the glass to soak up the glorious pink rays.

  After a while, Master noticed me and pounded the window with his fist, startling me and making me fall back. I sat on the floor just beneath the window with my knees clasped to my chest, watching Rachel and Tanya as they slept slumped against each other. I wasn't sure why I felt unable to to join in the kinship they shared.

  If my calculations were right, each of them had been captives for almost six months. I had been imprisoned for at least nine. So it was July. Middle of summer. One year ago I had just graduated from high school. I had started applying for jobs. I had been been babysitting for my cousin to earn money in the meantime. Soon, I would have been helping Mom plan Dad's fiftieth birthday party.

  I would have just signed up for the dating site that led me to Travis.

  A $30 ticket to hell.

  The window slid open above me, and Travis's voice drifted back. “We will be stopping soon. If any of you screams or tries to draw attention, she will be punished severely. Do you all understand?”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Rachel? Tanya?”

  Two quiet responses answered him. The window was closed. After a f
ew moments we began to slow, and when I peeked over the edge of the window, I saw that we were at a gas station.

  I slumped to the floor, fighting the wave of memories that assaulted me. It's not the same, I thought fiercely. And it wasn't. This time, I wasn't running away. This time, no one was going to die. At least not if we stayed quiet.

  I crawled across the corrugated metal floor to sit next to the other girls. Tanya wound her arm through mine, and I didn't resist. Together the three of us sat, silently staring at the door to our moving prison.

  After a while Travis and Master climbed back into the van. The vehicle rumbled to life and we were pulling out of the parking lot. Even though I knew what would have happened if I'd tried to get help, I felt a pang of regret as the chance was lost.