Chained

by Escalera, Tessa

  Travis hugged me tightly to his chest. “Please don't be sad. What else do you want? Food? Flowers? Clothes? I will get it for you.”

  My freedom, I cried in my soul. I want to be able to choose. I want to be able to tell you what I'm thinking without being afraid of the pain that will come afterward. I want to be able to direct my own life.

  It was too late by the time I realized I'd said these words aloud. Travis jerked back and stood up quickly, leaving me reeling for my balance on the slippery rock.

  “You ungrateful...” Travis cried, calling me a name I will not repeat, even in writing. “I have given you everything! Brought you all the pretty things that girls like! Why can you not just be happy with this? Why must you always talk about leaving?”

  I raised a hand to ward him off, aware of how close I sat to danger, with my legs hanging over the edge of the boulder. “I'm sorry! Please, no...”

  The first blow landed, and I slipped from the side of the boulder. The shallow water at the bottom was barely enough to cushion my fall, and the swift water swept me off of my hands and knees, drawing me inexorably downward and toward the waterfall. I clawed desperately at the rocks, searching for any purchase. There was nothing to stop my descent.

  Nothing, that was, until my back hit the trunk of a tree with blinding force. The breath was forced from my lungs, and the world quickly faded into blackness.

  ***

  I stand on the top of a hill. I know this place—it's the rock where Travis and I had our picnic. Where he raped me with the universe watching.

  Below me, the valley stretches on into infinity. I can see the track winding down the side of the mountain. I see a lake glistening on the edge of my sight. I see a herd of antelope, the buck at the head, his two prong antlers distinguishing him from his harem. He looks up, and I feel like he looks at me. His dark eyes fix on mine, and his tail swishes.

  My hand is cold. I look down, and my heart pounds. There is a gun clutched in my fingers. I cry out, and I try to drop it, but I cannot make my hand unfold.

  “Sarah...” The whisper is behind me, carried on the breeze. I spin around.

  There they stand. Every single one. Across the brow of the hill.

  Mom, Dad, Jenny, Annabelle, tiny Essie with her bear clutched in her arms. Sophie. The men from the gas station. Rachel and Tanya. Master. And there is Travis, who holds my son in his arms.

  “Sarah....why didn't you come back to us?” This is Mom, tears on her face, her hand outstretched toward me as she whispers. Dad stands silently beside her, his arm around her shoulder. “Sarah,” she says accusingly, and suddenly there is a gun in her hands. “Sarah, you abandoned us. You don't deserve to live.”

  I scream, and raise my hand out of instinct.

  Bang. Mom crumples to the ground, but before she can reach it, she turns to mist and floats away on the wind.

  “Sarah, it's your fault. Your fault your mother is dead.” Now Dad has the gun.

  Bang. Now Dad is gone.

  Jenny raises her hands, and the sleeves of her gown flutter in the wind. “Sarah,” She wails. “You should have tried harder. You let them take my baby away. It's your fault I died.” She raises the gun and points it toward me.

  Bang. Now Jenny floats away on the breeze.

  Annabelle doesn't speak, only raises the gun in her hands.

  Bang, goes the one in mine, and she is gone.

  “Mama!” Essie cries, and follows her mother into the wind. The teddy bear falls to the ground.

  Sophie looks down in horror, where bright red blood spreads down her legs, soaking through the fabric of her gown. “Sarah....” she whispers. “I died because you tried to escape. It's your fault I'm dead. It's your fault that my baby died.”

  Bang.

  The men from the gas station raise guns to their own temples, and pull the triggers as one.

  Bang.

  Rachel and Tanya silently raise the guns in their hands.

  Bang. Bang.

  Master leers at me, and I don't care whether he is going to try and shoot me or not.

  Bang.

  Now the only people left are Travis and my baby.

  “Sarah. This is all your fault, Sarah. If you'd only been happy with what I gave you, none of this would have happened. You tried to escape, and people died. It's your fault.”

  “God, I can't do this!” I scream to the sky. “Don't make me kill them too! Not my baby! Not Travis! No more death, God, please!”

  I throw the gun away from me and it skitters across the rock. Travis smiles. Then he and my baby turn into mist and float away.

  I stumbled forward. “No! Come back!”

  Chapter 21: Twisted Words and Twisted Minds

  “Travis.”

  “Yes, Master?”

  “What was the result?”

  “The test was negative.”

  “It's been over six months.”

  Travis sighed. “I know, Master.”

  “You know what happens if the girls don't deliver. Have you been giving her the fertility drugs?”

  “Yes, Master. I increased the doses as you asked.”

  “She's got one more month. Put more of the meds in her food. If she isn't pregnant by then, she needs to be replaced.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  They're giving us fertility drugs?? It shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. Was it just Rachel, or was I unwittingly eating them in my food as well? The thought made me sick. It was all I could do to keep my eyes closed and continue pretending to be asleep.

  “I've got a delivery. I'll be back this weekend. And, son?”

  “Yes?”

  “We aren't nursemaids. Either the girl lives or she doesn't. Now stop moping around. You have work to do, and there's plenty more girls where that came from.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  A door clicked closed, and I cracked one eye open. I was lying on my bed, and Travis was sitting in the chair in the corner with his elbows propped on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him.

  Travis noticed my open eyes, and jumped up to kneel at my side. “Sarah?”

  As my consciousness fully returned, so did the pain of my injuries. “What...what happened?” The last thing I remembered was getting out of the truck in front of the waterfall.

  Travis seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “You fell. You slipped on a rock, and you fell against a tree. You've been unconscious for nearly a day.”

  I shifted in the bed, and the pain brought tears to my eyes. It felt like all of my ribs and my back were broken. I tried wiggling my fingers and toes and looked down. They were moving. I sighed gratefully. I wasn't paralyzed.

  I pushed the blanket down and lifted my shirt. My entire torso was red and purple with bruises, as were my arms. My legs felt banged up as well, and there was a spot on the back of my head that was quite tender. That was probably why I was having trouble remembering.

  I was wearing sweatpants, not the jeans I had worn on the trip to the waterfall. So Travis had changed my clothes too.

  Travis looked a lot more nervous than I would have expected over a simple fall. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah.”

  Travis patted my shoulder and jumped up, closing the door quietly behind him.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed, groaning with pain and almost giving up on movement right then and there. But I desperately had to use the bathroom. I shuffled slowly across the room, avoiding the mirror until I was ready to absorb what I was going to see.

  After washing my hands, I braced my hands on the sink and raised my eyes to look at my reflection. I took in the mud caked in my hair, the hand-shaped bruises on my wrists. Probably from where he'd dragged me from the water.

  The weird one was the bruise on my cheek. I knew what the shape of a fist looked like, even on skin. My cheek wasn't scraped, as I would have expected from an impact with a rock or a tree trunk. The only laceration was a small split on my cheekbone.

  He had punch
ed me. So if I had fallen, it had been because of him.

  I sighed, and ran cold water over my fingertips before pressing them to my aching cheek. What did I do this time?

  I slowly and gingerly pulled my t-shirt over my head, and twisted to see my back. I could see where I had hit the tree. A rug-burn looking abrasion on my hip, covering the yellowing bruise of Travis's last “punishment”. A deeper gash on one of my shoulder blades. Three of my ribs on my right side were particularly purple. Those had to be the ones that were fractured. It hurt to breathe in anything more than shallow, slow breaths.

  I savagely pushed away the pang that gripped my heart when I saw my belly, still soft and marked from where my son had grown inside me. What had it been? Four months? A little more?

  At least he's alive. And probably safer than I am.

  Pulling my pants up to my knees revealed shins that were scraped and bruised.

  I'm more bruise than whole skin, I thought sadly. The thought flitted across my mind that Travis really was going to kill me soon if he kept doing this.

  He doesn't understand, I thought bitterly as I pulled my clothes back on. All he's ever known is abuse. He's always so sorry afterward. It's Master's fault, really. He's the one who taught Travis how to “love”. How can a child ever be any better than his parent?

  Suddenly I was intensely grateful for my parents and desperately sad that I had never accepted the reality of the God they served until it was almost too late. All along they had been teaching me the most sacred form of love possible, and I had ignored it. Travis had never had a chance to be a decent person. But I had. And I had wasted years rejecting the incredible gift that God had given me in the form of the people who raised me.

  They probably thought I was dead and burning in hell right at this very moment. A lump formed in my throat as I thought of how they must feel. That was the worst sort of hopelessness...knowing they would never, ever see me again.

  God, give them peace, I prayed, staring at my battered reflection in the mirror. Please give them peace, or let me escape, so that they won't spend the rest of their lives thinking they lost me forever.

  I heard the door in the bedroom open, and I walked slowly out of the bathroom. Travis was standing there with a breakfast tray. The highlight was a little crystal vase with a flower in it. A white carnation, the petals tipped with pink. It was so beautiful.

  “Oh, you're up!”

  “Yeah.” I shuffled to the bed and sat down slowly.

  “I'll just leave this here.” Travis set the tray down and straightened, scrubbing his palms on his jeans. “Do you need anything else?”

  I just shook my head. Nothing that would be safe to ask for. Travis nodded and left, blowing me a kiss as he closed the door.

  When the food was gone and I lay curled up between the sheets of my bed, I wondered if it was worth it to ask Travis if I could have my Bible and my journal back. Or new ones. The old journal had probably been destroyed by this point.

  ***

  I woke from napping to realize that Travis was lying next to me on the bed. He was gently brushing my hair back from my face. As I stiffened slightly and prepared to move away, I realized that he was talking. Not to me, or at least if he was, he didn't realize I could hear.

  “I know Master said there are plenty more girls where you came from, but I hope you know I don't believe that,” Travis whispered, his breath on my forehead. “My father barely even sees you as human. He doesn't know that all girls are different. I do. I know you're different from the rest. I don't want to find another girl. I want to keep you.”

  Pretending to still be asleep, I rolled over and curled into a ball so that my back was to him. I heard Travis sigh, and his weight left the bed. As he left the room, he said something in parting that I could barely hear. It sounded suspiciously like “I love you.”

  This isn't love. Love is gentle and kind and patient and sacrificing. Travis, this is not love. I don't know what it is, but whatever you feel for me is about as far from love as feelings can be.

  All hope of sleep was gone for now. I got up and headed for the shower.

  Later, as I stood in a corner of the kitchen and watched Travis make dinner, I mustered the courage to ask about paper and a pen. That seemed safe. Hard to believe that it had been over six months ago the last time I had written in my journal. The time I had spent chained in the basement with nothing to pass the time seemed like yet another reality that I had no connection to.

  Travis gestured at a drawer near the pantry. “There's some notebooks and pens in there. You can use them, if you like.”

  I pulled the drawer open and took a notebook and a pen. “Thank you.”

  He looked up and smiled at me. “Of course! What are you going to write about?”

  I shrugged. “Just stuff. I just like writing.”

  Travis looked back down at his hands, deftly chopping carrots before dumping them in the steaming pot. “We should write each other letters, remember, like we used to?”

  Inwardly I sighed. I could imagine this wasn't one of the things that would go well if I refused. “Sure.”

  My heart hurt to watch him. He was humming to himself as he cooked. He looked so innocent, so young, so handsome...so normal.

  But I guess if abusers looked like abusers, they would all be caught before they had time to truly hurt anyone.

  I sat across from Travis once dinner was ready, looking at him across the nicely laid table with the pillar candles that burned between us, releasing their vanilla scent into the air.

  I was having a “romantic” dinner with a man whose looks would have half the female population in the country fighting to be his girlfriend, and all I could think was: I'd rather eat toast and bologna in the safe silence of a barn stall than sit here wondering which of my words will flip the switch and trigger a beating that could finally be the one to cost me my life.

  So I sat, forcing my hands to be still and not tremble, answering questions as simply as possible and claiming a full mouth whenever I could. I fought the acid of nausea in my stomach and forced the food down my throat so that he wouldn't question why I wasn't eating.

  Apparently it didn't work. Or maybe the churning in my stomach was showing through in my face. I really did feel like I might be sick if I had to keep eating. The food tasted weird. It couldn't be the drugs Master had mentioned—I'd watched Travis the entire time he was cooking. We were eating and drinking from the same sources and Travis seemed fine.

  “Are you okay?” Travis asked, looking at me with concern in his eyes.

  My stomach heaved, and I pressed my napkin to my mouth. No, this couldn't be happening. I would not throw up. I nodded mutely, staring down at my plate with revulsion. The carrots, peas, chicken and toast might as well have been worms and dirt for all my stomach was rejecting even the thought of them.

  Finally I couldn't handle it anymore and I clapped both hands over my mouth, bolting to my bathroom where I barely made it to the toilet before losing everything in my stomach.

  Each spasm sent shards of unbearable pain through my body as my bruises and broken ribs protested the movement. By the time my stomach was empty, I collapsed sobbing against the toilet, begging to be able to pass out.

  I looked up to see Travis in the doorway. He obviously wasn't sick. It wasn't possible to have a virus...I never left the property. Then what in the world...

  My heart sank into my aching stomach as the only other possible answer hit me like a load of bricks. The welcome spots of darkness began to prick at my vision and I slid to the floor.

  No... I thought. Not again God, please. No, no, no....I can't do this again...

  Chapter 22: Beginning and End

  Four months. It had only been four months since my son was torn from my arms. That was a time I tried desperately to ignore and forget, because I feared to keep remembering would kill me. Even thinking about that time made me feel like I couldn't breathe.

  September 16th. It has been exactly
one year since I was taken. 365 days. 52 weeks. An eternity and a lifetime.

  How is this possible? How can I have lived this life for an entire year? I am alive, but at what cost? Most days I fear that my sanity has completely deserted me, because how else could I keep living? But then I hope that it has, because I don't want to die.

  I won't be able to plead sickness forever. Already I know Master suspects. I see it in the way he looks at me. Like a prized cow that is soon to head to slaughter. I can almost see the dollar signs dancing in his eyes.