by Keta Kendric
My cousin had set his sights on two women who he intended to kill that likely had no idea they were in the crosshairs of a serial killer. Nine times out of ten, these people weren’t aware of the crime he was going to pin on them whether they’d committed it or not.
After I threw my head up to the ceiling and closed my eyes, I took in few deep, relaxing breaths of air. I didn’t even mind the lingering stench of death that I was breathing in because there weren’t many things I could think of that was worse than my cousin. He was the facilitator of my punishments each time I’d been captured after running. Each time was worse and had been meant to break me. And although my cousin scared the hell out of me, I wasn’t broken yet.
“Fucking asshole,” I said under my breath before I walked over and locked the doors to the morgue. I rarely cursed, but Sorio was a good reason to start.
When I stepped back into the closet, my patient was wide awake and attempting to sit up on his own.
“Wait. Let me help you. Take it easy.”
“Where? Who?”
It was going to be a difficult task trying to explain things to August, who didn’t have his memory and didn’t really know who he was in relation to me. He had no idea where he was or the situation he was in either.
After ten minutes of trying to get him settled down, he’d breathed out a shaky, “Thank you,” before his body shut down.
Those two words made me smile. He was developing the habit of thanking me whenever he knew he’d given me the most hell.
Now, with Sorio lurking, I was going to have to keep a close eye on August. He was the kind of man who delivered action and would find a way to figure out what was going on. Rest and calm were what his body and mind needed most, but August was not going to sit by and wait. As hard as he was going to make my job, I admired the determination in him.
Chapter Eight
August
I appreciated Regina more than I could express in words, but there was no goddamn way in hell I was staying here. I didn’t care about what she was telling me about a traumatic brain injury. If I was strong enough to stand, I was strong enough to fight.
It was becoming obvious that she was a prisoner. She would become jumpy, whether it was the walls settling, the pipes rumbling, or any stray sound that found its way in from outside.
She’d made a valiant effort but would fail to keep me confined to this bed. She couldn’t stand guard over me twenty-four hours a day. She’d stuck around for hours, waiting until I fell asleep after she’d had to practically beg me to stay still.
All I knew was her and the four walls surrounding me, and the walls had started to close in on me. Although my head felt like a band of drummers was constantly stomping around in there, it wasn’t going to stop me from getting out of this bed.
When I was in the darkness, there were no constant or concrete ideas that I’d been able to latch on to that allowed me to determine time. Being in this closet was barely a step up from where I’d been. Based on Regina’s estimates, I’d been in this cellar for nearly five months. It had been nine or ten days since I’d opened my eyes, and that was nine too many for me to be lying around on my ass being babied by her.
If she thought I was going to lie quietly and not figure out how to get away, she was more out of her mind than I was out of mine. Based on the constant nagging inside my head, I didn’t think I was built to roll over and play dead. I couldn’t remember who the hell I was, but I was sure I could remember how to whip someone’s ass. I slung my legs over the side of the bed and eased into a standing position.
My head swam, but after I adjusted to being upright, I reached up to switch off a machine I was hooked up to. I snatched the needle from the back of my hand. My gaze followed the trickle of blood that flowed from the thin vein. A tear-shaped droplet dripped to the floor before I cupped a piece of gauze over my hand.
Regina had recited a laundry list of injuries I’d suffered at the hands of who she claimed was her family. Thankfully, my wounds had healed while I was comatose, and I was able to stand and walk on my own.
After the first few steps, hot pain shot up my leg and reminded me of the trauma it had suffered. However, there wasn’t enough pain in the world to stop me from figuring out how to escape or kill whoever it was keeping me down.
Aware that Regina locked the door whenever she left me, I’d been eyeballing anything I could use to pick the lock open. Two pieces of metal from the underside of the bed I slept in were going to have to do.
As I jiggled the metal inside the lock, something told me I’d done this before, but the memories wouldn’t surface. A distinct click sounded, and a smile brightened my face as I gripped the metal tighter between my fingers and turned until the lock disengaged.
Removing the metal, I shoved the pieces into the pockets of the flannel pajama bottoms I had on. My feet were bare, and the button-up, short-sleeve, blue pajama top I wore didn’t match the white striped bottoms, but my state of dress was the last of my worries.
I didn’t know where I was going or how I was getting there, but I couldn’t hide in the closet while the rest of the world went on around me. I wanted nothing more than to rip off the gauze that was wrapped around my head. However, the way Regina had described drilling into my damn skull, the head-wrap might have been the only thing keeping my fucking brains tucked inside where they should be. The damn details she’d given about subdural and intracranial hematomas, cerebral contusions, and sensory deprivation sometimes made me feel like the doctor’s monster.
When I stepped into the open space of the next room, which was considerably larger than the closet I’d been stuffed into, the scent of death assaulted my nose. A strange feeling settled over me. A big metal table with tubes running into the floor, the meat-lockers built into the wall, and machines I didn’t know the names of were neatly displayed throughout the spotless but smelly room. A fucking morgue?
I was living in a morgue! So, the doctor had not been lying about the job her family had assigned her. She was disposing of the bodies they were stacking up, and I was supposed to have been one of those bodies. Who the hell were these people and why did they want me dead? What had I done to them?
I shuffled over to the double metal doors that swung in both directions and found that they were the only entrance and exit from the room. Thankfully, the doors were open. I clumped out of the room and cringed against the pain that made my body jittery. Sweat dotted my face. Droplets inched down my forehead and neck as I shuffled further into the dim hallway.
A brick wall stood to the right of me and in front of me, so I turned in the only direction I could go, careful not to make too much noise. A line of light shined under the crack of the door, the only other door on the hall—Regina’s living space that she’d mentioned. This meant she was probably awake and I needed to move faster. The eerie silence of this place was a living creature that tugged at that sixth sense we often ignored.
With each painful step I took, my body became heavier, but my newly-awakened mind wouldn’t let go of my will to escape. When I reached the end of the hall, I had a choice: elevator or stairs. The elevator was one of those old-fashioned ones with a metal sliding door that was nothing but an alarm system as far as I was concerned. I calculated, due to our ability to hear muffled sounds from the outside that we couldn’t have been but one level underground, so why the elevator?
My body teetered a bit when a stabbing pain shot through my head, drew itself in, and exploded out. Standing in place, I closed my eyes for a few seconds until the pain dwindled. I was determined not to stop and I didn’t care if I had to crawl away from this place. I sat on the steps and inched back and up, taking myself higher and higher until the top of my head thumped the tilted wooden door above me.
I gripped the metal latch and pushed, but the door barely budged. My trip down the hall must have taken most of my strength. I cracked the door open enough for daylight to enter and blind me. The heat from outside pushed at the coldness of death
that had a hold on this space.
“August, are you crazy? They are going to kill you!” Regina barked in an alarmed voice.
She ran up the shaky wooden steps and took a firm hold of me as I struggled to make my way out of the door. When it became obvious to her that I was determined to either die or escape, she stopped struggling with me.
“Okay. Listen please,” she begged. “It’s not just your life at stake if you go out there. My family is going to kill you before they kill me for saving you. I think I know a way we can get out of this place, but it’s going to take time. Please, August, come back.”
My hand dropped away from the latch, but the determination on my face remained even as I drooped from exhaustion. Regina stood in a hunched position with her back to the door as she took hold of the door latch. Her gaze was on mine the entire time, scolding me without words.
“Let me show you something, August.”
When she cracked the door to about twice as wide as I’d been able to, I slid up to the highest step and squinted against the brightness of the sun.
“Look to the left, August. You should see at least two guards, heavily armed with weapons, standing near a gate.”
My head swiveled in the direction she had indicated and like she’d stated, there were two heavily armed guards standing there talking to each other with automatic weapons and backup weapons strap around their waist.
“Turn your head in the opposite direction and look up,” she instructed. A warm dusty gust of wind flew into my eyes, causing me to rub them before I refocused and fixed my gaze on the area Regina had pointed out.
Although I could only see the far corner of it, I was able to figure out that it was an elevated guard tower. My gaze roved, taking in as much of my surroundings as I could. The cellar we lived in was in a separate space from the main house. The elevator opened to a small shed that stood directly to the right of the door we peeked from.
From my vantage point, the cellar sat behind the rear of the main house. A big barn sat at least two hundred or more feet away, and the tip of a smaller shack could be seen over my left shoulder. I noticed that a third guard had joined and was talking to the first two I’d seen. It appeared they were at the side of the main house, but it must have been the area where vehicles gained entrance onto the property.
The world outside, although brighter, wasn’t filled with any more vibrancy than the stuffy space I’d been trapped in.
“Those are only two of the posts you can see from here. There is another building on the other side of the barn. It’s the cookhouse where my cousins, Luis and Lonzo, cook batches of meth.”
She stepped down and waited until I dropped down a few steps before she eased the door closed, my view dwindling as the dimness folded around me. Regina sat next to me on the steps. Our breaths fell in sync and bounced off the walls of the dim, dank cellar as we stared into the darkness.
“If you leave, they will kill you, August. Everything I told you was the truth. You and I are prisoners in this place. I don’t know much about you, but I can tell even without your memory, you’ve never been anyone’s prisoner. All I ask is that you give your body time to heal. You survived a situation that would have easily killed others. Don’t waste the second chance you’ve been given because of male pride or impatience. Also, give me time to figure out how to get us out of here.”
She shoved her arm under my shoulder and urged me to move when I didn’t reply.
“Don’t you think that I want to get away from here as badly as you do, August?”
I didn’t answer but considered her words as I poured every ounce of my energy into clumping down the steps and dragging my legs that were as wobbly as noodles along the scratchy wooden floor. By the time we made it into the morgue, Regina carried most of my weight, and I was barely conscious. My eyes were fighting to stay in focus.
Drenched in sweat and breathing like I’d run a marathon, I tumbled into the small bed and didn’t much care how I landed. Regina kept my head from striking the bed by placing her hand under my neck.
Once she had my head on the pillow, she reached down and lifted my feet to turn me into the bed.
“Thank you,” I whispered and drew a sad smile from Regina. I attempted to blink back the tiredness that had overtaken me, but it was too strong, so I drifted.
Chapter Nine
August
Darkness had swallowed me, but unlike before, I sensed the tightness around me and the ghost lingering in my head. This time, I found flashes of who I used to be in the darkness. Death, destruction, murder, guns, faces, names, and even love lived in my ripped-apart mind.
Making sense of what flashed in my brain was difficult. I couldn’t put any order to the chaos spooling through my mind. But there was one thing I was certain of. My brain was reconnecting itself to who I used to be, and the picture it painted gave me a hint of why I’d ended up in a basement right under the noses of an enemy who had tortured and almost killed me.
Since it was giving me answers, this was the first time I’d wanted to linger in the dark. Pain was the angry bastard that snapped me awake. Pain didn’t ease me from my limbering state. He slung me out as my head pounded. Bombs exploded in my brain, turning it into mush. Each heartbeat seemed to expand into aching vibrations that coursed through me. My sense of balance was off as I struggled to lift my heavy head.
My eyes snapped opened to Regina staring down at me with pity on her face. “I’m aware that you’re in pain, August, but the kind of injury you sustained doesn’t leave me many choices as to what I can give you.”
“Water,” rushed harshly past my dry lips and rattled in my throat, sounding like I’d swallowed an army of frogs.
After getting water into my system, I retook the doctor’s hand since she always seemed to be hanging onto my hand whenever I woke up. I’d wake to her either staring at me or asleep with her hand gripping mine.
What did I look like? Was I disfigured? She’d never looked at me with horror or surprise. It was starting to become abundantly clear that Regina was just as trapped as I was and as desperate to escape. I had to find a way to help her since she’d risked her life to save mine.
She gripped my hand, staring at me like I was something precious.
“Plan?” I asked. The word sounded normal, so I added more. “What is your plan for breaking out of this place?”
She sat for a moment contemplating what she wanted to say.
“My family…well, my cousin allows me a few moments of occasional freedom. However, I’m not naïve enough to think that I’m not being watched or followed. Every six months, I’m allowed a week of freedom. It’s been over five months since my last reprieve, so if you can be patient enough to hang in here with me, I intend to try and sneak you out when I leave.”
Stress always lingered behind her kind eyes, but when she spoke of escaping, it filled her with tension. Her warm hand tightened around mine.
“The only problem is how to get you into my car. They keep it parked in the barn.”
I’d taken a long hard look at the barn where Regina was saying her car was parked. It was a good distance from the cellar, and the only pathway that would lead us to the barn was in direct line of sight of the guard tower.
As if she knew what I was thinking, she continued.
“There is also a guard who hangs out at the back of the barn. If I can figure out how to get you into the barn without either of us getting shot, we may be able to leave this place together.”
“Map. If you can make me a map of where the guards are posted and where the other buildings are located, I can help.”
Her smile spread wide across her face, revealing rows of gleaming straight white teeth. “I can do that. I can definitely do that,” she expressed with enthusiasm.
The idea that we may have a way out eased a bit of my tension. Regina didn’t know it, but as soon as I could stand without tipping over, I was going out of that door to survey what we were up against whether she tho
ught it was a good idea or not. After seeing bits and pieces of my life, I was certain I was not the guy who laid around waiting to be saved.
“You were talking to someone the other day,” I stated, capturing her gaze. I couldn’t remember if it had been yesterday or the week prior that I’d heard her talking to someone, but I remembered their conversation. “You lied to keep him from coming in here to find me. It was your cousin, wasn’t it? He’s the one who hurts you, right?”
She attempted to hide her grief, but her eyes revealed her truth. “Yes. It was my cousin, Sorio. How do you know that he hurts me?”
“Because of the desperate lie you told about sex toys.”
She cupped her forehead in the palm of her hand and peeked at me from behind her fingers.
“I’m not a good liar, but it worked. Honestly, I would’ve said just about anything to make him leave. He was the one who ordered his men to take you from Florida.”
Based on the flashes of memory I’d gotten, I’d pieced together that I’d likely been from Florida and there was a chance I was just as dangerous as Regina’s cousin.
“Sorio is also the main reason I’m stuck underground working as my family’s glorified undertaker. He hates women and especially me because I refuse to embrace my family’s misguided principles. He is considering having me moved to a different location, which I pray won’t happen before we find a way to leave this place together.”
Thoughts of her cousin had her skin crinkling around her eyes as thin creases etched her forehead. The hatred she harbored for him ran deep, so deep that I didn’t think she would mind if I were to kill him.
“He’s talking about killing two women. He only came down to visit me so he could rub it in my face. I’ve taken beatings at his hands because I refused to burn women for him. He always wants the ashes of the females, and I’m sure he only wants them for some sick and disrespectful reason.”
