by Cee Smith
The three of us met up briefly to do our buddy checks, alongside Mark. We took a few minutes to swim around each other and do somersaults like we typically did at the beach together, before breaking off and going our separate ways again. The darkness swallowed us up as we swam away from our huddle—our lights the only sign of our proximity to one another. Though I’d spent the last couple days learning how to dive, I still felt like I didn’t know what I was doing, so when we broke away, I felt reassured that my gear was working properly, but my mind wasn’t at ease. I couldn’t quite capture the source of my anxiety, but I turned my head, casting light around me in an attempt to calm the tension climbing up my back. When I turned back to the direction that we met up, I could no longer see any lights, and I began second-guessing my decision to break away from the group.
After our check, I butterfly-kicked through the water to ascend back towards the top of the boat. I didn’t know what had me on edge, but I wanted to have a closer shot to the surface if the feeling progressed. After climbing fifteen feet back towards the surface, I stopped and floated in spot, my body suspended in water. The fish swam around me as if I was a fixture in their landscape. Something brushed my leg a little more aggressively than the other passing fish, catching my attention. I moved through the water slowly as I tried to find the source, but nothing stood out. Aside from a rusted door hanging off the hinges of the ship, there were only small groups of fish. Before I turned back to the open ocean, I caught the tail end of a toddler-sized grouper emerging from a window of the ship. My shoulders dropped with reassurance. It had to be the fish that bumped me.
I worked through a mental checklist of anything I may have missed: double-checking the time on my watch, looking for the other divers, checking my pressure. Surely something was off because I was no longer enthralled by the hidden world I’d become submerged in—my mind was elsewhere. I took a quick glance at my watch and noticed that I lost five minutes in my frantic state, but I threw my wrist down to my side as I made up my mind to make an early return back to the boat.
The firm tug on my waist threw my body off axis, leaving me clambering to right myself. I was no longer just a tourist having a good time, experiencing a new adventure—I was terrified. I was fighting to keep my wits, but what scared me most was no fin could replicate the feeling of a hand gripping my waist. This was a vicious trick if it was Adam, and even though I would kick the shit out of him for doing this to me, I secretly hoped it was him. I didn’t want to give myself the space to think this could be anyone but him.
Focusing on my legs, I kicked furiously in an attempt to shift my body so my head was upright again. I barrel-rolled, watching the light projecting from my goggles and fan out in a slow circle like an underground Ferris wheel.
When we were kids, Adam used to always pull pranks on Jessa and me—filling the salt shaker with sugar, jumping out of closets with a scary mask on, hooking water buckets over the door…you name it and he tried it, jumping out and hysterically laughing with a finger pointed to our offended and often horrified faces. He had never been unusually cruel, but maybe he was pulling out all the punches with this one.
I was still trying to locate Adam’s body when I felt something behind me just as my beanie was pulled from my head. My blonde locks drifted with the waves of the water rushing across my eyes, tangling into knots as my head sought refuge. It was as if a fan was blowing behind my head, thrusting the mass of my hair directly in my eyes while I flailed around like a fish out of water trying to revive the vestiges of my sanity.
I fought every inclination to hold my breath as instructed not to do, instead, counting each pull of oxygen as a reminder to remain calm. My mouth quivered as I fought back tears; everything in me was screaming for me to flee, to escape. Adam would never wait this long for gratification that he’d scared me. My body began seizing in fear, and I felt the small current that I’d created beat against me.
My arms were pistons winding through the water as slick fish the size of sardines flitted through my widened fingers. My limbs locked up as the cold speared through me, and I felt like I was drifting without gravity, trying to capture some sign of Adam to ease my fears before hysteria overtook me. Just then I captured the shadow of a man, right before I felt a tiny prick against my neck. It was the smallest of feelings, almost as if it didn’t happen—like the feeling of an ant crawling across your skin. You know you felt something, but then when you look down, it’s nothing, and you wonder if the ant was fast enough to evade your sight or if it was a phantom memory of a time when your foray into bug sanctum was as common as chocolate milk and PB&J sandwiches. Except this feeling didn’t remind me of my abandoned childhood; this was a whole new feeling.
My limbs became weightless, like strands falling carelessly through a comb. The ocean was sifting me through its teeth, and all I could think of was the juxtaposition of the calming water and my racing thoughts as my eyelids began to drop like weights. My body did a hypnic jerk as if fighting off sleep. Was I losing oxygen? Was my tank not working properly? I was too far down to ascend quickly—there was no way I was going to make it back up in time. My head swerved from shoulder to shoulder, and I felt the darkness pushing through. I fought my lids from shutting, and it felt like I was trapped in a coffin, searching for a light to guide me back to the surface. Just one headlight, I just need to see one headlight. That was the last thought that ran through my head before I drifted off like a balloon released into the ether, drifting into the unknown.
“Hailey, Jessa…breakfast is ready,” my mother’s voice rings softly through the intercom positioned outside the door of our adjoining bedrooms. With the door closed, I can’t quite smell the familiar Sunday breakfast that awaits, but I know that once I enter the hallway, the smell will hit me, lassoing me up and leading me to the source. The sun splashes across my room through downturned blinds casting light across my bedroom floor. The light escapes the shelf across from my bed filled with all my favorite animals. I roll across the bed pulling the covers with me as I look down at the ground next to my bed. Too many times I’ve put my feet down and have been faced with an unwelcome greeting of toys I left out the night before. Just like I thought, the Barbies I was playing with yesterday were left at the edge of my bed where I was playing last night. My head is still hanging over the side of the bed when I hear my mother’s voice ring out again.
“It’s time to get up, my little munchkins. Don’t make me come tickle you awake.” My mother knows that we’re both up, but sometimes it takes extra effort to actually remove ourselves from our beds. When this happens, she usually bellyflops onto the beds, throws the covers off us, and goes to “tickle-town.” We’re tickled until tears shower our faces and our ribs hurt from laughing, but I’d take this any day. In fact, I want to lay right here and wait for her. It feels like it’s been years since she’s done it, and though she just tucked me in for bed last night, I feel like I haven’t seen her in ages.
I miss the beauty of her face—her smooth skin and large hazel eyes that display her full range of emotion in their vortex. Her porcelain skin looks slightly cracked around the edges of her eyes like the faint lines of a record played one too many times. Jessa gets her mouth from Mom; they both share a wide mouth that’s permanently fixed in a smile. People love my mom. She’s gentle and caring, the type to bring welcome baskets to new families in the neighborhood. The type to bring a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup when she hears someone’s sick. The picture of my mom, spatula in hand flipping pancakes, settles in my mind, and I’m reminded of the breakfast that awaits me downstairs.
“Zssshhh.” The walkie-talkie I share with Jessa springs to life, “Are you out of bed yet? Over.” I pull the walkie-talkie off my bedside table, holding it close to my lips, “Not yet. Over.”
“I bet you tomorrow’s allowance that she’s back to those weird recipes. Over.”
“No way. That French toast was disgusting. It looked like a hairball covered in snot. She’s definitely
back to the usual. You’re on. Over.”
I wait for Jessa to say something more, but as I’m pulling the walkie-talkie up against my ear, Jessa opens my door, nightie dragging across the beige carpet before she gives a gentle tug on my bedding, releasing me from my confinement.
“So far, bacon is definitely on the menu. My mouth started watering before I reached your door.”
“Well in that case maybe we should up the stakes,” I say sitting up in bed next to where she’s perched.
We make our way down to the kitchen island where in front of our stools are two plates with bacon, toast, scrambled eggs, and a pancake. Each plate has a glass of orange juice in front of it. Now I know what you’re thinking. This seems like one of those 1950s shows on domesticity, and I guess to most people it does seem that way, but for us, it’s a weekend ritual. As a politician, my father doesn’t exactly have off hours so many Sundays are spent just the three of us girls—homemade breakfasts, running errands, long drives around town; this is just another Sunday for us.
I look at Jessa knowing that she can feel my eyes focused on her and say, “Guess who’s getting paid twice tomorrow?”
“I know. You don’t have to say it.”
“Don’t be such a sore loser, Jessa.” I say, sticking my tongue out at her.
“Girls…” my mother pokes her head from behind the open refrigerator door, and Jessa and I hop up on the wooden stools diving into our meals. Salt and pepper is passed, butter is spread, syrup is poured, the two of us become a hive of breakfast readying before the clanking of silverware commences. My mom picks up her plate to come join us, and we sit in companionable silence.
Everything about sitting here feels right, like how Sundays are supposed to feel. I look through our front door, the glass oval giving me a slim view of the Johnsons’ perfectly manicured lawn. Sounds of suburbia penetrate the walls—lawns being mowed, barking dogs, and chirping birds. Then it dawns on me that the only sounds I don’t hear are forks moving across plates. I look to my right to see why Jessa stopped eating and she’s gone. I didn’t even hear her leave. Where did she go? Her plate’s gone too. Then I look to my left again and my mom is gone. I’m alone at the counter in a kitchen now cast in shadows. The white of the cabinets and marble counters seem colder. I shiver as the cold seems to radiate through my feet clear up to my head.
***
I raised my hand to my hair and winced at the damp strands that fell limply between my fingers. Every part of my body hurt. I couldn’t quite assess the origin of the pain; it seemed to spread from my bones to every cell of my skin, until the dull ache swaddled me like a blanket. My eyes fluttered as they tried batting away the burning sting, forcing tears from my eyes like suicide jumpers plummeting beyond my face. My throat felt hoarse like I’d been screaming for hours and my vocal chords were permanently etched from the sounds. I just wanted to go back to the warmth of the kitchen, the smell of breakfast on Sunday mornings, my mom. Were those thoughts the reason why I hurt so bad? It had been ages since I had thought of my parents—ten years since we’d seen them. Ten years since they were lost to us forever. Ten years since Adam’s family took in me and Jessa, like we were their own.
The tears bound my eyelashes together like glue, and I struggled to pry them open, but it felt useless. I didn’t know what had happened to me, but it felt like more than just waking up from a bad dream—something happened. I could feel it. Though my eyes were closed, I could tell that the room was shrouded in darkness, that I was alone here. I tried listening for the faintest of sounds to alert me of anything that might jog my memory, anything that might place this feeling that loomed over me like smog over an L.A. sky. I heard a faint dripping like a leaky faucet—from a nearby bathroom, perhaps? I matched my breaths against the drips in the basin. Drop. Breathe in. Drop. Breathe out. Repeat.
I brushed the sleep from my eyes using my right hand to allow a small window for my eyes to flit open and capture glimpses of the room. The room I was in was bare. Besides the bed I was comfortably tucked in, the room housed a small table and lamp in the far corner. While still rubbing my eyes, I moved to throw off the blankets covering me. My left hand lifted but didn’t get far before I froze stiff as a plank.
The rusted two-inch thick shackle fastened around my left wrist was like something out of a horror flick. Sheer panic seized me, and I no longer heard the drips I used to help count my breaths against. All I could focus on was the way the cuff chafed my skin in protest of my movements. I followed the length of the chain to its source. There, ensconced in the wall, was the other end of my imprisonment.
How it happened was irrelevant. All I needed to know was how to undo this. I didn’t want to think about how I ended up this way, or why; all I could focus on was the frantic feeling that was telling my muscles to move, to escape. If only I could find a way to use my other three limbs to help free the one so firmly lodged to the wall at my back. The cuff was so tight against my skin; it reminded me of that tree that grew around the bike. I didn’t know if it was the situation and my mind was trying to make light of what little light could come from this situation, but all I could think about was that shackle becoming a part of me, like my skin could grow around that anomaly, and I’d be stuck in that room forever.
An image of my bones lying limp across the bed with the chain still lodged around my wrist came to my mind, and my stomach lurched at the thought. I felt like I was going crazy as my thoughts vacillated from one moment to the next, double-dutching between a clear mind and horrific images. I needed to be able to think through what was happening. If I can just keep a clear mind my chances of making it out alive are more probable. I was trying to remain rational when everything about the situation screamed there was nothing rational about my situation.
I tugged the foot of chain linking me to the concrete wall, hurting myself more than helping. Even if the wall was soft enough for me to use my full strength to pull the chain out of the wall, I couldn’t. The chain was too short to allow me to position my legs against the wall and use the weight of my entire body to pull. I felt small and helpless and the word “think” was the only thing I seemed able to think of. I knew I needed to get out of there. Whatever happened, whatever I was nabbed for couldn’t be good, and I didn’t want to be there when whoever did this came back, but I couldn’t move beyond think, to form a plan that could get me out of there.
Throwing the covers off me, I looked down across my body, taking inventory of myself. My body was sore, but why—was I bruised somewhere? There didn’t appear to be any obvious marks on my body that would suggest I’d been hurt, but I felt it—the pain that kept me just within the line of sanity. It wasn’t enough for me to pass out, but just enough to leave me on the right side of consciousness.
Nothing obvious seemed out of place, except the clothes I wore. My eyes had time to adjust to the dark, and I could make out the silk lace camisole and matching sapphire-colored shorts that I was dressed in. If I saw that outfit in the window of a store, the jewel colored pajamas definitely would have caught my eye, but they weren’t familiar, and then it hit me. These weren’t my pajamas. Someone bought these or took these and dressed me in them. Whoever had taken me had seen me. All of me.
The house I used as a holding spot, until I was able to transport Hailey back home safely, was stark with crumbling cement and fissure-lined walls that looked like the veins of a rotting corpse. Having been abandoned for years, the house was forgotten by anyone traveling this far from society, which made it perfect for my use. Above the sink, the foggy mirror dangled, showing a murky shadow of my face. That was OK; I wasn’t into my own vanity.
The clawfoot porcelain tub sat in the middle of the bathroom with peelings of the varnish littering the floor like pencil shavings. My life had afforded me many luxuries, one of those being that I’d never had to experience anything quite as desolate as that house, but I didn’t mind suffering the discomfort if it meant Hailey was finally mine. I gave the tub a quick brush bef
ore I turned the water on, watching dust circle the drain. Once the dirt was no longer visible, I pulled the stopper to flood the tub. The sound of the rushing water cut through my jittery nerves, still rife with endorphins coursing through my blood.
I was the founder of a multibillion-dollar corporation, someone responsible for the jobs of hundreds of thousands of people, a man with the power to build a company from scratch or tear a successful company down to its foundation. As successful as I was, I’d never felt as powerful as I did at that moment. Months had been spent fawning over the moment I would have her, and it was just a waiting game until she was aware of the role she’d be playing in my life, how she’d change it. Save it.
I stripped the clothes from my body—the smell of ocean water still clinging to every fiber—tossing them in a heap across the floor. Despite the heat rising from the water like a freshly brewed cup of coffee, I submerged myself in the tub, knees pulled up high to force the bulk of my body within the confines of the too-short tub. The blistering heat upon my skin caused me to wince before I twisted the knob to adjust the temperature. When it was full, I turned the water off and curled up with my head nestled against the rim of the tub and my arms and legs folded beneath the hot water. Once relaxed, I unfolded myself, letting my limbs fall outside the tub. I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of my breaths intermixed with the flickering of the fluorescent light above. The light pulsed as if it was alive, flickering blue sparks across the dark walls.
Opening my eyes to look over the rim of the bathtub, I saw the picture of Hailey I placed on the floor. A 5x7 candid shot of her face mid-laugh. Her long golden hair—like leaves of a maple tree—looked alive, as the wind picked up just before the photo was taken. In the picture, she was frozen with fingers pulled up against her mouth to wipe away the hair caught on her lip. A slight dimple cratered her chin as she smiled, and even in the light, her eyes were so dark they looked brown, but I knew they were the deepest set of blue. You couldn’t really see her body in the picture, but I had other pictures that showed me her luscious curves, with small pert breasts and round hips and ass, all toned by hours spent at the beach.
