Just One Bite

by Jack Heath

  Abbey is backing away from us. Toward fresh air, and the twilight at the entrance to the parking lot.

  “I can’t,” she says again.

  “I’m sure we can get a doctor to come outside,” I say.

  Thistle looks around doubtfully at the freezing parking lot.

  I take off my coat and hold it out. Abbey reluctantly puts it on over the top of Thistle’s jacket.

  “Maybe you can get some blankets?” I ask Thistle. “And coffee?”

  Abbey’s teeth are chattering. “Tea?” she says hopefully.

  Thistle nods. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

  She goes into the elevator and disappears.

  I sit on the hood of Thistle’s Crown Vic, fidgeting in the cold. It’s not too bad being alone with Abbey—not much temptation. Hardly any meat on her.

  “You’ll have to go indoors eventually,” I say. “It would be a shame to freeze to death at this point.”

  Abbey looks at me. “Was that a joke?”

  “Was it funny?”

  She thinks for a moment. “Not yet.”

  “How about you tell me what happened?” I say.

  She just shakes her head.

  “The more we know, the faster we catch Luxford,” I say.

  She sits on the hood next to me. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  She thinks she can’t let it out. It’s so bad that just hearing about it would hurt people. She thinks that once I know what she had to do to survive, I’ll look at her like she’s a different species.

  “I might,” I say. I show her my missing thumb. “You see this?”

  She looks. Doesn’t seem shocked, just curious. “What happened?”

  “A very bad guy chained me up in his basement. He was someone I’d thought I could trust. I was sure I was gonna die, and no one would ever know what had happened to me. I had to chew off my thumb to get out of the handcuffs.”

  She keeps looking, examining the scar tissue.

  “I tell people it was an accident with a hedge trimmer,” I say. “Because I don’t want to have to deal with their feelings on top of mine.”

  She turns her head away.

  “I wasn’t down there for long,” I admit. “I don’t want to say that what happened to me was as bad as what happened to you. But I’m a good listener.”

  Abbey takes a deep breath. “I didn’t really know anyone at Braithwaite,” she begins.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A man is found shot to death inside his car. The car is undamaged, the windows up and the doors locked, but the police find no gun inside the car.

  How was he shot?

  At first, Abbey’s story sounds like Hope’s. A young woman, freshman year, isolated. A party. Out in the parking lot, an offer of a ride home.

  But Abbey declined.

  And Shannon smiled. “You have some spine,” he said. “You’re perfect.”

  Abbey was bowing her head to take the compliment when she saw the knife.

  “Give me your phone and get in the truck,” Shannon said.

  Later, she would wish she had screamed and run. He might not have chased her. If he had, he might not have caught her. He might not have used the knife, and even if he did, the wound might not have been fatal. There were so many ways she might have escaped.

  But like all young people, she thought there would be more chances later. So she gave him the phone and got in the truck.

  He drove fast, so she couldn’t grab the handbrake or the steering wheel without risking both their lives. He drove in silence, apparently feeling no need to justify kidnapping her. When they got to his house, she felt oddly safe. She knew where he lived now. So if anything bad happened to her, she would be able to lead the cops to his doorstep. Therefore, nothing bad was going to happen to her. This was all some kind of joke. A hazing ritual, maybe.

  He parked behind a convertible on a quiet street and led her up to his front door, the knife still in his hand. She looked around, wondering if one of the neighbors might be looking out the window. But it was the middle of the night. All the curtains were drawn.

  He was on her right. The knife was in his left hand. She could have grabbed it, but her fingers were likely to grip the blade directly. It would hurt, and she would bleed.

  This was another chance she would hate herself for missing, later.

  She had thought she was scared already. But she didn’t really understand what fear was until she saw the room. The camera. The padlocks on the open door.

  She lost it then, screaming, thrashing, trying to claw his eyes out. But now it was too late. He grabbed her upper arms hard enough to leave bruises and threw her onto the bed. Then he braced the door shut with his foot as he engaged the padlocks, one by one.

  There was no adjustment period. At college there had been an Orientation Week. Not here. Shannon was excited. More excited than she had ever seen a boy.

  “Say hi for the camera,” he said, his voice slightly muffled by the Plexiglas. “And maybe blow a kiss, or something.”

  Still nursing her bruised arm, Abbey told him to go fuck himself.

  He seemed delighted to hear this. Like he’d been waiting for the excuse to do something terrible. She fought the urge to shrink away from the glass—if she stayed close to the door, she might just be able to force her way through when he came in to beat her or rape her.

  He didn’t come in. He just switched off the lights.

  Suddenly blind, she fumbled her way over to the glass wall, looking for the door. But he didn’t open it. There was complete silence.

  As a little girl she had gone to the Ohio Caverns with her older brother. They had driven fifty miles to see the huge limestone stalactites, protruding from the roof like alligator’s teeth. But what made a more lasting impression was a smaller cave, left unlit to show city slickers what real darkness looked like. Abbey had only spent a minute in there, but it was enough to make her stomach churn. Even though she knew other people were right outside, it was impossible not to feel the weight of all that stone above her head and think, What if I never find my way out? She could hear her brother’s breaths quickening beside her. She held his hand as they left, and it was as damp as the walls.

  In Shannon Luxford’s homemade prison, the silence and darkness were so much thicker. Her heart raced until it felt like she was going to die.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll do it.”

  There was silence.

  “I said, I’ll do it! Turn the lights back on.”

  Nothing.

  “Are you still there? Hello?”

  He must be gone, she thought. He wouldn’t just sit there, speechless in the dark. Would he?

  She screamed until her throat was raw. Pounded the concrete walls until her palms throbbed. Somehow being alone was even worse than being stuck in there with a psychopath. Eventually she collapsed.

  Shannon didn’t come back.

  To pass the time, she counted all the people who would be looking for her. Tara, her roommate with the hooded eyes and the volleyball obsession, must have reported Abbey missing by now. They didn’t know one another well and rarely spoke when their paths did cross, but Abbey came home every night. So Tara would have noticed she was gone, and would do something about it. Right?

  So that meant the police would be searching. And her mom, and her brother. Who had seen her leave the party with Shannon? No one whose name she knew. But maybe someone who knew hers.

  The dark seemed to be inside her now, nibbling at her lungs. Her breaths grew tighter. Her pulse was deafening. She could feel the panic growing. Was it possible for a nineteen-year-old to die of a heart attack?

  This thought led to another nightmare scenario. What if Shannon had a heart attack? What if he was the only one who knew this room existed, and he died? She might starve
to death in this little room. No, she would die of thirst first. She’d taken a first aid course, and heard the rule of three. You can survive three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without air.

  Oh, God—what if there was no source of fresh air? She wouldn’t even feel herself running out of oxygen. She would get confused, pass out and suffocate.

  Eventually the silence grew too much and she started screaming again. She yelled that she would do anything he wanted if he just turned the lights on. She told herself she was lying. That she wouldn’t have to do anything—as soon as there was light, she would see a way out. Something he had overlooked.

  It didn’t matter. She screamed for hours—or what felt like hours—and no one came. She realized the sun could be up by now.

  She got thirsty, and hungry. She sat on the floor, quaking. The adrenaline had exhausted her, but every time she got drowsy, she worried she was running out of oxygen, and suddenly she was wide awake again.

  Eventually she slept, right there on the concrete. Using the bed would have felt like accepting his terms, whatever they were. She woke up disoriented and alarmed, thrashing like she was drowning.

  After a thousand years the lights came back on. She was still blind, but for the opposite reason.

  “Hello, Dolly,” Shannon said.

  “Please,” she said. “Just let me out of here.”

  “That was two days of lights-out,” Shannon said. “No one’s even looking for you yet. Are you gonna do what I want?”

  She nodded desperately.

  He sighed. “I’m not convinced,” he said, and turned the lights back off.

  * * *

  The next blackout lasted only three hours. Or he said it did. Later she would start to suspect he was lying to her. Her hunger gave her a sense of time passing, and it didn’t seem to line up with what he said. Sometimes it felt like days between his visits, but he said it had been only hours. When he eventually told her she had been missing for two weeks, she hadn’t had her period, and she was sure it had been more like nine days. He always smiled when he told her what day it was. Like he enjoyed having control over time itself.

  He had thought of everything. There were no sharp objects in her cell. Nothing electrical. Nothing heavy enough to break the glass or use as a weapon, except the bed frame, and she had no tools with which to disassemble it. There was no plumbing to sabotage. She was expected to piss and shit in an old paint bucket, which she kept sealed in one corner. Another bucket had clean water, with a washcloth. The bedclothes were polyester, which she thought about setting fire to—but she couldn’t work out how to create enough friction, or what she would do once she was trapped in a burning room. Several times per hour she would reach for her phone to Google something like this, and then remember that Shannon had taken it.

  She started to wonder if he’d done this before. And if so, what had happened to the last woman who lived in this little room.

  If she’d been a “good girl,” she would be fed. A TV dinner would be passed through the slot cut in the bottom of the door, with bottled water. No cutlery. This slot—barely wide enough to put her hand through—was also used to deliver outfits and sex toys. The sex toys came in increasingly disturbing shapes and sizes. She was told where to put them, and to act like she enjoyed it. If her performance wasn’t good enough, lights out.

  Sometimes he left the lights on for what felt like weeks, and that was almost as bad. The colors were slowly bleached out of her prison. It was like jet lag, making her feel physically ill. Without real sunlight, she started to become delirious, convinced the fluorescent bulbs were irradiating her. Giving her skin cancer. Sometimes it felt like she couldn’t breathe. She would press her lips to the holes in the Plexiglas and gasp, heart bursting.

  Whole days passed—or felt like they did—when she didn’t get out of bed. But nor did she sleep. The tiniest of noises kept her awake. She imagined she could hear rats scratching under the bed, but never saw any.

  Abbey knew about cam sites. She’d busted her ex-boyfriend on one once. Lee—a stoner creep who didn’t think sending obscene messages to a naked stranger counted as cheating. But Abbey hadn’t given a thought to the woman he had been watching on the screen. Had she been a prisoner, too? Was Abbey listed on that same site? Maybe Lee would see her.

  She was waiting for the toilet bucket to fill up. When it did, Shannon would have to come in, right? To change it. She would have a chance to escape. He might threaten her with the knife again, but this time she wouldn’t hesitate. She strained over the bucket three times per day, desperate to fill it, careful never to spill a drop.

  “I need a new bathroom bucket,” she told him when it was three-quarters full.

  “Fine.” He pushed some handcuffs though the slot. “Cuff yourself to the bed. With both hands behind your back.”

  She hesitated.

  He reached for the light switch.

  “Okay!” she said. “Okay. I’m doing it.”

  She sat down and cuffed her wrists together, the chain behind the leg of the bed. He made her show him how tight the cuffs were. Then he unlocked the door and brought in a new bucket.

  Abbey had managed to lift the bed before. She had assumed she would be able to do so again, and slip the chain out from beneath the leg. But with her hands behind her back, she couldn’t lift the frame. It was too heavy, and the angle was wrong.

  Shannon had already put down the empty bucket and picked up the full bucket. He was grimacing, revolted by the sloshing fluid inside. It would take another month for her to fill another bucket and get another chance.

  Abbey didn’t think she would survive another month.

  She lashed out with her foot. Shannon tripped over her and crashed headfirst into the concrete wall. The bucket tipped over and the lid popped off, spilling an ocean of sewage across the floor. Shannon landed in it, facedown, and didn’t get up.

  Abbey had watched him pocket the keys. She stretched out her bare foot. She couldn’t reach into his pocket. The opening faced away from her. She curled her toes around the rim of the pocket and pulled, trying to pull down his pants instead. His belt was too tight. But with a sound like popping corn, the stitches snapped. The pocket ripped open and the keys tumbled out, sending ripples across the fetid puddle.

  Shannon stirred.

  Panicking, Abbey tried to slide the keys toward herself. She managed to get them into her sweaty fingers, but she couldn’t get the slippery key into the lock behind her back.

  Shannon sat up, red-faced and dripping. His eyes focused on her, and lit up with a terrifying rage.

  Abbey got the key into the lock, but it was too late. He punched her in the head. Sparks filled her skull. He hit her over and over until her ears rang. It was like the sky was falling. She couldn’t even raise her arms to protect herself—when she tried, something tore inside her shoulder and the cuffs bit into her wrists until she bled.

  So she went somewhere else. A woman named Abbey Chapman was being beaten to death, but she was no longer that woman. She knew things about the lives of many people—her mom, her brother, the president, Beyoncé and Shannon Luxford. How could she be sure she wasn’t one of them?

  When she came back into her body, Shannon was gone. The lights were out. Abbey was still cuffed to the bed, in a puddle of piss and blood.

  This was the longest blackout yet, or maybe it just felt that way. Bruises swelled under her hair. Her eyes dried out and her tongue shriveled. The room grew colder and colder. Maybe it was winter now, or Shannon could have turned up the AC to freeze her to death. Or maybe she had a fever.

  She passed in and out of consciousness. Her dreams bled into reality. Sometimes she thought she was back in the Ohio Caverns, looking for her brother. Sometimes she knew where she was, but thought her mom was standing beside her bed, asking why she wasn’t getting up. She tried to tell Mom abo
ut the handcuffs, but her throat was too dry and her lips too crumbly to make words. Eventually Mom gave up and went away. Abbey wept.

  In a lucid moment, she decided Shannon was never coming back. She was going to die here. She was sure it had already been longer than three days without water. Maybe she was already dead. She was a ghost. Soon she would meet her replacement.

  Then the lights came back on.

  Shannon came into the panic room, and unlocked the Plexiglas door. He left it open for ventilation as he mopped the floor of her cell. He worked silently and carefully, like one of the queen’s butlers. She was too weak even to speak. He was clean-shaven, with slicked-back hair and clothes that smelled of fabric softener. She was a pale, shivering husk, legs stained with her own shit. She was too ashamed even to look at him.

  He bent down and uncuffed her.

  She felt a rush of gratitude for this handsome man who was saving her life.

  He left a bottle of water and a TV dinner on the floor, then he walked out and locked the glass door behind him.

  “Thank you,” she rasped.

  He looked at her for the first time, and smiled, showing perfect teeth.

  “No sweat,” he said.

  When he was gone, she crawled over to the meal. She took one gulp of the water, and immediately threw up over the clean floor.

  * * *

  The camera became her friend.

  When she wasn’t spreading her legs for it or gagging on something in front of it, she would talk to it. Tell it stories from her high school days. Like the time she had practiced kissing on the bathroom mirror, and then seen the janitor cleaning it with the same mop he had just used to scrub the toilet bowls. She would tell it about Grandma Ivy, who would pretend to be deaf when telemarketers called and would leave her dentures in unexpected places as a prank. Ivy had been in the hospital with emphysema when Abbey was abducted. Abbey sometimes prayed for her, and invited the camera to pray, too. Being watched by strangers wasn’t as bad as being alone.

  She didn’t tell the camera that she was a prisoner, and she never said anything negative about Shannon. She didn’t know when he was watching the feed. Every once in a while he would come in and do something to the back of the camera. Changing a battery, maybe.