My Peace

by Courtney Cole

  Fuck.

  I back off.

  “Is he alive?” I ask her coldly.

  She grins.

  “Eat. You need to for the baby.”

  “As if you care.”

  “You should put a cool cloth on that,” she suggests, gesturing at my mouth, and then she’s gone again. I ignore my swelling lip, and instead focus on my husband again.

  Is his hand in a different place? Did he move while I wasn’t looking?

  I sink to my knees.

  “Please, please please,” I beg. I’m not sure if I’m begging God or Pax.

  I’m frozen in place and he doesn’t move.

  “Please, God,” I mumble, without taking my eyes off the screen.

  He’s so completely still.

  I wait. I ignore the food tray and I watch my husband for any sign of life. For anything.

  He gives me nothing.

  For an hour, for sixty long, frustrating minutes, I stare at him, and he doesn’t move. But then... then…

  Something is slipped under the door of his room.

  I peer at it.

  It looks like a folded piece of paper.

  Pax blinks.

  He blinked.

  The knowledge rams into me and I cry from relief. He’s not dead.

  He’s not dead.

  Slowly, slowly, slowly, he reaches over and takes the paper. He unfolds it. He reads it.

  He gets to his feet.

  He grabs a box.

  He takes a syringe out. He taps the barrel, he flicks at his arm.

  “No,” I breathe. “No. Pax, don’t!”

  He plunges it into his arm without blinking again. He stares at the wall, like a robot or a machine, and he doesn’t blink. I don’t think he’s feeling a thing. His eyes are wide open.

  When he’s finished, he puts it back in the box, and tosses it in a pile of empties. There are so many empty boxes, and had they all contained drugs?

  I’m stunned. I’m numb.

  What the hell is happening?

  Why is this happening?

  Pax sits back down on the floor in the same place he’d been. He resumes staring at the wall, his eyes wide open and unblinking.

  My chest quivers, my hands shake.

  He’s not fighting?

  This isn’t like him.

  I scan his surroundings. It’s definitely our bedroom. It’s our bed, our night-tables. My gaze stops on the night-table. The nursery monitor is there, and the screen is on.

  Something… something looks like it’s moving. But I can’t see it clearly enough. It almost looks like the outline of a small person. Maybe a child.

  Is it Zuzu?

  Please, God, I pray again. Please. I’ll give you anything. Take my life, not theirs.

  I sink to the floor and watch the screen.

  It’s the only thing I can do.

  21

  Chapter Twenty

  Pax

  Time has no meaning now.

  At some points, it passes slowly, and at others, it passes quickly. It all depends on what is in the box.

  This time, it is cocaine. For the fourth time today.

  He has planned the exact drugs that will counter each other out throughout the day… some speed me up, some slow me down. They’re carefully planned to keep me alive. To keep me going. To keep me suffering.

  “Is Mila alive?” I ask when a note is shoved under the door.

  There is no answer. I doubt they can hear me.

  This note also tells me to look in the top dresser drawer.

  Two boxes of granola bars and a dozen bottles of water are there. I ignore them. I’m not hungry. My heart is racing though. The cocaine speeds it up and I’m flying and I’m numb, and all of my emotions are dulled like I’m sinking in a murky pond.

  I’m worried about Zuzu and Mila, I know that I am, but at the moment, I don’t actually feel it. I don’t feel the emotions that should accompany my thoughts. They’re gone. Leroy has taken them from me. In theory and in practice. In reality and in my head.

  I glance at the nursery monitor.

  Zuzu is sleeping. She’s safe on the bed, and she’s sleeping.

  I can’t save her.

  They are going to kill me here. I know they are. I want to look inside all of the boxes, but at the same time, I don’t want to know just yet how they’ve planned my end.

  Will it be a fatal dose of heroin?

  Will it be too much cocaine?

  Maybe they’ll make me drink antifreeze.

  It’s hard to say.

  All I know is, at the moment, I don’t care.

  Every ounce of my caring is gone. It’s been taken.

  The longer I take these drugs, the more I will feel empty. I know that from experience.

  The walls start to close in on me, and my skin starts to itch, and the ceiling seems to fall. I focus harder on the wall in front of me. If I don’t, I will lose my mind, and he can’t have that. He can take my feelings, but he can’t have my mind.

  My thoughts are my own.

  I breathe in and out, I focus hard, harder, harder.

  I picture Zuzu and Mila. I know I love them. I know I do. Love is a fact. It isn’t always a feeling. I don’t need to feel it at the moment to know it’s true.

  I picture Zu’s blonde curls and bright eyes, her bright smile and her tiny fingers. She holds my hand at every opportunity. I imagine walking across the garden with her, playing hide and seek, which Mila watches. Mila’s eyes are clear too, and her smile is like the sun. She watches us, and the love she feels is in her eyes, and she reaches for me, and my stomach clenches.

  They’re going to kill me, and that will kill Mila. It will kill her.

  I don’t care for myself, but I care what it will do to her.

  She’s been through so much already. She shouldn’t have to go through this, too.

  I stand up, and because I know they are watching me through the small camera in the corner, I take the remaining boxes and throw them as hard as I can against the wall. I stomp on them. Then I flip off the camera.

  The tiny red light blinks and I know they see.

  I stare at them without blinking.

  “Fuck you,” I tell them.

  The light blinks.

  They see me.

  I smile.

  * * *

  Mila

  Pax rages against captivity.

  His muscles bulge as he throws the boxes of drugs against the wall and then stomps them into oblivion. When they are tattered and torn and flat, he flips off the camera, and they must be watching him through it. I smile because this is my husband. This is the man I married.

  He won’t take it lying down.

  I’m terrified about what they will do to our daughter, but I know that they will do what they’re going to do regardless. It was never contingent upon what Pax does. I know that.

  The door bursts open and two men dressed in black storm in. They fight with Pax, and the movement seems to be slightly delayed. Every few seconds, it catches up, and it seems like it skipped a frame.

  One is kicking him now, over and over in his gut. My husband’s body jerks and lifts with each blow. I call out and scream, but they don’t stop. I can feel each blow as if they are doing it to me. That is how closely my husband and I are connected.

  When he is limp, I’m limp.

  My brow is sweaty, my hands are shaking.

  He is no longer conscious, and they heft him onto the bed, restraining him there. His hands and feet are bound and he is bound to the bed itself. He isn’t going anywhere. His face bleeds, his nose looks broken.

  His head lolls to the side and they leave him there, alone and broken.

  “Pax,” I murmur. “Please…”

  I cry into my hands, and I am so helpless. He’s dying in a room alone, and I can’t get to him, and I can’t help.

  I’m taking a shaky breath when he finally moves.

  He turns his head and stares at the camera.
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br />   He smiles and his teeth are red.

  22

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Pax

  I drift in and out of consciousness.

  I can’t move. Not really.

  The bindings bite into my hands and my ankles, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel my knee. I don’t feel anything. I don’t even feel my face, and I know it must be ragged. They kicked the the shit out of me.

  I feel nothing.

  The light fades in and out with my consciousness, day turns into night.

  I can’t turn my head far enough to see the nursery monitor anymore, so I can’t see Zuzu. I can’t check on her, I have no idea what she’s doing.

  “Let her go,” I ask them when they come back in later to inject me. “Let her go. I’m here now. He wanted me. He has me.”

  They don’t say anything. Their faces are covered with black ski masks, and I don’t know why they’ve bothered with that. They aren’t letting me live. I know that.

  I try to think of my options.

  I don’t have any.

  All I have is money.

  “I can pay you,” I tell them the next time they come. “I can pay you more than he can.”

  They don’t say a thing. They inject me, the room swirls, and I’m out like a light.

  I don’t wake up for what must be hours. My body is stiff when I awaken, but there is no pain. I guess I should be thankful for that smallest of favors.

  I try to focus.

  What should a person do when they are a bound captive?

  What can I do?

  I examine the room again. Nothing has changed.

  I know there are at least two of them.

  I know they have what seems to be an unlimited supply of drugs.

  I know they were prepared.

  I focus on staying conscious, and it is actually difficult. My body is fighting back against all of the toxins in my system. It wants to sleep them off, to regain strength during slumber. I can’t do that.

  I have to think.

  Think, think, think.

  I have to stay calm.

  They come back.

  One of them speaks.

  “We were told you’d want to know what your mother said about you.”

  I focus on that, on my mother. She was kind and warm. And Leroy said… that he had something to tell me. Something she’d said.

  I remember now.

  I wait.

  The guy laughs, and his lips are dry. I can only see his eyes and lips through the holes in the mask. His eyes are brown. Dull brown. His lips are chapped, flaky in the corners.

  “I’m not going to tell you. Not while you are resisting like this. You were told to behave. You aren’t.”

  He places a lock of blond hair on my chest. The curl of it gleams in the sun from the windows. It’s Zuzu’s.

  I struggle to turn, to see the monitor.

  “Don’t you touch her,” I shout at him.

  He laughs again.

  “She’s fine,” he tells me finally. “For now.”

  My head falls back against the bed. My wrists are bleeding from the binding.

  “You can only behave if you do it on your own accord,” he continues. “It doesn’t count if we have to force you. Are you ready to behave?”

  I nod.

  “Are you sure?” he asks sternly.

  I nod.

  “Fine. We’re going to untie you. And you’re going to do as you’re told, or the next thing I bring you won’t be your daughter’s hair.”

  I nod again, and when they untie me, the blood flows back into my limbs in a flood of pins and needles.

  “Son of a bitch,” I mutter before I can stop myself, as I rub at my hands and feet.

  The guy laughs. The other doesn’t say much.