by Mary Kubica
Gus is sleeping now. I’m trying to sleep. But I got too much on my mind to sleep. Now that the lady’s starving us to death, I know we got to get out of here if we don’t want to die. We got to take the next chance we get to run, if we ever get another chance. I been doing my calisthenics. It ain’t easy because after all this time not eating, I’m weak as can be. My legs don’t work right, and if I’m gonna stand a chance of running away from here, I got to get them ready. I’ve been spending my time jogging in place, leaning down to touch my toes, marching laps around Gus and my dungeon while he watches on, asks what I’m doing, begs me to stop. Gus don’t like the idea of us running away ’cause he’s scared as heck we’re gonna get caught.
I shrugged when he said that, and said, “Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. But how do we know if we don’t try?” I told him that when I go, he’s got to make sure he’s right behind me. He can’t drag his feet ’cause we’re better off dead than getting caught.
I sit now with my spoon in my lap. I keep it close. It’s not a spear. I don’t think it’ll ever be a spear, but it’s mangled enough that it’s got a chiseled point and could stun someone, if not kill. Stunning someone might be as good as it gets, but it’s better than nothing.
* * *
All of a sudden, the door creaks open. I hold my breath. It ain’t the lady coming. It’s the man. I can tell by the sound of his footsteps, though he’s trying to be quiet, which tells me the lady is somewhere up there, too, but she don’t know he’s coming down to see Gus and me.
I grip my spoon. The last thing I want to do is hurt the one who’s been nice to me—or nicer, ’cause keeping kids in your basement ain’t ever nice, even if you aren’t the one hitting them. But sometimes you got to do what you got to do, and the man is the least suspecting of the two. I’m ready, or at least as ready as I’ll ever be. I’ve thought this through a gazillion times. In my head I know what to do. But still, that don’t mean that my heart isn’t going hog wild. My arms and legs is shaking and I know I’ve got to get ahold of them if I’m going to do this right. I take a deep breath, count to ten. Release it.
“Where you at?” the man is asking, hissing his words out into the darkness.
Gus says nothing. “Right here,” I say, gripping my spoon so tight it hurts my hand.
He comes to me. He says he’s got a candy bar for me to eat. I hear the sound of him unwrapping it. “Far as she’s concerned, we might as well leave you down here to starve to death. But don’t worry. I won’t let nothing bad happen to you.” He’s trying to sweet-talk me, to make up for her not feeding us for all this time. He feels badly about it. He slips the candy bar into my hand. “Go on,” he says, “eat it.” This ain’t the first time the man’s brought me chocolate. He brought me a cupcake once, ’cause he said it was my birthday. I don’t know if it was.
I bring the candy bar to my mouth. I set my lips on it and taste the chocolate. It’s richer than I’ve ever tasted before. I sink my teeth slowly in. This candy bar is the kind with nuts. It’s got something gooey inside. That gooey something falls to my chin, tasting so sweet that I want to cry. I can’t remember the last time I ever ate something so sweet in my whole life. I nibble at it ’cause I want this candy bar to last forever. I should save some for Gus. Gus would love this candy bar. And Gus needs to eat far more than I do. He’s wasting away. But I don’t want the man to think I’m ungrateful. He’s probably got another one for Gus, anyway.
I take another bite. The sweet sugar rushes through my bloodstream. I make a sound.
“You like that?” the man asks, standing so close I feel his breath on me when he speaks. It stinks.
“It’s good,” I say back with a hunk of chocolate in my mouth. It sticks to my teeth, that gooey something like glue.
The man is trying to wheedle me. He talks soft, buttering me up, and I don’t know if it’s ’cause he feels bad about the lady starving me or if it’s ’cause he’s got something else on his mind. “I got more where that came from. Whenever you want, it’s yours. All you’ve got to do is ask.”
The man is standing so close. Wherever the lady is at, she don’t know that he’s here.
There may never be another chance as good as this.
I’m nervous, ’cause I’m thinking about all the things that could go wrong when I try and stab him with my spoon. The fear almost gets the best of me. I almost talk myself out of it.
But then I get to thinking about Gus spending the rest of his life in this place, and know I’ve got to do it for him. I’ve got to get Gus out of this place if it’s the last thing I ever do.
I hold the spoon tight, wrapping my fingers around the belly of its handle. I got only one chance to do this right. I don’t plan to aim for anything in particular. It’s too dark to see where I’m aiming, anyway. I just got to stab and see where it lands.
The man is telling me what a pretty girl I am when I take a deep, terrified breath and reach out and jam that spoon as hard as I can into him. If I had to guess, I’d say I hit somewhere around the side of the man’s neck because of where he’s standing. When I stab him, the tip of the honed spoon goes into him; I know ’cause it don’t feel like a dead end when I touch skin. It don’t go far, but it goes, leaving behind more than a scratch. The man lets out a screech.
It ain’t a knife I have. It’s something far lesser than a knife. One run-through isn’t going to work. I grab my spoon out of this man’s neck and spear him again and again. I don’t know how much damage I’m doing, but by the sounds he’s making, it hurts.
The man falls to the ground, taking me down with him. He’s grunting, clutching himself, calling me names. I try rising up to my legs. As I do, he reaches out and tears at my hair with his sweaty hands. I pull away, feeling some of my hair go with him. I let out a cry and keep going.
The man reaches out again, but this time I’m standing upright. He gets my leg and tries tugging on it to keep me from leaving. I kick at him. I got only my bare feet, so that don’t hurt none, but I kick hard enough that his hands let go ’cause he can’t hold on to me no more.
I got him on the floor. From the sound the man’s making, he ain’t gonna be quick to get up and follow me.
I call to Gus, “Come on,” as I go charging up them steps. I must’ve dropped my spoon ’cause I don’t have it anymore.
At the top of them steps, I lay my hand on the door handle and turn. I hear Gus’s scared footsteps on the stairs behind me. He’s walking from the sounds of it, when I need Gus to run. I tell him to hurry up. There’s a pounding in my head, a ringing in my ears. Gus is crying.
The man downstairs is making a sound. It’s not so much a scream as it is a bellow. But it’s loud enough that I’m starting to wonder how far it carries. Far enough that the lady will hear?
Once upstairs, I have no idea where I am. I have no idea where I’m going. The only time I’ve ever been up here before was when they first brought me to this place, for those first two seconds before they pushed me down the steps and locked up tight behind me. I don’t remember it. It’s dark upstairs but, unlike downstairs, it’s not black as pitch. Here and there is a faint glow of light that helps me see.
I call to Gus to hurry up. I don’t know how far he is behind. One quick glance over my shoulder tells me he’s there, but lagging behind. I know Gus is scared to death, and I try and reassure him that everything will be all right. “This ain’t no time to be scared, Gus,” I say, trying not to be mean about it, but firm. “We got to go. You got to run.” I reach back and grab ahold of his hand, pulling him with me. His hand is cold as ice. Gus says nothing but every now and again I hear him cry.
I hear that lady’s voice somewhere in the distance, half-asleep and confused. “Eddie?” she’s calling out. “What’s the matter, Eddie?”
The man is making his way up the stairs now. He figured out how to get himself up off the floor, though he’s still groani
ng as he chases after Gus and me. I hear the man scream to the lady, breathless and mad. “That little bitch got out,” he’s saying. “She’s getting away.”
“What?” the lady asks. “How, Eddie? How in the hell did that happen?”
That man lies and tells her, “I don’t know how.” He’s telling the lady they got to find me, that they can’t let us get away.
I find a door on the wall. I can just barely make out the square shape of it in the faint nighttime glow. I reach for the handle, but the door is locked up tight. My sweaty hand feels up the door, landing on the lock.
The man and the lady are getting closer. I know ’cause they’re still screaming at one another, telling each other which way to go to find Gus and me. Calling one another idiots, telling each other to turn on a light so that they can see. Their voices feel close enough to touch.
They try and negotiate with me, saying things like, “If you tell us where you are, we’ll give you a cookie,” as if I’m dumb enough to fall for that. No cookie is good enough to live here the rest of my life.
But then, in the blink of an eye, they go from negotiating to mean, ’cause right after their offer for a cookie, they’re calling me a bitch again, saying, “I’ll kill you when I get my hands on you, you little bitch, you dumb twat.”
They know this is my doing. They know Gus ain’t so naughty as to try and run on his own.
My sweaty hand turns that lock and the door miraculously opens. There’s a rush of air on the other side of it. It’s hot and sticky, hitting me like a wall. It comes barreling into me and I freeze ’cause I ain’t ever felt it in all these years that I’ve been here. Fresh air.
The outside world immobilizes me at first. But then I get ahold of myself ’cause if I don’t I’m easy prey. ’Cause when the front door opened, an alarm on the house started screaming. If the man and the lady had any question about Gus and my whereabouts before, they know now.
The lady hollers that we’re getting away.
I force myself outside. I start running. I’ve still got Gus’s hand in mine and I pull on it, dragging him with me. There’s fear in being outside as much as there is in staying inside. I haven’t been outside in a long time. I nearly forgot all about outside.
The heat and the darkness swallow me whole and I run faster than I ever have in my life. I drop Gus’s hand by accident, but I pray that he can keep up. Gus hasn’t been doing his calisthenics like me, so there’s no telling what kind of a runner he is. But sometimes being scared makes you do things you didn’t know you could do.
My bare feet run across pebbles first and then the grass. The pebbles cut into my feet, hurting, making them bleed, though I’m not paying any attention to things like that. The grass, when I get to it, is soft and wet, tickling my feet. But I can’t feel that, either, not really, ’cause I’m just running.
I see something shining in the sky. The moon. Stars. I forgot all about the moon and stars. I hear the buzz of nighttime bugs around me. I want to stop and stare and listen, but I can’t. Not yet. Not right now.
“Stay with me, Gus,” I scream back over my shoulder, knowing we’ve got to get far, far away from this place before we stop to look back. For all I know that man and that lady are just twenty paces behind and they’ll catch us if we stop for a breath. I ask Gus if he’s coming, if he’s okay. I tell him to stay with me. To not slow down one bit. “We’re almost there, Gus,” I say. “We’re almost free.”
For a while I hear that man and that lady calling after us. They’re quiet mostly because they don’t want to cause a commotion. They got flashlights with them, though, ’cause I see the glow of those flashlights moving through the trees. Every so often the light falls on Gus and me and I duck away from it, veer off in some different direction so that soon I’m all turned around and couldn’t find my way back to that house if I wanted to.
But then, after a while, I can’t hear the man and the lady no more, which is a relief, but it also terrifies me. I wish they’d make some sort of noise so that I’d know where they are. Have we lost them? Or are they hiding in the trees, waiting for me?
It’s dark outside mostly, still nighttime. The moon and the stars light the world a bit, make it so I can somewhat see. After all that time in the basement, our eyes are accustomed to the darkness. It gives us an advantage over the lady and man. They’re not used to seeing in the dark, like Gus and me.
I don’t know where we’re at. There are houses, a street. But there aren’t too many houses and what there are is broken up by trees. The trees are big and tall, but not the kind that are big enough that Gus and I can hide behind. The houses are tucked into the trees, and they’re dark, hardly a light on anywhere. The grass everywhere is overgrown. It reaches right up to my knees and is chock-full of prickly weeds that scratch at my bare feet and legs. They’re knifelike, stabbing me and making me bleed.
I run headlong into a tree branch, stunning myself. For a minute, I see stars. My knees lock and I freeze in place, trying to get my bearings. “What happened?” Gus asks. But before I have a chance to tell him, I hear the snap of a tree branch from somewhere behind and know we’ve got to keep running if we’re to survive.
I say, “Let’s go.” I take off again. I hear the sound of Gus’s heavy breathing behind me. After a while, neither of us says another word ’cause we got to conserve our breath for running.
I trip over a felled tree. I go soaring to the ground, where I land on my hands and knees. It hurts, my knees mostly, but I can’t lie there on the ground and cry about it. I get myself up, dust off my hands and knees and keep running. “Watch out for the tree,” I whisper to Gus as I go, knowing he’s got to be just steps behind me, though his breath is getting harder and harder to hear over the sound of mine.
My legs are getting worn out from all the running, my feet heavy as lead. My heart is beating hard, on account of being short of breath, and my fear. I’m scared as hell, wondering what that man and that lady would do to us if they caught us.
Now that I got a little taste of freedom, I don’t want to die.
I run fast past houses. I cut through yards. I run down the road.
A ways down, my legs become tired as all get-out. Gus and I ain’t got a lot of options. There are a handful of houses, but what are the odds that anyone would open up for us if we knock on their door in the dead of night? I’m not sure we can risk it. We’re sitting ducks if no one lets us in.
Hiding out seems like the better choice. I start looking for a place to hide. My running has slowed down some. We’re no longer being tailed by the flashlights, but I’m not so dumb as to believe the man and the lady plumb gave up and went home. They’re playing games with Gus and me.
In the backyard of one of them houses, I spy a shed tucked beneath a gnarled tree.
“Come on, Gus,” I call, knowing the shed would be as good a place as any for us to hide. “In here,” I tell him, spotting a padlock on that shed door, but seeing that it ain’t locked up tight. We can still get in.
I silently remove the padlock from the metal loop and open up the hasp. The shed door pipes when I open it up, so I don’t open it all the way. Just enough to get in. I slip inside, make room for Gus. But Gus doesn’t come. He must have fallen farther behind than I thought. I got to wait for him to catch up.
Only when I’m in, tucked behind the shed door, do I allow myself a look back. I hold my breath waiting for Gus to materialize in the yard in the darkness of night and join me in the shed. But Gus ain’t there.
I look all around and call quietly for him. Gus ain’t nowhere.
* * *
I hear footsteps. I hear the mashing of leaves beneath someone’s feet, like someone’s chomping on chips. I hear the sound of breathing, of heavy huffing and puffing, and though I hope and pray it’s Gus, I know it ain’t, ’cause that’s the same huffing and puffing that man was making when he was first chasing aft
er me.
I’m in that shed. I got the door pulled to. It ain’t closed up tight ’cause I was looking out for Gus when the footsteps came. I slinked back into the blackness of the shed when they did. I wasn’t quiet enough ’cause that man heard something. Something brought him to me.
Now he’s inches away. I’m crouched down into the corner of the shed, tucked behind a big old garbage can. There ain’t a whole lot of room in this place ’cause it’s chock-full of stuff I can’t make sense of in the dark.
I can feel my whole self shaking. I got to sit on the wood floor, pull my knees into me and wrap my arms around them to keep from shaking so much I rattle the stuff around me. I’m wondering where Gus is. I’m thinking that if the man is here, then that means he don’t have Gus. But maybe the lady has Gus. Or maybe Gus is hiding in his own shed, ’cause even though he’s a scaredy-cat, Gus ain’t an idiot. He can take care of himself.
The man’s footsteps encircle the whole entire shed. They come to a stop right there by the door. His heavy breathing makes me breathe faster and louder, so that I got to hold my breath to keep from giving up my hiding place. I got to press my hands to my mouth so that the noisy air can’t get in or out.
The heartbeat inside my neck is going so wild it makes me dizzy. I got a cold sweat going on. I feel like I could pee my pants. I can’t hold my breath forever. I take one small, quiet breath, and then press my hands to my mouth and hold it.
The moon on the other side of the shed door is bright. It lights up the man, shines on him standing there just outside the open doorway. It makes him glow. I see the shape of him. I see his pointy chin and his straggly hair. His big nose. He’s an ugly man, just like the lady’s ugly. He ain’t super tall, not nearly as tall as my daddy was when I remember him.
The man turns toward the shed door and opens it up all the way. The door whines, sad that the man is coming in. With that door all the way opened up, the moon comes worming into the shed, too, brightening it some. Not a ton, but enough to scare me ’cause with the moonlight on me, I’m not as invisible as I thought.