I had promised myself to find a way out of here. I needed the strength of mind and body for it. So, from now on, I was determined to eat any amount of the green stuff that would come my way. Even if I still felt a bitter disappointment of my failed interaction with the guard.
Actually, there was a bright side: I could hope now to see him not only at night but also at breakfast and possibly at lunch too. That also meant that I would see him one on one without the presence of any other guards. And I would most definitely talk to him again!
I did talk to him again. In fact, I talked to him every chance I got, which was relatively often since he was the only one now who brought me all my meals and bath water every day. Actually, the only time I ever saw the other two guards was when they accompanied him to take me to the arena in the evening.
The next time I saw him was when he brought me lunch. I was still trying to get his name, and I stood in front of him, blocking his way to the mattress.
“So, I need to know your name whether you like it or not, you know.” I insisted. “You don’t need to talk to me if you don’t want to. Or maybe you do want to talk, but you’re not allowed?”
I waited for a second, giving him a chance to reply, but he only blinked at me and remained silent.
“Fine, that’s fine. Well, I will talk to you anyway. It was not my choice to be locked up in here with only you for a company, but if you are all I’ve got, I may as well get to know you. Right? So, what would you like me to call you?”
Determined not to be distracted from his task by my talking, he took a step to the side in an attempt to walk around me and deposit the lunch tray by the mattress. I let him but then turned around and faced him on his way out, now blocking the exit from him.
“Come on, it’s not like I can call you ‘dude’ or ‘buddy’. It really doesn’t suit you. And don’t you even think that since we have some …um, sexual history…that I’d call you ‘babe’ or ‘honey’ now!”
No reaction from him. He stood calmly in front of me with both arms down along his body, with legs parted wide in a military stance, and said absolutely nothing.
Of course, he could have easily pushed me aside or simply mow me over on his way to the door if he really wanted to leave, but he didn’t do either. Instead, he just stood there and listened to whatever nonsense came out of my mouth. Not much of a silver lining, but I’d take all I could get.
“Okay then. I can always make a name up for you. If you don’t want to talk, just nod if you like it.” No reaction, as expected. “So what should I call you? How about Josh? I had this boy in elementary school his name was Josh. Well, he was not very bright… and a bit of a bully, actually… But you remind me of him, for some reason. Or Tank? My friend had a dog named Tank. He was very friendly!” I said brightly. “Tank would actually suit you really well! With all that armor you keep wearing every day.” He remained unresponsive and just stood there, as if frozen in time and space.
“Okay, fine.” I mumbled defeated. Feeling disappointed once again and a little irritated, I stepped aside to let him pass. “I’ll just have to make up a name for you myself then, without your approval. I’ll make sure it’s something really stupid too.” I stared at his back as he exited the cell and tried but failed not to take his rejection personally. “See how you’d like being called Tin Man, or Kettle Head, or Dumbass With a Soup Can For Brains And a Black Hole For a Heart!”
Chapter Six. Wilson.
According to the marks on my wall, it had been 10 days since I counted them last. 10 days since my hysterics stopped, since he came into my life or at least since I noticed him. Looking at the time spent in this basement now, I divided it in two parts: my time here before I met him and the time after. It’s amazing how narrow you mind’s vision could become when your whole world is reduced to a basement cell and the other room.
I never ended up giving him a name after all. Nothing seemed to fit, or maybe he just didn’t give me enough personality to work with.
I’d had lots of conversations with him since that first time, even though all of the conversations followed the same pattern: I talked and he listened. Well, mostly, he just stood there and blinked at me occasionally, but at least he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get out of the cell, letting me talk instead.
“There you are!” I said with a smile as he walked in my cell one morning.
I had to admit that I liked seeing him in the morning. I waited for him to enter my cell, bringing me my bland food for breakfast. He was the only one around that I could talk to, even if he didn’t answer any of my questions and never replied. His mere presence in my life now kept my brain from imploding with loneliness and isolation.
For now, I did all the talking, hoping that he would say something too one day. I told him a little about my life back home in Toronto, about my past life as a student at the university there and about my friends. I tried to stick to stories from my past to make him learn more about me as a person, whether he wanted to or not. I hoped that if he knew me better, he would see me more as a person too and less as an object, like the rest of them did.
I chose funny stories to keep it light. I told him about the times I went out and had fun with my friends. I couldn’t detect from his body language whether or not he found my stories amusing and couldn’t see through the mask if he smiled at my jokes, but he made a visible effort to linger around listening to my talking, and I appreciated it very much. Talking to him made me feel less alone.
Granted, he wasn’t the best conversationalist, but intentionally or not, he was helping me to survive. Tom Hanks only had the volleyball to keep him company on that island. My companion might have been as responsive as that ball, really, but he was all I had and I was grateful for him.
“Good morning,” I said and continued, knowing that there was no use to wait for a reply. “You know, I keep hoping that you’d walk in here with a plate full of scrambled eggs and bacon one day! Wouldn’t it be nice! I didn’t even like bacon back home and never ate it. With all the people around constantly talking about managing weight nowadays, it was an easy sacrifice. But now, I have real cravings for it. And for coffee. And for any kind of pastry. I keep having this recurring dream that I am in a huge bakery shop with several large rooms connected by long hallways. And every wall of every room and hallway is lined with shelves from floor to ceiling with all the possible cakes and pastries displayed on them! And I just go from shelf to shelf, choosing and picking what pastries to buy. And you know what the saddest part is? Even in my dream, I never get to taste any of them! Why do you think that is? I think it’s because even my subconscious forgot by now how any of them taste after eating nothing but the pale stuff you keep feeding me! Do you know what it even is?” I pointed at the bowl on the tray in his hands. “It must be good for me, right? My hair looks better even if I haven’t shampooed it for ages. I haven’t had any skin breakouts for a long time, either… It feels like something healthy, and it tastes like nothing. That means it must be good for me, right?”
I stepped aside to let him walk past me and put the tray on the floor. I noticed that he almost seemed anxious when I talked. I couldn’t figure out if his uneasiness was caused by the things I told him or by the fact that I talked to him at all.
My guess was that he couldn’t stay in my cell for long even if he looked like he wanted to linger. I sensed that he was afraid to get caught. He didn’t exactly look over his shoulder every few seconds, but his broad shoulders seemed tense, and his head would turn towards the door a little, as if he listened for footsteps of anyone passing by.
For this reason, I broke up my speeches into portions and delivered them at intervals, letting him do what he came in here to do in between. So that if anybody really was passing by, they could see that I was the only one talking and that he was actually in the middle of doing his job, not just standing around listening to me. That said, I wasn’t sure if my strategy was actually helpful, but I followed it anyway.
He put the breakfast down and turned around to face the door, or me, actually, as I had put myself into his way again.
“Hey, I thought of something we can do!” I said with an exaggerated enthusiasm, hoping against all odds that it was catching. “We can play a game! When I was little, I used to love playing it with my mom. She called the game ‘Da i Net’, it’s Russian for ‘Yes and No’; my parents were from Belarus. Well, in the game you’re supposed to think of an object and let the other player guess what it is by asking only yes-or-no questions. Since you don’t talk, we won’t bother with an object. I will just ask you questions that require only yes or no answers, and all you have to do is nod your head for ‘yes’ or shake it for ‘no’. Okay?”
He cocked his head at me. That was something, wasn’t it? I wish I could tell, though, if he was amused with me or just annoyed by me. This gesture of his could have meant either.
Determined to get him to talk eventually, I continued: “Okay, I’ll start. But feel free to jump in with any questions you may have for me!”
I started with the most innocent, neutral question I could think of.
“Do you have a name? I’m not asking what it is, just if you have one. Yes or no?”
No answer.
Ok, it was a stupid question with a predictable answer. Everybody had a name, right? When I asked it, I hoped it would require so little effort from him to answer that he actually would answer it.
He didn’t. He still had his head tilted slightly, and his eyes were fixed on me. It made him look like he was trying to figure out what was the real game that I was playing in order to decide whether or not he should play along.
I thought I’d explain myself a little to calm his suspicions.
“I have told you so much about myself by now. I just would like to know a little bit about you in return. It would be only fair, wouldn’t it?” He didn’t move, so I went ahead with another question: “Do you have a family?” I tried to keep eye contact with him the whole time while asking questions as not to miss a nod or even a blink, and I also made sure to pay attention to any other signs of non-verbal communication.
His arms were seemingly relaxed, hanging along his sides, but I noticed that his fingers twitched slightly when I asked the last question. It may not have been a yes or a no, but it was still a reaction. A rare reaction coming from him, and it came from a question about a family. Did he have a family? Did something happen to them?
I kept going. Over the next several days, I continued asking him questions as part of the game. I asked harmless questions, without an agenda, mixed in with questions that would have given me a little more information about this place, about the world outside and about my situation.
“Is it cold out there?”
“Do you like working here?”
“Have you seen the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks? Do you know that you remind me of Wilson, the volleyball?”
“Are we underground, in a basement? Is it safe here? Am I safe?”
“Do you like cats?”
“Do you live here? Can you go outside any time you want?”
I also found myself asking some more personal questions out of pure curiosity because I knew so little about him, and I wanted to find out more if I could.
“Do you have friends? How about a best friend?”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Do you like dancing?”
“Do you read books?”
“Do you ever get scared? Lonely?”
“Do you ever feel excitement?”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Are you ticklish?”
“Do you ever feel like running in a field until your lungs burn and your legs give in?”
“Do you ever feel like running out of this place and never coming back?”
He never actually answered any of my questions, not with words, not with a nod or a shake of his head, but I could no longer say that there was no reaction at all. I could tell that some questions made him tense up; some would make him tilt his head in amusement, as if he couldn’t believe I even asked it; and I could have sworn I even heard a soft chuckle from behind his mask a couple of times when I asked a really funny question.
“Any chance you can bring me some shampoo with the bucket of water today?” I asked one morning even as I knew that he would not. I had asked for a hairbrush before and a blanket. I made sure to ask for the most essential, innocuous things that even the creepiest of kidnappers would have a hard time denying to their victims. Still, he never brought me any of them. There must be a rule here against me having these items, but if it was impossible for me to get him to break a simple rule like that, how could I ever convince him to help me escape?
“I’m sure you know that a bucket of water alone doesn’t even begin to cover the bare essentials for an average woman? You look like you know women well enough, with all your expert skills in… you know, pleasuring them…and stuff…” I trailed off.
I deliberately tried to avoid any references to what was happening in the arena between us. It helped to keep the arena sessions separate from the rest of my life, at least in my mind. It wasn’t difficult to do because he acted differently there, compared to the way he behaved the rest of the time with me.
Outside of the arena, he never touched me, never even came close enough for his breath to reach me, except when he helped me put on the clean dress after the session. Even then, his touches were far from sexual.
“You should know, I would need at least a hairbrush, a toothbrush, shampoo, hair conditioner, tooth paste, soap, body lotion…” I kept talking now just for the sake of continuing to talk, to keep him here. It was also why I never touched the food while he was in the cell. I knew that if I so much as moved towards the bowl, he would leave. And then, I would be left alone again. “…a curling iron, a nail file, a razor, hairspray, perfume… And just as a proof of my good nature, I will make do without any makeup for now. I’ll compromise, okay?” I said in a lighter tone, trying to remove any bitterness from my voice to keep my one-sided conversation on the fun side, hoping that he’d like it enough to stay longer.
“You do know what a compromise is, don’t you? I will give up something in order to gain something. You have to give in order to get, isn’t it how it’s supposed to work in the world?” And just like that I couldn’t keep it light anymore. “…Except that I already gave up so much, everything really. You took it all without asking, and you just keep on taking. There’s no giving with you…”
By you I meant all of them, not just him specifically. I didn’t mean to put the whole blame of my being here solely on him. I couldn’t even be sure that he was one of the guys who abducted me. To be fair, he actually was the only one who showed any difference to me at all. But he was the easiest target for my blame: he was here, he listened and he was not indifferent. All the things that kept him apart from the rest of them, ironically, made him now the perfect target for my bitterness and resentment.
“Honestly, not even freaking shampoo?” My voice cracked at that moment, and I knew the conversation was over. No way was I going to cry in front of him now, as he just stood there uncaring in front of me like a slab of concrete!
I walked around him, sat on the mattress, and picked up the bowl with my breakfast. I kept my eyes on the back of his boots as he remained in the same place in the middle of my cell, facing the door for a few moments. Then I heard him inhale deeply and noticed the slight slump of his massive shoulders as he exited the cell.
My words must have affected him in some way, and even if all they caused was a sense of frustration with my attitude in him, it was still better than a complete indifference, as far as I was concerned.
Chapter Seven. The Beginning.
I stood on my knees over the bucket of water a few days later. I had just finished my sponge bath, rinsed my hair and was now squeezing the water out of it. My dress was still lying on top of the mattress while I let my skin dry in the warm air
of my cell. Despite it being obviously a basement where they kept me, it was always very warm in here, almost too warm at times. One of the reasons why sleeping on the thin mattress on the floor without a blanket was, actually, bearable.
I rose from my knees and tossed my hair over my shoulder, shaking it out a little and getting ready to finger-brush and braid it again, as I did every day now, when I noticed a movement through the barred window of the door and turned to meet the light-blue eyes staring at me. The door then slid open, and he stood in the doorway.
His eyes slid slowly down my body, and a strong awareness prickled my skin following the path of his gaze. Suddenly, I felt naked and moved my hands in an attempt to cover up.
It was ridiculous, and I knew it! He had seen me naked many times and had touched almost every part of my body.
Until now, however, it had always been for the audience, for somebody else. Right now, here in the small cell and away from the cold eyes of the others, it felt different, more personal and intimate. What he was doing right now was for him and me alone.
He was taking his time, slowly moving his gaze along every curve of my body, and it felt as if he saw me for the first time ever.
When he reached my eyes again, the heavy distracted look in his eyes focused. He was watching my face now; his pupils flickered between my eyes, like he was trying to read my thoughts behind them. He let it go, finally, and moved his eyes away from me. I let out a breath I didn’t know I held, as if he had physically released me form a strong embrace.
Before I could realize what he was up to next, he stood in front of me and held my dress open, ready for me to put it on. With my eyes fixed on the floor between his boots, I stepped forward, and he slid the dress up my arms and onto my shoulders. He then moved behind me and buttoned it all the way up. Then, I felt his gloved fingers moving up into my hair, brushing against my scalp softly, running along the length of the wet strands, tracing the curve of my ear… Tender, soothing caresses…
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