CHAPTER SEVEN
Kathleen woke the next morning to the unmistakable aroma of food cooking. Someone was cooking up breakfast just on the other side of the green door. Kathleen could smell the distinct scent of bacon frying. She normally didn’t care much for bacon, but, this morning, the smell of the cured meat was driving her nearly insane with a nearly animalistic craving for the fatty meat. Her mouth was salivating heavily despite being so thirsty. The glands in the back of her throat ached for the taste of food. Her stomach growled hard and emphatically. She was starved. She wanted to eat. She needed to eat. She wondered if perhaps the compassion her kidnapper had shown when she had a fever would continue with an offering of food. Kathleen didn’t have to wait long for the answer. The green door opened. Her kidnapper walked in with a heaping plateful of bacon and scrambled eggs. He walked up to Kathleen’s cage so she could get a good smell of the delectable dish. Kathleen saw that the scrambled eggs were covered with ketchup, just how she liked them. Was it a coincidence her kidnapper had prepared the eggs just like Kathleen prepared hers? No, Kathleen answered herself. How she liked her eggs, how she liked everything in her life, was posted on social media for everyone to see.
“You’re looking better, Princess. You must be feeling better.”
Kathleen nodded her head while keeping her eyes on the plate of food.
“I bet you’re starving.”
Kathleen nodded her head again and swallowed a mouthful of saliva.
“Oh, before I forget, I need those blankets back.”
Kathleen handed her kidnapper the two blankets.
“Now, do you want to eat?”
“Yes, please.”
“Then you know what you have to do. Are you ready to end this?”
Kathleen immediately became disheartened. The kidnapper’s compassion was no more and she realized she wasn’t going to get to eat. She didn’t say a word. She just turned around, walked to the far corner of her cage, and sat down with a resolute look given toward her kidnapper, letting him know she had made her decision.
“Fine. But you can’t go without eating forever. Sooner or later you’ll give me what I want. I’m a patient guy. I can wait for as long as it takes.”
As her kidnapper walked out the green door, Kathleen’s stomach began to cramp violently and growl loudly, protesting her decision not to eat. Kathleen felt nauseated as her stomach screamed at her defiantly. It demanded substance and it was determined to make Kathleen suffer until it got what it wanted. Her stomach churned and convulsed and felt like it had a fire burning out of control inside, but Kathleen refused to let her stomach intimidate her. She was ruler of her own body. She was in control.
It took a few hours, but Kathleen’s stomach eventually settled down, quietly sulking in its defeat. Kathleen looked around her cage, a cage that was seemingly getting smaller. The cage bars were closing in around her. The cage ceiling looked lower than it was the day before. A strong feeling of claustrophobia began to overwhelm her and she had to quickly stand up and start pacing around the inside of her cage. She needed to get out. She needed to run. Run as fast as she could. Run until she couldn’t run any more. She needed to feel a breeze in her face, the sun on her skin. In a desperate and futile attempt, she tried to squeeze her body through the cage bars, but was stopped by her shoulder. The space between the cage bars was just too narrow. She began pacing back and forth again and was suddenly hit with the image of a lion inside his cage she saw at a zoo she had visited years ago. The distressed lion had also been pacing back and forth inside its cage just as Kathleen was doing inside of hers. She now knew exactly what that lion was feeling, what he was longing for…freedom.
A frustration wailed up in Kathleen. A frustration with herself for allowing herself to be locked up like an animal. A frustration with her captor for locking her up. Even a frustration for the abandoned factory for providing a place where her kidnapper could hide her. This inanimate factory seemed to delight in the fact it was chosen to conceal Kathleen’s presence. Its windows watched her day and night like an ever-present sentinel. Its walls surrounded her with a suffocating hold. Its bowed rafters smiled down on her from the ceiling with a sinister grin. Kathleen could taste its smug air on the tip of her tongue. She glared at the green door and her frustration began to boil. She took ahold of the cage bars and began rattling her cage as hard as she could. She then started screaming.
“Let me out of here! Do you hear me? Let me out, now! I want to go home! I just want to go home!” Kathleen slid down the cage bars and onto her knees. She began to cry softly. “I just want to go home. I can’t take this anymore. Just let me go home.”
After Kathleen stopped crying, she began to think about the conversation she had with Josephine. The question of whether Josephine was actually inside Kathleen’s cage, if the young waitress was a ghost or simply a figment of Kathleen’s imagination, wasn’t really the issue. What was plaguing Kathleen, and had been ever since the encounter with Josephine, is that she was now questioning the way she handled people. The way she treated people. She had always felt she was doing a person a favor by pointing out their flaws or their shortcomings, but now she wasn’t so sure if such directness was right. If Josephine did slit her own wrists because of how she was treated, then Kathleen felt a sense of both guilt and failure. That wasn’t the outcome Kathleen would have wanted for the young waitress. Suicide wasn’t the outcome she wanted for anyone. She expected Josephine to take her criticism, learn from it, and use it to become a stronger person. Strong love is what some people call it. It was the kind of love her mother showed to Kathleen and Kathleen knew it worked for her, but perhaps it didn’t work for everyone. Maybe some people are just too fragile to be pushed.
Kathleen began to wonder if her treatment of other people in the past had resulted in making someone’s life worse rather than better. Could it be that she had pushed someone else hard enough to make them want to commit suicide? Had she pushed anyone beyond their limits? It was a question that had never entered Kathleen’s mind before. Maybe her self-appointed mission in life to turn the weak into the strong wasn’t hers to undertake. Maybe she wasn’t qualified to attempt to change a person she felt needed to be changed. Perhaps it took a tenderer and more compassionate approach than Kathleen knew how to give. Maybe, Kathleen thought, she should leave her life-bettering mission of others to the experts. Being the reason someone killed themselves would be more of a burden than Kathleen wanted to bear.
Kathleen heard the green door open. The second the door opened, Kathleen was bombarded with the sweet aroma of more food. Eggplant parmesan to be exact; her favorite food. Of course her kidnapper would tempt her with her favorite foods. What better way to get what he wanted from Kathleen. Kathleen was regretting ever publishing so much of her personal information on social media for everyone to see. But who would have thought something as innocent as posting her favorite food on-line could have ever been used against her.
Kathleen’s kidnapper walked up to her cage carrying a plate full of the steaming hot, delectable Italian dish. Kathleen’s stomach immediately began to growl urgently and her saliva glands flooded the inside of her mouth. The food smelled better than anything she could ever remember smelling. And she desired nothing more than to sink her teeth into the delicious cuisine.
“It taste as good as it smells,” her kidnapper said. “I can assure you of that. Don’t you want a bite? I know you’re starving.”
Kathleen turned her back to her abductor. Turned her back to the plate of eggplant parmesan she so desired. She didn’t want her kidnapper to see in her eyes how much she desired and needed his offering. She didn’t want him to see her hands trembling with weakness as her whole body begged Kathleen to accept the food. She didn’t want him to see how she had to constantly swallow to keep from drooling because of the heavenly smell entering her nose. She didn’t want him to see how close she was to surrendering.
“Suit yourself,” her kidnapper said, “, but I’m not sure if I’ll
be returning today. I might not be back until sometime tomorrow. Who knows if I’ll have more food with me or not.”
Kathleen heard her kidnapper’s footsteps walking away. Her stomach immediately began to cramp, purposefully punishing Kathleen for turning down nourishment. Her whole body suddenly felt heavy, almost too heavy to hold up, as it threatened to shut down. Her legs buckled, forewarning her that they too would refuse to keep supporting her if she did not feed them. Only her mind knew what was at stake if she accepted her kidnapper’s offering, but her body’s demands were drowning out any apprehension her mind was feeling. She could no longer fight it. She no longer had the strength. She barely had the strength to fight back her tears as she realized what she had to do.
“Wait,” she said in an almost inaudible voice.
“Did you say something?” her kidnapper asked as he stopped just before walking out the green door.
“Wait,” Kathleen said a little louder.
Her kidnapper turned around and set the plate of food down on a short stack of wooden pallets next to the green door. He left the door open and approached Kathleen’s cage.
“Wait?” Her kidnapper asked.
Kathleen turned around to face her abductor. She had lost the fight with her tears and they were rolling down her face. “You win.”
“It’s about time.” Kathleen’s kidnapper went to the cage door, unlocked it, opened the door, and then stepped back several feet from the cage.
Kathleen was hesitant at first, not sure what her kidnapper expected her to do. He wasn’t giving her any instructions. He was being strangely silent. Kathleen made the assumption that he was waiting for her to exit her cage so she slowly and cautiously stepped outside. She stood next to the cage and faced her kidnapper, fumbling with her arms, not sure what to do with them while she waiting for instructions from her abductor, but he remained silent. The awkwardness was nearly unbearable standing submissively in front of this stranger like an object on display. Kathleen wished her kidnapper would say something, but he just stood there, peering through the eye holes of his expressionless hockey mask. Waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for her, Kathleen assumed. Waiting for her to give him what he wanted. He made a promise not to touch her without her consent. He was now patiently waiting for that consent.
With her heart racing, Kathleen breathed out a long, nervous breath and, with shaking hands, she reached behind her back to undo the hook that held her bra together.
“What are you doing?” her kidnapper asked.
Kathleen stopped trying to unhook her bra and she looked at her abductor with a puzzled stare on her face. She was doing what she was told she had to do. She thought she understood what her kidnapper wanted, but now she was confused.
“You’re out of your cage. I’m a good fifteen…twenty feet away from you. I know you can see that the exit door to your left is hanging open. And I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that the rear exit door to your right is hanging open. That door doesn’t even have a doorknob on it, yet you didn’t try to run. You could have made a dash for either door the second you stepped out of your cage, but you didn’t. You didn’t try to escape. Why?”
Kathleen looked at the green door. It was indeed opened wide. She then looked at the red door, which she already knew was hanging open. Why had she not bolted as soon as her cage door was opened? Why had she not tried to escape? As she stepped out of her cage, the thought hadn’t even entered her mind. Why? All she had been wanting to do since she first woke up inside her prison was to escape. Why had she not seized the opportunity to do so? The puzzled look on her face intensified. What was wrong with her?
“I’ll tell you why you didn’t try to escape.” Kathleen’s other kidnapper, the female one, said as she walked through the green door. Kathleen immediately recognized her, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on where she had seen this woman before. It wasn’t until the man in the hockey mask revealed himself that Kathleen knew who they were. With her two abductors standing side by side, Kathleen recalled who they were and where she had seen them before. She had seen them on T.V. They were the parents of Amber Lynn. Bubba James and Stacy James.
“You didn’t try to escape because you’ve been broken,” Stacy said in a menacing and hostile tone. “Just like we used to break wild stallions back home. Your spirit has been broken. Even your will to escape has been smashed.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Kathleen said. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“You want to know why?” Stacy asked through angry and clenched teeth. “I’ll tell you why. That night you and your friends were celebrating your birthday, Bubba and I were sitting in a booth directly behind you. We heard every mean, horrible thing you said about our sweet Amber Lynn. You called her weak. You called her stupid. You called her ugly. You had the audacity to say that our little girl was so desperate for affection that she wanted that monster to touch her. You called us bad parents and basically said we were the reason Amber Lynn was taken. You accused us of not loving our daughter.” Stacy stepped up closer to Kathleen, waving a threatening finger in Kathleen’s face. “How dare you! How dare you talk about my little girl like that? You don’t know what she had to endure! You have no idea what that monster did to her! We love our daughter more than anything. Amber Lynn is the strongest person we know! You are the weak one! You! I only wish you hadn’t given up so quickly! There was so much more suffering I wanted you to endure. I wanted to give you just a taste of what my little girl had to go through! But you were too weak! You gave up. You robbed me of the satisfaction of seeing you squirming to the brink of your sanity; to see you struggling to hold onto your own identity; to see the light of your soul dim into nothing more than a flicker. That is why you were brought here. So you could know my daughter’s pain.”
“That’s enough Stacy,” Bubba said to his wife. “You got what you wanted. You got your revenge. Now, go wait in the van.”
“But those things she said about Amber Lynn,” Stacy’s eyes were red with angry tears. “This little spoiled girl hasn’t suffered enough!”
“Yes she has,” Bubba said with more assertiveness. “She is not the one who took Amber Lynn. She doesn’t deserve your full wraith. She has been punished enough. This is over. Go wait in the van, now!”
With one last huff of anger, Stacy reluctantly turned around and walked out the green door.
“This whole thing wasn’t your idea, was it?” Kathleen asked.
“It doesn’t matter whose idea it was. I would do anything for my wife, no matter what the price. If she needs her revenge to help put this whole thing behind her, then that’s what I’ll give her. Whatever she needs to find the woman she was before all this happened. And I would do anything for my daughter. Especially after the hell she had to go through. No one will ever hurt either one of them without there being consequences. And no one will talk ill of them…ever. Especially my Amber Lynn. We didn’t tell the media everything that monster did to her. We didn’t feel those vultures needed to know all the specifics. Just enough to send that “thing” to prison for life.”
“Now what?” Kathleen asked.
“You’re free to go. Your clothes and things are outside and the plate of food is yours. There’s also a map next to your stuff that will tell you where you are. We’re only about six miles from the city limits.”
“And that’s it? You let me go and what? You and your wife just walk away after what you did to me?”
“That’s up to you,” Bubba said as he walked behind a stack of wooden pallets that was positioned in front of Kathleen’s cage. When he returned, he was carrying a video recorded. “I recorded everything that you did inside your cage from the first day you arrived. On this recorder are images of you crying, pleading for help, pissing in a butter container, vomiting, drinking from a baby bottle, and whatever else you might have done while I was away. It captured everything. I’m sending this tape to a very close friend of mine with the instructions to release it
to every form of media he can in the event my wife and I are arrested for kidnapping.”
“Yes, I realize the contents of this video would certainly criminate us for the crime of kidnapping and we would most certainly spend years, if not the rest of our lives, behind bars, but imagine what it would do to your career if people were able to view this video. Being a lawyer is all about image and how people perceive you. People want a strong, able, competent person to represent them in a courtroom, but they would no longer see you as that kind of person if this video was to get out. They would view you as being weak, fragile, and powerless. Not someone they would want in court with them. And even the father of such a humiliated victim could suffer the consequences. There’s a strong chance this video would severely hurt his reputation and probably that of his company’s. No one wants a lawyer whom everyone looks upon with sympathy. Sympathy has a way of manifesting itself into patheticness after a while.”
“And then you have your friends. How long will you be able to stand seeing the pitiful looks they would must assuredly be given you? That is, the ones that stuck around. The ones who weren’t embarrassed to be seen with you. Your friends and everyone around you would start treating you like you were a fragile china doll and, I imagine, that would start making a person like you feel inadequate, small, and subordinate. Are you willing to risk all that? Your friends? Your career? Your self-esteem? The person you try so desperately to be would cease to exist.”
“Ultimately, the decision is yours. My fate, my wife’s fate, and your fate lies in your hands. Make sure you make the right decision, because making the wrong decision could cost you everything.”
Bubba turned and began walking out of the abandoned factory, but he stopped just inside the green door. He turned around and looked at Kathleen. “I want to leave you with this final thought. What my wife and I did here might have been wrong, but we felt it had to be done. We simply couldn’t let you go on saying the things you were saying about our daughter without you knowing just a little about what she had to go through. You called Amber Lynn weak. She was only fifteen when she was abducted by that monster, yet she resisted him for two weeks before she hit her breaking point. You, on the other hand, only lasted three days. Who would you consider to be the weak one?”
Kathleen stood still for several minutes after hearing her kidnapper’s van speed away. She was then overcome with such a feeling of relief that she was free from her cage that she broke down and started to cry. She was so thankful to still be alive. To still be untouched. She looked around the old abandoned factory, at what she once feared would be the last place she saw, and had a strange feeling she needed to ask the building’s permission to leave. As if the abandoned factory had been her warden and her kidnapper only her prison guard. She then looked at the open green door as a sign from the old building giving her permission to leave. Kathleen took the plate of eggplant parmesan and walked out the door and to her sweet freedom.
She hadn’t made up her mind if she was going to tell the police that she knew who her kidnappers were. She knew Bubba and Stacy James deserved to pay for what they made her endure, but would the cost to Kathleen be too great? Was it worth potentially losing everything she and her family had worked so hard to accomplish? Would it be worth the humiliation she would certainly endure if everyone saw the video? But the question that most intrigued Kathleen was this…Was she a better person because of what she was forced to endure? Was she a better person for being forced to face who she truly was? All types of people make up the world we live in. There are survivors and there are victims. But is there really a distinction between the two? Cannot one be a victim and a survivor? And does it take a person reaching their breaking point before they can truly and honestly know themselves?
THE END
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Breaking Point (Short Story) Page 7