Chapter 26th

Maybe I could dig! But was it possible? The basement walls were made of cement! Well, prisoners dig their way out of prisons all the time, and they're all made of thick concrete! I picked up a small gardening shovel, moved some buckets and other clutter around, clearing the farthest wall – the one facing the street – and began to slam the shovel into the ground.

That would do… it would expiate… I could do it, if I was strong. The floor was rubbery, soft, penetrable… it gave way! I was tired, I was panicked, but it would do: I'd break free! Hard, but manageable dirt lay underneath the flooring. Yes! Exhilaration grew, desperation grew, anxiety peaked, but I tried my best to focus. What would I do if Chris walked in on me before I had advanced enough in my efforts? The thought was nerve-wracking, it competed for my vigor - I couldn't allow myself to think about it, but having contemplated it once, fear grew exponentially – it felt so realistic, I could almost anticipate it, as if it was bound to happen any second now…

"No!!" I screamed, anguished, digging harder, faster!

This had to be a nightmare… I'd wake up shortly. It couldn't be real. Nightmare or not, I must dig harder.

I was doing well… I was doing so well, hellbent on escaping, hard-work-does-it, until… One foot into my hole, I hit a rock. Unmovable, unbreakable – at least by my exhausted limbs. I stared at it, studied it… I attacked it, and I could barely scratch the craggy surface. Start again – try again in another spot, maybe the rock was small, maybe I could still find a way around it, maybe I could… - thoughts died as courage faltered. My arms… they were so tired already. As I tried to move them, they trembled. Now that I had stopped, I was certain I couldn't resume straining them again. I couldn't do it: hopelessness was there, just around the bend, ready to pounce on that short-lived determination. God was not on my side, there were no miracles for me, and why should they be wasted here anyway? I threw the shovel to the side, crawled away from the hole, from the dirt, from my latest defeat.

"I'm dead!" my inflamed brain spoke, tired of thinking otherwise. "I'm fucking dead!" There was no way out of that basement, and of course Chris knew that – he wouldn't have thrown me in if there was. Nothing could be done – nothing but fret my last hours away, like he wanted me to. At some point today, I'd hear the door unlock – Chris would come for me, he would force himself into me, and then he'd kill me – and there was nothing I could do about it. Would it hurt? Would he use the ice pick? Oh, I could only imagine the pain… and to think I used to be terrified of needles! But I couldn't complain, could I? I couldn't plead innocent, I couldn't blame the randomness of life for a solace: of all the shitty horror movies I had watched, I was the dumbest, most pathetic victim of all! I had walked straight into the lion's mouth… And yet, unlike those clueless high school girls who took a wrong turn in the woods or twisted their ankles mid-run, I wasn't running away from my killer when the blunder happened and the audience jeered. I was chasing him, making sure he'd notice me, begging for his attention and unknowingly begging him to pick me. I… I set him free. If it weren't for me, he'd probably be in jail by now.

I pressed my palms to my face and slid down the wall, onto the floor; Once there, I reviewed in the darkness of my hands the whole extent of my fate.

Mortified and tired, my inner child – and, frankly speaking, the one I was just a couple of years away from - could only think of hiding and praying – pray that I would magically wake up out of that mess, maybe in some past event, with my mother calling me from my lonely nook because playtime was over and nothing of this was real: I had simply gotten carried away by some dark fantasy, but all was well, and I was safe. Back in reality though, what good would hiding do? Chris would just find me: there weren't that many places to look.

I felt myself give up – my insides crumbled – and I began to cry: I was utterly alone! I didn't have my father to hide behind, nor my mother to bake me a distraction cake… I didn't have my sister to see things through simpler, childish lenses; and I didn't have my pet cats to lick my nose with their coarse tongues whenever I was too absorbed to pet them. My life neared its end, and no one was around to see it. And what had it amounted to? Fourteen short years of anxiously worrying, struggling, trying too hard… Trying to be cool, to grow up already, to be liked… specially, lately, to be liked by him… Chris! He was the one thing I ever truly wanted, and now… Having gotten what I wished for, I was about to go extinct by his very hands! Him, the one man I truly, really… loved. What a strong word, and yet, what a befitting one! Even now, I could feel it still: love!

Could I fetch that small shovel I had tossed aside, hold it to my chest and stuff it in his throat when he came to get me? I felt a potent lethargy take over my limbs at the thought – some sort of deadly laziness hindering me, so that I knew I couldn't fight him – I couldn't hurt him… because through it all, he was still Chris. "So you will die?" my brain teased. I didn't know how to reply to that. I guess I would just die. And more girls would come – that inner voice spoke – If I wouldn't do it for myself, to save my own worthless hide, then do it for them: to spare them a grim fate, one I would be responsible for, having cut him free. But I couldn't! I was really, truly worthless!

So nothing else could be done, and for lack of a better alternative, there was solace in that: It couldn't get any worse, I couldn't fall farther down: I would die by Chris, I couldn't fight him. There and then, I let my inner child take over – I followed its impulses and I hid inside the lower level of an old, moldy cupboard under the stairs. It was a tight fit, it was dark and claustrophobic and it smelled like a grave… and yet, nearly folded in the middle, in there I felt safe. I nurtured that sensation, let it delude me – perhaps like I let Chris, whenever he acted suspicious – and in there I cried until my head hurt, until I had no more tears and felt so numb that I couldn't even tell reality and dream apart anymore. Then, I must have dozed off, and dreamed such dreams as only come to us in moments of true calamity: that I woke up and all was magically resolved, that Chris was gone and I was sad, but I was safe.