Nyissa
I know that I am returning to consciousness when my body starts to feel like it’s on fire. No longer a shapeless concept lost to the darkness of thick, velvety sleep, I come alive in sizzling spurts of agony. An ache between my shoulder blades. A bruised sensation weighing heavily between my hips and, lower than that, the tenderness of my knees. I’m not the most athletic of women. I can be convinced to run on occasion, however, and the pain is reminiscent of pushing myself too hard, too far, too quickly. It comes at me gradually, but I know I’m not lying down in my bed. I’m on my feet, upright, and I can’t move my arms. I can feel them straining above my head, and I know that doesn’t bode well.
I want to open my eyes and look around me, to make sense of what the waking world has delivered at my feet, but I need a minute before I let that happen. I was having the weirdest dream, and it felt… Significant. Whatever I was dreaming, I feel like I need to remember it, so I resist the urge to open my eyes and turn my attention inwards. Where the hell had my unconscious mind taken me? I have a vague memory of thick, shaggy carpet under my feet which I know, as the memory comes back to me, were bare on the soft fuzziness. I strain to try and recall the walls, but all I can manage is… Pink? Were the walls pink? The floor? I fight for more detail for another second, and when nothing comes up, I give in and open my eyes.
Shit. I’m in a concrete box. Room? Basement? It’s hard to tell. I don’t see many details. A single bulb hangs from a wire somewhere above me, spilling a pool of harsh white light around me and not much else. I can see as far as I could reach, if my arms were free. Everything else is cast in grainy shadow, barely legible even if I narrow my eyes into a squint. I think I can make out a work bench against the far wall but the rectangular shape is vague and difficult to distinguish.
“Alrighty.” I say, surprised that my voice isn’t hoarse given that my throat feels so dry. “Something clearly didn’t go as intended last night.” I could recall being in the middle of town. The courthouse and its triangular roof had been fading behind me, the trials (both literal and figurative) fading in my mind’s eye with the approach of evening. I didn’t walk home - it was too far - but I couldn’t recall heading for my car either. In the scarce handful of minutes between leaving my job and trying to go home, what had happened? A throbbing pain in the nape of my neck indicated that I wasn’t quite ready for levels of thought this intense.
Groaning quietly, I let my head hang. I was grateful to see that the only part of my body that was naked were my feet beneath me. I still wore the sensible, navy blue slacks I’d had on when I went into the office. The soft cotton blouse was a bit dishevelled but otherwise untouched. Any woman that finds herself in a situation like mine - restrained in a strange place with no memory of how she got there - is going to feel immense, albeit short-lived, relief at maintaining her dignity. I sighed softly, simultaneously grateful and apprehensive.
A shuffle comes from somewhere behind me and I straighten immediately, head jerking up and inviting my aches and pains to flare up anew.
“Hello?” I rasp. I try to turn my head and peer over my shoulder at the source of the noise, but my hair and arms block my view. “I heard you. I know you’re there.”
“You heard me because I allowed you to.” The disembodied voice is pitched low and even. An involuntary flush of goosebumps rises to attention on my raised arms.
“Funny. What’s happening here?” I keep my voice edged with steel and give my wrists an experimental twist. I look up and confirm my suspicions. I’m bound with wire, not rope or plastic zip ties. I subtly try to strain against the bindings, but they don’t give at all.
“What do you think is happening here?” The voice replies and it sounds like it’s right behind me, but I don’t feel the warm presence of another living being.
I sigh. “I don’t know. Am I about to be raped? Are my kidneys going to be harvested?” As surreptitiously as I can manage, I twist my wrists together. If I can loosen the wires above me with friction and squirming, maybe I can wriggle free.
I stop moving when I hear a throaty, rasping laugh crumbling from the void behind me. I open my mouth to speak again but a faint, mechanical whirring cuts me off. Abruptly, the wires above my head twist and I am forced to turn on my feet to go with the motion. I expect to see whoever it is that the voice belongs to standing in the darkness somewhere and momentarily forget my efforts to escape in favour of trying to spot a face that I can memorise.
But there isn’t anyone there. The concrete room is featureless and cold, not a window nor door in sight. The rotating wire takes me in a full circle and I jump despite myself when it stops, and before me, another light clicks on with a sharp snap. I estimate that it’s about eight feet in front of me, identical to my own pool of light. Only, this one illuminates a wooden desk devoid of any other furnishings like a computer, or a pad. A wooden chair on wheels is paired with it. A man is sitting in the chair. His face is still in the shadows, but his hands are clasped together loosely on the tabletop. It’s the only detail I have to latch onto, so latch I do.
His hands are white. His nails look clean and maintained. He has no distinguishing marks - no watch, no handily recognisable tattoo, no visible scars. The detail is worthless.
“Someone likes to be dramatic.” I roll my eyes, exaggerating enough that there’s no way he could miss it.
“You got me.” He replies, and I hate that I can hear the smile in his voice. I hate that it makes me feel cold inside. “I like what I like.” He adds, in a softer tone.
“You like kidnapping women and trapping them in your basement?” Sarcasm might get me killed. It also might not. Regardless, I can’t excise my reflex to snap back at the cretin that has stolen me from the life I worked so fucking hard for.
“Evidently.” He says, giving away very little with his stupid non-answers. As I watch him, he separates his hands and draws a circle on the desk’s surface with his fingertip. I watch the shape of his head tilt a little and anger sparks through me again.
“People are going to look for me. I have a boyfriend. Family. They’re probably already reporting my disappearance.” I want to rattle him. I wriggle my wrists as much as I can but I don’t feel anything budging above my head, so I want him to feel fear. It’s not entirely unheard of for captors to be talked out of their plans once they’re made to realise what the consequences of their actions could be.
“Probably, yes.” One of my kidnapper’s hands disappears from the pool of light and I hear the sound of him scrubbing at his chin. “I don’t think they’re going to find you, though.”
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“Because, you’re mine now.” He delivers each word so casually, but every one lands like a blow to my heart. “You’re never going to leave this place, Nyissa.”
He knows my name. My mind whirls. “Do I know you?” I blurt. If he knows my name, he must be someone in my circle. He might be removed by degrees - a friend of a friend, someone I may not even know the name of - but the fact that he knows me is crucial.
“I don’t think so.” The light surrounding my captor expands, growing to reveal his face and head. He has loose, dark hair that falls in waves to his jaw. His eyes are a deep shade of brown, shrouded with thick lashes and guarded by arched brows. His nose is straight and narrow. His mouth is a flat line comprised of pink, soft lips. He is unarguably handsome in all the ways that convention dictates. I feel like I’ve seen his likeness on the cover of a book, clutching a maiden romantically between his arms. He does not look real. He does not look like anyone I can recall from my life.
Questions boil up the back of my throat, begging to fall out and land at my feet but I know better than to think he’s going to answer everything I throw at him. And if he does, there’s no guarantee that he’s being honest. Queries about how he knows me immediately start to feel futile, so I shuffle those to the back of my interrogative priorities. Likewise, he could lie about any details he provides me about himself, like his name or his occupation. But, I can use information like that to my advantage.
“If you’re set on keeping me, I should probably know what to call you.” I say, and just barely manage to keep my tone neutral.
“My name is James.” My kidnapper’s voice is soft. He continues tracing circles on the surface of the desk. His eyes are locked on me, boring into my own.
“This isn’t going to end well for you, James.” I forge the statement into a promise. I put all the meaning I have in my body into one sentence. I see his eyes lift to meet mine. James’ eyelashes cast dramatic shadows on his cheekbones. His eyes are just dark, gleaming marbles the colour of chocolate. His expression is serious for so long that I start to think I might have triggered something in him, that I might be about to see his temper.
Instead, he surprises me with a smile. White teeth flashing in a grin that sparkles with playfulness.
“I was hoping you would say that.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, every single light above clicks off at once and all that remains is total, impenetrable darkness.
