The Days That Passed
Once I finished crying, the sun outside told me it was high noon, and I was starving. It was the first time since I'd awoken that I felt hungry. I guess physical stress tromps emotional stress, eventually, even in a situation such as the one I was currently stuck in. My stomach grumbled, but I knew there wasn't anything I could do, except wait and hope.
I was beginning to drift off, in daydreams of chocolate chip cookies and dancing vanilla shakes, when a knock on the door pulled me back into the real world.
I sat up, quickly, and waited. A knock. Why would Ryuzaki need to knock? He hardly needed my permission to enter, and so far, the door hadn't budged. I stood up, slowly, curiously, before speaking into the silence.
"Hello?"
No answer. I walked forward and touched the door quietly. I pressed my ear up against the wood to see if I could hear anything, but no sound came from the other side. I felt like it would be a waste to try the handle, but I did anyway, and jumped back in surprise when I realized it was unlocked.
Carefully, I opened the squeaky door to reveal a small serving tray of food sitting on a mat right below me. I was surprised at the coincidence, but my hunger dulled my previous caution. I was just about to grab the plate when something else sunk in.
The door. It was open. Totally, completely, open. This might be the chance I was looking for! A chance to escape!
In excitement, I drew my eyes up to peer into the blackness beyond. I searched the side of the wall next to the door and found a switch. My dreams of escaping were crushed when I saw what lay in front of me.
It was a hallway, yes, but it didn't lead straight. It led down; down a flight of stairs, that is. And all the way at the end was another door—no, two other doors. But I didn't have to check to see if they were locked or not. Chances were not in my favor.
But, despite my misgivings, I decided it was worth a try. After taking the food back into the room, I began my way down the steep and narrow steps, groping at the peeling flowered wallpaper as I went. At the bottom, I tried the first door, not shocked at its refusal to budge. I turned towards the second door to realize something odd—it was already open.
Just a crack, was all. But once more, my hopes were raised.
I pushed open the door and squinted into the darkness, until I could vaguely make out the shape of a beaten-up toilet and sink, as well as a metal bath, in the tiny, closet-like space.
A bathroom! I sighed in relief. I hadn't gone in god knows how long, and it felt good to know I had easy access to one. I searched the walls to look for another switch but found none, and the only thing even resembling a light inside was an old and dusty candle sitting on a metal plate in the corner of the sink, with no matches to be seen anywhere nearby.
But still, I was grateful at the very least to have this one thing. It wasn't an escape, but it was still more than I'd ever hoped to ask for in this sort of position.
After finishing up in the bathroom, I walked up the stairs, stumbling several times on the old and creaking steps, wondering, in the back of my head, whether or not this building was safe to live in.
"Of course it's not," I muttered, incoherently, my mind wandering in its hungry, tired wake. "There's a mad man keeping me captive here. He carries a gun and switchblade, and he deeply enjoys scaring the living daylights out of me."
Back inside my room again, I shut the door behind me, and sat down on my bed to eat. Beforehand, I had barely even noticed the items on the plate. The only important thing that registered in my mind was that it was food, and I was hungry. But now, facing the odd pairings on the platter, it finally sunk in what exactly I was given to eat.
First, there was a small white plastic bowl, a bowl that completely contradicted the nice silver of the platter it sat on, and inside the bowl was a diced tomato. Just tomato—I picked up a piece warily and tasted it, mostly at first to see if there was anything funny about it. But no. It was just a simple tomato, cut into thumbnail-sized cubes.
Second, there was a lime-green ceramic dish—another contradiction on the platter. On it sat two pieces of white bread toast, and on the toast sat the largest heap of jam I had ever seen in my entire life. So much jam, to the point where it was more accurate to say the jam was served with a side of toast, and not the toast served with a side of jam. I dipped my finger into one of the gooey piles and licked it; again, testing for any weird flavors. There were none, but I quickly identified the jam flavor as strawberry.
Third and last was a cup of coffee, in a tiny porcelain tea cup, intricately decorated. It was the only thing that seemed even slightly suitable for the somewhat-tarnished silver platter it sat on. I picked it up and was deeply surprised to find the tea cup surprisingly heavy for its size and contents.
I took a sip anyway and choked on the sickeningly sweet liquid. It wasn't even a liquid anymore, really—it was more of a mushy substance. No wonder the cup was so heavy; the main part of the coffee wasn't the coffee. It was sugar. Just as the main part of the toast wasn't toast. It was jam.
While rubbing my tongue in an attempt to clean it of the nauseating mixture, I set the cup aside and away from the rest of the food. I had no desire to drink any more of it.
As for the rest of the food, I finished it within a minute, down to the last drop of jam on the plate.
My next problem arose when my thirst began to get the better of me. Like with the bathroom, it had been a while since I had something real to drink, and I certainly wasn't about to count the mush from earlier. I first thought of the sink downstairs; an easy way to get the water I desperately needed. This plan was cut short when the door leading out to the staircase refused to open. It was locked, once more, astounding me. The stairs outside it were so noisy, I could barely hear myself think while walking up and down them—yet somehow Ryuzaki managed to lock the door without making a sound.
With my only source of water now out of reach, I perched on the edge of the bed to think. With my stomach partially filled, and my head partially cleared, I started to notice things I before looked over.
Such as the room's color—it was not gray, as I had at first believed. In the light of the day, I realized the walls were actually painted a light cream. The bed's sheets were off-white, and the furniture seemed to match. The only two things in the room that stood as truly gray were the hardwood floors and the metal bed frame.
The piece of furniture I had before believed to be a dresser was actually a desk, with a stool pushed all the way underneath. I tried opening the drawers, but found nothing, save for a few religious books in the top right hand drawer, as if I were in a hotel. It seemed quite ironic that the room I was being held captive in came with a Bible, but maybe that was just me.
I checked underneath the bed itself, but the only thing I found there was a giant pile of dust.
With nothing left to look at, I stood up and shivered, in the icy cold wind blowing in from the open window. The sun had disappeared behind giant gray clouds, and a few flakes of snow were starting to fall from the sky. Still shivering, I took off my shirt, under which I wore a tank top, and plugged up the crack as best as I could. It stopped the draft, but the room was still slightly cool from before. Locating the nearest heating vent, I camped out there for the next few hours, until I heard the knock on the door again.
"Hello?" I was hesitant, once more, in case it wasn't the food like before. But once again there was no answer and when I opened the door, there on the floor sat the same sort of food as before.
I remembered this time about the water. Quickly, I dumped the bowl of tomatoes onto the plate with the jam, before pouring all of the soupy coffee mixture into the empty tomato bowl. Assuming I had around three to five minutes, I hurried down the stairs to wash out the cup and fill it with water. I gulped it down in one drink, and then repeated the process several times. Finally, I filled it up one last time, and headed back up to eat.
That night, it snowed. I laid in bed watching the snowflakes fall silently from the sky, lighting up the two alleyways remaining my only connection to the outside world. I drifted off to sleep that night in peace.
The next few days passed by in a blur.
After awaking the next morning, the dishes from before were gone. I wasn't sure how, but they were, and I could only assume Ryuzaki had visited in the night to remove them.
I was given food three times a day. It was always the same; tomatoes, bread, jam, and the over-sweetened coffee. Every once in a while, there would be something extra on the plate, like a few berries or a roll of some sort, but always those same items, no matter what. He didn't seem to notice my dislike for the coffee, since it was included in the meal anyway, although I didn't particularly care.
In the days that passed, I held a constant wonder as to why Ryuzaki never came to speak to me. Granted, I never particularly wished to speak to him, but I was growing nervous, wondering if I should be worried about his avoidance of me.
And then, six days after the first meal came, something else arrived with the food in the morning.
It was a small collection of newspaper clippings, paper-clipped together, dating back to the day I was first abducted. The very first piece was an article about my disappearance.
An article, complete with interviews, warnings, and all. I read through it, my heart in my stomach. It talked about how I went missing between the two buses scheduled, and how almost no one saw me get off the first bus in the first place. They interviewed the driver, who was reported to be "the last person to see me," and who responded that no, there was no one suspicious riding the bus that night. I nearly screamed in anger.
"Of course there was someone suspicious! He was the only other man on that bus! And you saw him get off with me!" Tears began to run down my dirty face. There was nothing that could be done now. Still frustrated, I continued to read.
The police investigation was still moving through Chicago, but they were beginning to expand their search, under the grounds that if I was truly abducted, the abductor would most likely not stay in the area for too long. I wanted to scream at this too. I couldn't have been more than a quarter mile from the station.
But once more, there was nothing that could be done. Not wishing to reread the article again, I flipped to the next piece in the collection.
It was dated one day after the article of mine. It discussed the brutal murder of a woman in her early twenties, and how her body was found covered in snow in a park by a young boy. The article was disturbing; especially considering how eerily close the circumstances were to mine. She went missing at night, after taking the city bus to her neighborhood in a shady district of town. The driver could not identify anyone suspicious on the bus and no one remember seeing her once she arrived. She just magically disappeared, only to be found the next morning.
The next clipping was about a sixty-year-old man who was admitted to the hospital after claiming he had seen "a God of the Dead" rise before him in the middle of the night, offering to kill him if he wished to no longer live. The man had panicked in shock and grabbed a knife from his bedside table, only to have it taken from him quickly. He was then stabbed in the shoulder, and was close to dying from blood loss when his daughter found him the following morning.
The other few were similar to the first two; murders, torture, all seemingly disconnected, although all with a few similarities: done at night, with a knife, and by a man that no one could identify.
Once I had read through them, all dated up until the day before, I slowly folded the papers up and clutched them in my hand, as I curled up in a ball on the bed. What was going on? What did these stories mean? They were all so shocking; so disturbing. I stayed in that position until nighttime fell, not even bothering to get up at the knocks on my door. I didn't have an appetite anymore—I guess emotion stress won this round.
