Chapter Six: Taken
Laurie lay helplessly on the cold ground. Her body was drained off all energy, all emotion. Every inch of her feeble body ached terribly with her nerves and muscles pulsing in pure agony. She reached up to the door, but her arm could hardly lift itself off the floor. With a labored groan, she let it fall and her head did the same. Her cheek collided against the cool cement and the memories rushed back to her.
"Please," she sobbed as the man she spoke to neglected to even look at her. "Can I see him? Can I hold him? Please!"
Her tears turned into wild and animalistic screams as the man turned from her in silence and began slowly walking away, the small and writhing infant in his grasp. Her breathing quickened and her relentless tears caught in her hoarse throat, blocking her screams. In a fit of rage, Laurie tugged violently at her wrist restraints. They merely further chaffed and mocked her as she did so. She then turned to her legs, pulling and kicking. Her ankles still remained locked in position. She thrashed about, gritting her teeth to somehow bear the torment. The struggling and violent squirming continued until her body could no longer manage the strain. Her energy depleted, she lay on the bed limp and motionless. As she did so, an invisible heavy weight began to pull itself over Laurie's head. It covered her body and surrounded every part of her. It slowed her breathing and pushed down on her weak eyelids. Suddenly, she threw her eyes open and began letting them dart around the room.
"No," she mumbled in a scratchy and barely audible voice, "no, no, no."
As she spoke, her voice slowly left her for exhaustion and all that formed were gravelly coughs and squeals. She wheezed, continuing to follow the bland walls with her tired eyes. It was the one thing she had left, the one last thing she could attempt to control. Her body and her freedom now belonged to another man and he had taken everything he could from both of those things. She could not die, for she had begged him to simply kill her and be done on more than several occasions and he refused to grant the wishes. Her meals, or lack there of, were of his choosing. She was merely a puppet, a slave doll. She had this one part of her left that she could take charge of though; this one last piece of hope. Still, the exhaustion continued to struggle for victory over her. She dutifully scanned the bare walls of her confines. She let herself follow the cracks and imagine what sort of great event caused them. She dreamed of an earthquake and pictured herself being held somewhere in California. Then she defined them as the work of an unstable, unsupportive land. She envisioned her prison located in the swamps of some rainforest or southern bayou.
"Maybe it will break apart," Laurie thought in her drained delirium. "The structure will crack and break and I will be free."
As she was imagining this insanity, her wandering eyes fell upon the overwhelmingly bright yellow light looming above her head. Laurie's eyes fluttered at the sudden burst of direct light into the pupils. It hung above her, ridiculing her as she merely laid there like a defeated animal. As she continued to stare into the glowing bulb, her eyelids grew heavier with each moment. It wasn't long before she involuntarily relinquished control over to her pleading body and embraced the darkness.
She was not sure if the physical, emotional, or mental pain ached the most as she recovered from the undesired memory. At first, she imagined it all been a horrible nightmare. She yearned for it to be just a dream. In her heart, Laurie knew differently though. In a daze, Laurie glanced around. The tools and the awful bed were both nowhere to be seen. In fact, she was in an entirely different place altogether. She was back, back in her living quarters.
"No," she whimpered just as she had in the memory.
And then it all rushed back to her; the memories, the laboring pain, the entrapment soon afterward in the darkness. Trembling with fear and pain, Laurie used her frail elbows to prop her upper body up and then pressed her palms against the ground to do the rest. She remained on her knees, her back straight and her head aimed high at the ceiling. Her voice came in hoarse hiccups at first as it regained its strength.
"Where are you? Where are you? What did you do with him?" She paused and then repeated herself again, "him." Laurie sighed, horrifically realizing that she did not even know the gender of the newborn. "I guess I think you're a boy," she lamented to the absent child. "Please, don't hurt him!" She screamed with a sudden burst of strength. "Don't you hurt him! Please! What are you doing up there, huh? Talk to me! Let me see him! Please. Please, just don't hurt him."
Laurie waited but merely received a response of silence. She sat there for several painstaking moments, simply staring up where she could hear the creaking of floorboards. Her capture loomed right above her head and yet seemed so very far away. Laurie had been taken far away from everyone and everything, and now that included her child.
