Chapter 14- Isolation
Hey everyone! Just a quick note, this chapter does mention abuse and some darker themes. I just wanted to make sure you all know. Thank you!
Laurel woke up with a start in the dark, believing for a second that she was still in her apartment. She was sitting upright, on something that she identified after several moments of confusion as metal chair, given how uncomfortable her backside was, but the dark was so thick that she couldn't see two inches in front of her face. Trying to stand up, she was violently thrown back down into her chair as her wrists were caught behind her and her ankles were restrained on the legs of the chair. A cold sweat broke out on her back and she pointlessly tried to stand again, even though she knew that handcuffs weren't known for being easily breakable. The cold metal dug into her wrists sharply and she winced at the pull they created. The side of her face throbbed and recalled somewhat violently, the last memories she had. The memories alone sent her into full body tremors that took several minutes to subside.
Laurel had to force herself to take several deep breaths, finding that terror had temporarily taken her ability to breath. The air wherever she was felt damp and cold, with the odor of mold. Other than the sound of her breathing, the room was completely silent, and it was suffocating. The overwhelming urge to scream overtook her but she swallowed it as much as she could, involuntarily letting a few whimpers out. Panicking wouldn't do much for her now, being so completely unaware of her surroundings. Straining her ears once more, she gritted her teeth in frustration and rattled the handcuffs on her arms, ignoring when they cut her wrists. She pulled on the handcuffs until she felt the warm blood dripping off her fingers before finally resigning herself to being stuck in the seat.
There was no way to tell how long she sat in the dark, waiting for god knows what. To Laurel, shivering from cold and fear, it felt like an eternity. Her stomach tightened in hunger, despite her fear, and growled loudly at intermediate intervals. Any semblance of hydration that she had before she was taken was gone, along with all the saliva in her mouth, leaving her throat feeling like it had been coated with sand. Most of her initial terror had faded, leaving her with a pit of dread in her stomach that felt like it was eating her from the inside outwards.
At some point, due to her complete mental and emotional exhaustion, Laurel drifted off to sleep, but was startled awake suddenly with a bright light flicking on. She blinked her eyes slowly, trying to wake up enough to process what was going on. Her brain snapped into high gear when she saw a man standing in front of her holding a tray of food. Laurel's eyes flitted from side to side quickly, trying to observe where she was. The space, more accurately described as a cell, was small and dark, with a single strip of fluorescent lights attached to the ceiling with wires. The walls were rough brick and sitting in front of Laurel was a small metal table, sitting just out of her reach. The man in front of her set the food down and Laurel almost slumped over at the sight of one roll and a pile of beans that looked so old they could have been served during the Dark Ages.
"Where am I?" Laurel willed her voice to remain calm, but the end of her questioned tremored a bit. She wasn't expecting a response from a man who looked like he hadn't smiled in the last 5 years, and she didn't get one. The man remained stoic and silent as he walked around and unlocked her handcuffs from her right wrist, then forcibly bringing her wrists around in front of her to lock the handcuffs on a metal bar attached to the table, allowing her to reach her food. The man then departed as silently as he came and Laurel launched herself the best she could at the meager food.
She lost all sense of dignity as she shoveled the beans into her mouth using her hands. The bread was hard enough that it could also have doubled as one of the bricks in the wall, but she chewed it down. Midway through a bite, her teeth bit into something with a different texture. A liquid flooded her mouth and Laurel froze, then spit the rest of the bread out frantically, trying to rid her mouth of the strangely sweet liquid. There was nothing to wash it out with and Laurel started to hyperventilate. There were a few minutes of paralyzing fear, but when nothing happened immediately, Laurel let herself relax a little. Suddenly, her stomach seized up and she leaned over to the side as best she could and vomited what little she consumed onto the concrete floor. The next 20 minutes were spent retching and vomiting intermediately, trying not to pass out. When her stomach finally decided to calm down, she maneuvered her head to wipe the bile off her mouth with her sleeve, breathing heavily. Her throat burned and the only thing she could do was close her eyes against the tears that had gathered in her eyes and breathe deeply.
When she opened her eyes again, the same man who had given her the food was standing in front of her with a bucket of water that he poured over the mess that Laurel had made next to her chair. She could hear the water running down what could only be a drain and she cringed at the smell. The man unlocked her hands again, and leaned down to unlock her ankles. He bodily hauled her upwards and towards a bucket in the corner. He motioned towards the bucket and Laurel swallowed, then slowly lowered and used the bucket for the bathroom. Afterwards, the man locked her to the chair again, and left turning the light off and leaving her alone once more in overwhelming darkness.
More time passed, and Laurel drifted in and out of sleep. She would wake up, and the dark was always the same, so she would fall asleep again. She also suspected that the amount of sleeping she was doing was due to the fact that she was slowly starving, and her body was trying to conserve energy. Silence became her new companion, and she found herself missing the noisy Red Lantern Saturday nights that she had hated for so long. There was never any noise from behind the door, making the dark seem even larger and more suffocating. Her wrists refused to heal, most likely infected from the initial cuts, and were constantly throbbing and rubbing raw on the handcuffs.
Her thoughts were her only company, but even they weren't much help. The mild nightmare that was her past was constantly creeping into her thoughts with nothing to distract her like work normally would have, and she was going insane. Other than that, Laurel was constantly thinking about James, praying that he was safe and in a comfortable place with Steve, getting healthy. Then she would think about Steve and get angry, angry for the way he had treated James in the last few moments she had seen him. Trying to unpack the whole friendship seemed useless, especially with how little she remembered from classes in school about Captain America and his trusty sidekick Bucky. She was constantly kicking herself for not realizing from the all-American, apple pie vibes that Steve had given off that he was Captain America. Eventually the same thoughts ran themselves out and she fell into blank monotony.
Once a day, a light would flick on and the same man would be standing in front of her, holding a tray of food, and afterwards she used the bucket for the toilet. After the first bad experience with the bread and the pill, Laurel stopped eating the bread they gave her. Then the next day, the pill was in her beans, so the following day, she only ate the bread. What made her the most nervous was the fact that they made no attempt to disguise the pill further, simply placing it in her food, showing that they didn't care if she knew or not. Finally, the day came where the pill was simply sitting by itself on the tray. Laurel examined it curiously. It was a blue capsule, and it reminded her of mouthwash. If only that was the effect it had on her body.
The man motioned toward the food, and Laurel ate it all cautiously, digging through the beans and picking apart the bread, trying to find any hidden pills that might have been. Her entire meal was clean, and she breathed a sigh of relief and of satisfaction when her stomach eased its constant ache. Glancing up at the guard, he was motioning to the pill. Laurel instinctively shook her head, and pushed the tray as best she could away from her. The next thing she knew, her head was slammed downwards on the table and pulled forcefully upwards by her hair. Dazed and unable to see clearly, Laurel felt a gun on her temple and she froze. The hulking pulled the tray forwards and motioned to the pill again. Reaching towards it with trembling fingers, she picked the pill up and put it into her mouth. The guard covered her mouth and nose so she would swallow, and when he was satisfied she did, he released her roughly. Two tears slid down her cheeks involuntarily, but no more came after.
Thirty minutes later, Laurel took a shaking breath and leaned back the best she could, tasting and smelling the bile in her throat and on the floor. There was a large lump rising on her forehead where the guard had hit it on the cold metal table, and the beginnings of what she was sure was going to be one hell of a headache. Just like he did every day, the guard washed the vomit down the drain with a bucket of cold water that splashed on her feet and her calves.
More time passed, but now the blue capsule wasn't a part of her meals. Instead, they mixed the powder into the foods themselves, and refusal to eat meant a beating from her friendly guard. Mealtime was associated with pain to her now, and she started to hope they would forget about her meal rather than bring it. Laurel had no idea how much time had passed now, her only time marker was when the man came in with a plate of poison for her to consume.
Then one day, the sight Laurel woke up to was much more sinister. Instead of her regular guard, who she had grown accustomed to, there were 3 men, one of whom she recognized vaguely. Two on the sides and were wearing the customary black outfit of the other guards. In addition, they were holding clubs in their gloved fists. The man in the middle was the one she recognized, and he was wearing a black suit, differentiating him from the others.
"Hello Laurel." The man spoke and she instantly recognized him. He was the man from the street, who she had bumped into when she was picking up painting supplies. That seemed like ages ago when she was finally painting her peeling wall in her tiny apartment, in another world. Recoiling, she said nothing to him. The man smiled at her, in a way that would have bordered on fatherly if it hadn't been so terrifying.
The man smiled again and slowly pulled a knife from his belt. "My name is Simeon. Here's how it's going to work. I ask questions, and you answer them. There are wrong answers, and we're going to have a problem if you choose to say those, all right?" Laurel nodded frantically and the man smiled, satisfied.
"Who are you?" His first question was direct and so simple that Laurel was taken aback. She cleared her throat and tried to speak. Her throat was so unused to speaking that her voice caught in her throat a few times before she was able to formulate a reply.
Finally, her vocal cords cooperated and she croaked out, "Laurel Anderson."
Shaking his head, Simeon smiled slightly and then Laurel's cheek was branded with what felt like fire. All Laurel could feel a hot liquid running down her cheek. She stared in disbelief at the knife, now delicately outlined in red in the cruel man's hand. Laurel suddenly realized how much danger she was in with this man, playing a game that could never go in her favor.
"Wrong answer Laurel. We know that bullshit already. Your name is Laurel Charlotte Anderson, you're 24 years old, going to be 25 in a few months. You have been working at the establishment named the Red Lantern for the past 3 years and living above it in the attached apartment. Your parents are both dead, one from drugs and the other from a gunshot, and you have no extended family. You have been financially independent since you were 16 years old, and until you found your job at the Red Lantern, you were working as a call girl."
Laurel stared at Simeon in horror, with tears dripping down her face, intermingling with the red that was already flowing off of her lower cheek. That was a part of her past that she didn't share with anyone, and the fact that he had read it off like a news anchor reading off the evening news made her life seem so worthless. The death of her shithole parents was news to her as she had cut ties with them as soon as she was old enough, but it still stung almost as badly as the knife wound on her face.
Simeon looked up, completely unaffected by the tears, and said, "We want to know who you really are. Why would they choose you to house the asset, out of all people? What are your ties to them?" He walked slowly around her chair and paused behind her.
Laurel shook her head vehemently, "I don't have any. I swear. I'm don't know who 'they' are!"
Another fire started, this time between her shoulder blades. Laurel arched desperately, crying out in a strangled voice, trying to get the pain to go away. She couldn't remember a time when she had been in this much pain, and she just wanted it to be over, more than anything. She just wanted to wake up in her tiny shitty apartment.
"Wrong answer Laurel," he hissed into her ear. His breath smelled like cheap cigarettes and vodka and Laurel fought another sudden urge to vomit, but there was nothing to empty.
Panting, Laurel said, "I don't know what the fuck you want from me. I just took a guy in for a few days. I wasn't even getting paid, or laid for that matter." It was like a dam had broken on her mouth and she was spouting out whatever came to her head if it could get them to leave her alone.
"Nope!" Simeon sounded cheerful as he brought the knife swishing through the air onto her bare shin. Laurel screamed and jumped backwards in the chair, catching her already tender wrists and ankles.
"I don't know how to help you. James stayed at my apartment for a few days, and then they took him. I don't know where, I don't know why, I don't even know who you are!"
Simeon paused and said, "James?" His voice lilted a little in question and Laurel nodded. She wasn't sure why that word had caught his attention, but at least he had stopped and she could try to catch her breath through the pain.
Abruptly Simeon spun on his heel and left the room, but paused on the way out and said, "Don't kill her yet." Laurel swallowed hard at the careless tone in his voice and tried not to cry when the two other men moved forward, each brandishing a club. The next few minutes were a haze of pain and trying to stay conscious. There was no end to the blows it seemed. Her chair ended up on the floor, and she vaguely realized that her head was resting on the drainpipe that her vomit was poured down every day.
Suddenly, the new bursts of pain stopped and she dimly felt the chair being lifted back upwards onto its four legs. Through her haze, she could vaguely hear some chatter in a language that she couldn't understand. A sudden icy splash brought her back into her own body again and she gasped at the icy water dripping down her body, into the fresh wounds.
Managing to look upwards, she viewed Simeon was standing in front of her with a sickening smirk on his face, holding a camera. "Smile Laurel."
Completely spent, Laurel stared blankly at the camera and didn't even blink in the face of the bright flash. Simeon checked the image, then nodded in satisfaction.
"Nice job Laurel. We'll talk later okay?" again the sinister smile crossed the face of the psychopath and he walked out of the room, followed by his two goons, and Laurel was left alone. The light flicked off and all she could hear was the drip of her own blood. Her strength was fading and her eyes closed by themselves. The last thing she remembered is half-heartedly praying that she would wake up, but not really caring if she did.
Okay! That was definitely a harder chapter to write. Laurel is a strong girl though, and I promise that things will change. Thank you so much for reading. Please leave a review, if you have any suggestions or anything you liked. Otherwise, like and follow. Thank you!
kath