Hi kids! Just dropping a friendly little note to say thanks for all of the reviews I've been getting! You guys crack me up. It feels good to know that at least a few people are reading my material and liking it. Just to give a fair warning: this chapter is by far the most serious I have written to date. I didn't intend to make the story come out this way, but I never know where my mind is leading me next. I'm not even sure where I'm going with rest of the plot. But thanks for the support! And keep sending me ideas and suggestions. They really help.

-Aven

Nineteen

The room he kept me in was nothing like I had ever expected. In movies, kidnappers usually stuff their victims into dark closets or tie them to beds in battered rooms. But this place was completely different: it was immaculate. I could tell that he wanted his victims to feel like they belonged here, not that he had forced them to be here. The bare walls were painted a pale grey-blue, and the only furniture was an asylum style twin bed with no sheets and a lonely nightstand. He left a plastic pitcher of water out for me, but no glass to pour it into. He obviously made sure that I couldn't harm myself with anything in the room before he got to it.

There was one window, but it was too high off the ground for me to reach. Even after I pushed the bed up against the wall and stood on the mattress, my arms weren't able to touch the thick glass or the steel bars that covered it. Still, I was thankful for the window. It was my last connection with the outside world, and I needed the reassurance that someone could still find me; someone out there in the world could still save me. Judging by when the sun went down and my room got dark, I determined that I had been in there for two days, although it felt like longer.

My throat had gone hoarse from screaming for hours and hours, hoping that someone would hear my cries out the window, or at the least, annoy my kidnapper. Yet he didn't seem to mind. All I knew of this man was that he sat outside of my door, listening to what sounded like scratchy old opera records. I would hear him stir, and my heart would stop, wondering what he was doing. Was he going to come in here? Was he going to rape me? Or kill me? In those first two days, he did neither. He just sat in his creaky chair, listening to a combination of his music and my violent yelling.

By the time the sun came up on the third day, my body was drained of all its energy and my mind was beginning to play tricks on me. I hadn't had contact with another human in almost half a week, and my own thoughts were driving me crazy. I started thinking about the obvious, like Greg and whether he was okay or not. I had never been a religious person, but I prayed that he had recovered from the ordeal and was relentlessly searching for me with the rest of the crime lab. But then my thoughts went to the most random things, like the time in third grade when I wet my pants in front of the entire class. Maybe it was true that your life flashed before your eyes before you died….only my "flash" was more like a grand epic.

Desperate for anything to eat or drink (the water was gone by the first evening), I decided to try to talk to the mysterious man. My consequences could be severe, but that was a chance I was willing to take. I hadn't eaten anything in three days, not even a single grape, and my stomach turned with hunger pangs. Besides, whatever punishment he prepared couldn't be as bad as staying in a room with an unflushable toilet full of my own waste.

I gathered all of my remaining strength and stumbled over the door, leaning against the wall for support. The room spun, and the distorted opera music began to sound like voices talking. Or maybe those were just the voices in my head. I lightly knocked on the wood of the door, but there was no response. Trying again, I knocked harder, getting a splinter in my finger in the process. His music came to an abrupt stop, and an immense silence fell over the two of us. After a long pause, I summoned the courage to say something.

"Hello?" The sound of my own voice shocked me. It sounded so raspy, so vulnerable. There was no response from the other side, so I continued talking. "I need food! I haven't eaten in three days!" Like he didn't already know that.

I waited a long while for his reply, hearing the occasional shift of his body weight from time to time. With every creak and squeak, I thought that maybe was actually going to send me something, anything, to eat. Even dog food would work. But as more time went by, I realized that he was apathetic to my request. Something deep inside of me made me fume with anger, wondering how one human being could do this to another. Why did he think he had the power to control me and what I did?

I pounded harder on the door now, making sure that he heard me. I wasn't so much afraid anymore as I was pissed off.

"Listen to me, you sick fuck!" I screamed. "I don't know who the fuck you are and I don't give a shit! You pathetic son a bitch! You'll burn in hell for what you did to me!" The vile words poured out of me, and I immediately clasped my hand over my mouth, disbelieving of what I had just said. In all my life, I had never felt so much hostility and unadulterated rage. Tears flowed from my eyes as I cursed myself on the inside for being so stupid. Why would I provoke a dangerous murderer? How could I do something so idiotic?

I could hear the man undoing chains and locks on the outside of the door, and I cowered into the corner, wrapping my arms around my body as if that would protect me. By that point, I was in a full out sob, pleading with my still unknown captor through the door.

"Please!" I begged of him. "Please don't kill me! God, please help me!" My words trailed off as my sobs became heavier. The room was blurry from my tears, and my chin quivered.

The doorknob turned slowly, until a loud click came from the rusty metal and the door opened. I shielded my face with my arms, unable to look at the person who was causing me so much pain. If he was going to kill me now, I didn't want him to have the satisfaction of seeing my tear-soaked face. I must have stayed in that same position for half an hour, waiting for my demise. When the man made no further advances towards me, I looked up to see what he could possible be doing.

Through the door frame, I saw a tall and thin shadow of a figure, outlined by a bright light that radiated from behind him. His features were hidden under darkness, and the only thing I could hear was the sound of a chain hanging from his belt loop, rocking back and forth with his body. As my eyes adjusted to the light, his face began to take shape, and my mind went fuzzy. My mouth fell wide open in disbelief, and my entire body became numb. Even as my head was spinning, the room was standing still, as if time had stopped. Somehow, I found the strength to say one thing to this man; this man who wasn't a strange after all.

"Greg?"