What had happened?
I twisted my wrists, trying to loosen my bonds. It felt heavy, like handcuffs. I couldn't make anything budge, there or on my feet. Writhing, I cast about desperately for some plan. Was he going to kill me? Dispose of me, now that I knew? Wouldn't that be ironic.
I felt the car pull to a stop. Too tense to breathe, I waited for the trunk to open; it was him. There was a syringe in his hand; I screamed as loudly as I could, and he quickly pushed it into my skin. Everything went dark.
I woke up on a bathroom floor, my head pounding horribly. My mouth was uncovered now; I screamed, my ears pounding with the noise. Nothing happened. Everything but my clothes were gone: phone, bag, keys.
My arm was cuffed to a wall support next to the toilet. Casting about, I looked for something to pick the lock—but there was nothing. I kicked it as hard as I could, hurting my arm and accomplishing nothing.
I stayed there for hours, trying to break out. The only result was a skinned wrist and bruised body; nothing worked. Nobody heard me. Was I in a basement somewhere? My stomach turned. Would anyone ever find me? Was he ever coming back?
I glanced at the sink. I could reach it, I thought. I could survive for at least a few weeks with just water. It was a horrible prospect, but I was too frightened to be scared of it.
Time drained more slowly than I could bear, but there was nothing else I could do but sit and try to think of other ways to get out. The ache in my head reached such a pitch, I had to throw up again. Good thing I was by a toilet, I thought darkly.
If he was going to kill me, would he have done it already? Or was the abandoned house I had taken him too conspicuous a place for him to get rid of me? Did he just want to torture me by abandoning me here? Would my father already be looking for me? I had left nothing to tell him where I was going—how would he ever know? I had no idea how far Morgan had driven me; we could be states away, for all I knew.
I vomited again, getting dizzier by the minute. I tried to drink something from the sink, but I couldn't hold it down.
When Morgan came back, even the adrenaline couldn't get me to my feet. I stared up at him, my mouth feeling as though it was stuffed with cotton.
"You're sick?" he asked. I didn't answer.
He came back with a pill. "This is for the nausea."
Perhaps I should have fought him off, but he probably would have been able to force it in me anyway. I took it.
He left and came back with blankets. "I'm sorry," he said, wrapping one around my shoulders. I was sweating profusely, but I was shivering. "You're reacting to the sedative." He got me a cup of water and told me to sip it, sitting on the edge of the bathtub to watch.
When I felt the room stop spinning, I spoke. "What are you going to do with me?"
"I don't know."
I hugged the blanket closer around my shoulders. "Why?"
He didn't answer.
"Look, could you at least un-cuff me? It's not like I'm getting anywhere fast." I thought I was probably lying, but it was worth a shot. My arm hurt from being held above my head for so long.
"No." He went to the medicine cabinet beyond my reach and got out some kind of ointment and gauze. Sliding the cuff up my arm a little, he dressed the wounds I had inflicted. "I'm sorry."
"I'm not going to tell anyone," I told him. "I won't. Please let me go."
He gave no indication that he had heard me. I wondered vaguely if crying would make any difference. It might annoy him enough to kill me.
"Are you hungry?" he asked. I shook my head. "I'll come back tomorrow." He left, shutting bathroom door. I heard it lock, heard something being dragged in front of it to brace it. My heart sank. I was in for a long night.
I stretched over to the sink, opening the cabinet I already knew was empty at its base. Rummaging blindly at the plumbing of the sink, I searched for something I could use to pick or break the lock. My eyes fixed on the soap. Of course. Why had I not thought of it before?
I cupped water from the sink onto my cuffed arm and soaped it thoroughly.
It took a long time, and I found tears running down my face; it hurt. But I got it off.
Bleeding profusely, I stumbled to the medicine cabinet and got more bandages, managing to stem the blood. What now?
The door was locked—from the outside, of course. The door was metal (what kind of person had a metal door for their basement bathroom?) and locked from the outside. Shit.
I looked to the hinges, and got back after the sink, somehow wrenching out a pipe. There were tweezers in the cabinet; I used the pipe as a hammer, the tweezers as a pick, and tapped out the hinge pins.
The only way I could put leverage on the door was to stuff my fingers in the crack along the bottom and pull. It took me several tries, but I managed to yank it out—it fell heavily on me, bruising my hands and head. I cursed violently, curling up in pain.
It was a freezer he had dragged in front of the door. I shoved at it, but nothing happened. After sitting back and looking at it for a moment, I heaved the door over and wedged sideways into the door frame, throwing my weight against the protruding side. The leverage worked; the freezer scraped slowly across the concrete floor, finally giving me enough room to squeeze out.
Heart pounding with exultation, I cast about for the way out. I clattered noisily up the stairs—if nobody had come with the noise from that freezer, then the place was definitely empty—and reached the top, finding that door unlocked.
He was there. He was right there. I froze, terrified, too shocked to react. He pushed me to the wall and injected me again as I started to fight. For the third time that day, I blacked out.