Chapter Five: Exploring the Environment

CHAPTER FIVE:

Exploring the Environment

Patrick sat in the far corner with his head against the plaster wall. Halfway along the back wall sat the bucket filled with dog food, just to the left of the spigot. The empty bucket he’d placed all the way in the opposite corner.

Only it wasn’t empty any longer.

He’d held out as long as he could, but eventually it had been go in the bucket or in his pants. Both options were humiliating, but he went with the one that would allow him to keep at least a tattered shred of dignity. Clare must have heard, just as he’d been able to hear her when she went earlier, but she had the tact not to say anything. In fact, they hadn’t spoken since, as if perhaps she was sensitive to his discomfort and embarrassment. Or maybe she’d simply fallen asleep.

Now that he had eliminated, his body told him it was time to fill it back up again. His stomach cramped and gurgled, the hunger pains starting out as mere twinges but gradually building to sharp jabs. He hadn’t eaten anything since dinner Saturday night, twenty-four hours ago. Or possibly even longer than that, he had no real way of knowing. All he knew was that he was voraciously hungry and he had no way of satiating the hunger.

His eyes strayed to the other bucket, the one filled with dog food.

Dog food, not people food, he kept reminding himself.

It doesn’t taste so bad, really. Sort of like dry cereal . . .

Patrick shook his head, both in negation of the thought and to clear his mind. He’d already been reduced to shitting in a bucket; he would be damned if he’d eat dog food like some mongrel. He thought he’d read somewhere that a person could survive up to three weeks without food. Only about a week without water, so thank God for the spigot.

Of course, the pragmatic part of his brain said, he had to keep his strength up. If he hoped to gain the upper hand against whoever had abducted him, he couldn’t allow himself to get so malnourished that he lacked the strength to fight.

It’s only been a day, he told himself. Yes, you’re hungry, but that’s all it is. You aren’t starving. Think of it as a fast. Sure, if this goes on long enough the time may come that you’ll have to put aside your dignity and do what has to be done . . .

“But not yet,” he muttered.

“Did you say something?” Clare asked, her voice so close he guessed her head rested almost in the exact spot as his on the other side of the wall.

Not wanting to admit he’d been talking to himself, Patrick said, “Do you think he’s still gone?”

“I haven’t heard the car so I think so.”

“How long do you figure it’s been?”

“A long time, longer than he’s ever been gone since I got here. You don’t think . . . ?”

“What?”

When Clare spoke again, her voice was like that of a girl half her age, lost in a large department store and unable to find her Mommy. “You don’t think he’d just leave us, do you?”

The question hit Patrick like a brick to his face. He’d been so focused on the imagined confrontation between himself and the man whose face he couldn’t quite remember that it had never occurred to him that the creep might never come back. That he would simply abandon them here to die like hamsters left in a cage when the family goes away for vacation.

This notion had a ripple-effect of ramifications. Their captor wouldn’t necessarily even have to abandon them willingly. What if he went out somewhere and had a heart-attack? Or was blindsided by a drunk driver running a traffic light? Or fell off a cliff, was bitten by a rattlesnake, mauled by rabid dogs?

“It hasn’t been long enough to worry,” he said, as much to quell his own budding panic as to assure Clare. “We don’t know anything about this man or what he does. There are a million reasons why he might be gone longer this time. You said he thinks of us as his children, that he’s building a family in his sick mind. He wouldn’t leave his kids behind.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Patrick said with more conviction than he felt.

Clare let out a shaky laugh that dissolved into a sob. “I feel like I’m losing my mind, like I’m becoming a split personality or something.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like I’m two people. One of them hopes the bastard never comes back, but the other is afraid that he’ll never come back. I can’t decide which possibility is worse.”

Not coming back, that’s worse, Patrick thought but didn’t say. If he didn’t come back then they were trapped with no hope of escape. But if he came back, that gave Patrick a chance. A chance to overpower the creep and save both himself and Clare. And this Linda if she was still in the house and not buried in a shallow grave somewhere.

So yes, Patrick definitely wanted “Big Daddy” to come back, but he also had to seriously consider the other option. If they had been discarded here like so much trash, no one was going to save them but themselves. Clare was a kid, and one balancing on a thin wire above a pit of despair and madness, and Patrick suspected her foot was slipping. That left their survival up to him. Quite a responsibility he didn’t ask for, but he had no plans to die. Not here, not like this, so he had to act.

Pushing himself to his feet, he cast a scrutinizing eye about the room. He went to the door and tested it again. Glancing upward, he estimated the ceiling was about twelve feet above the floor, constructed of wooden planks. They looked solid as well, but he’d never be able to reach that high without something more than two rusty buckets to stand on.

“Hey Clare,” he said. “I know this is a longshot but I don’t suppose you have any windows in your room?”

“No, I think we’re underground. Just walls and a door.”

“And all your walls are stone except the one that separates us?”

“That’s right.”

Patrick mulled this over for a moment. Obviously their cells had once been one long room, and the plaster wall had been added to divide it into two. He began to make his way slowly to the left, pressing on each individual stone from the floor to the utmost height of his reach, looking for any that might be loose or wobbly.

“What are you doing over there?” Clare asked.

“Just exploring the environment.”

“Please, Patrick, don’t get us into trouble.”

He paused and glanced back toward the plaster wall, imagining he could almost see the shape of her crouching on the other side, hugging herself and trembling. “Clare, listen to me. We’re already in trouble. Serious trouble.”

“I know, but...you can make it worse. Trust me, you can make it so much worse.”

Patrick felt a sharp retort rise to his lips, but with a grimace he swallowed it back down like a horse pill. He had to remind himself that Clare had been here for months, had suffered beatings and had to listen to the woman in the cell next to her being violated. Had been reduced to eating dog food and relieving herself in a bucket. As dire as their circumstances were, he still needed to be patient and sensitive, not push her too hard lest she break completely.

Making an effort to soften his voice, he said, “I know this bastard has hurt you, but he will keep on hurting you unless we find a way out of here.”

Silence for a moment, then the sound of quiet sobbing. “I’m just so afraid.”

“I know, and I’m afraid too.”

“At least you’re a boy, you don’t have as much to be afraid of.”

“What do you mean?”

“I worry that . . . well, with Linda gone now, what if he decides to upgrade me from daughter to wife?”

This shocked Patrick into speechlessness for a moment. He was reminded again of how much more women had to fear in life than men. Yes, he was aware that men could be victims of sexual violence, especially in the gay community, but statistically women were much more likely to be targets. He’d had female friends tell him it was something they thought about almost every day. He could empathize but he couldn’t ever really understand, not completely. Even here, with him and Clare in the same boat, she harbored fears he hadn’t even considered.

“All the more reason for us to find a way out,” he said lamely.

Clare didn’t respond to this, other than more hiccupping sobs.

Patrick resumed his systematic search for weaknesses in the walls. Though the room wasn’t particularly large, there were so many stones. He knew this would take quite a while, but what did he have if not time?

He tested each stone, even running his finger around the mortar in between to see if any of it was crumbly. It took him almost twenty minutes to reach the corner and begin on the next wall. The closer he got to the bucket he’d used earlier, the more the unpleasant smell assaulted him, making him want to retch. He resisted the urge, taking shallow breaths through his mouth, because he knew if he vomited it would only make things worse.

Patrick found himself flashing back on his time dating Gary. Gary had tried several times to convince Patrick to go to one of those Escape Rooms, where you paid to be locked in a room and you had to search for clues and solve puzzles to free yourself in a set amount of time. Gary had thought they were tremendously fun and exciting, but Patrick had had zero interest. He didn’t like murder mysteries, brain teasers, or even the game Clue.

Now a part of him wished he had given in to Gary, thinking that perhaps he could have gleaned some skills from such an experience that might help him now. Of course, the Escape Rooms were manufactured to be solvable; there was no such guarantee in this situation. There were no clues, no puzzles to figure out.

Still he kept going around the room, testing the stones, almost as if one might push inward, a hidden switch that would open that door and he’d get a prize for his troubles.

As he worked his way down the long back wall, he spent extra time around the spigot, grabbing the cold metal faucet and pulling, pushing, yanking, and jerking, but the thing didn’t budge.

“Patrick, why are you so quiet?” Clare asked suddenly, startling Patrick so badly that a squeaky gasp escaped him. He’d been so caught up in what he was doing that he’d nearly forgotten about the girl.

“Clare, honey, I’m kind of busy right now.”

“Just talk to me. Please. So I’ll know you’re still there.”

“Doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere.”

“I need to hear your voice. I need to know I’m not alone. Even if I can’t see you, your voice keeps me grounded. It helps, at least.”

Patrick came to a stone, about three feet up the wall, with a deep maroon stain darkening it. He ran his fingers down the rough surface and they came away dry. Could have been blood, but there was no way to be sure. He felt suddenly lightheaded, and he squatted down, head hanging, waiting for his equilibrium to return. Perhaps it wasn’t only the girl who needed some grounding.

“What do you want to talk about?” he said, resuming his progress around the room’s perimeter.

“I don’t know. Anything. What’s your favorite TV show?”

“Um, Game of Thrones, I guess.”

“Yuck! Too violent for me. I like Riverdale.”

“Isn’t that the one loosely based on the Archie comics?”

“I don’t really know what that is.”

“Such a baby,” he said, though she was only a few years younger than him. “Were you also one of those girls who went crazy for Twilight?”

“I thought the movies were okay. Never read the books.”

“Not much of a reader?”

“Not really. I mean, when I was really little, I read the Harry Potter series. Well, the first few anyway. They got kind of long and involved after a while.”

Patrick had made his way back to the corner of the back and plaster wall. He let his fingers trail along the plaster and he took up his investigation again, working his way back toward the door.

“So, what’s your favorite subject in school?” Patrick asked.

“I guess I used to like math alright. I’ve got a head for numbers.”

“Used to like math? Why the past tense?”

“Well, I haven’t been doing too great in any of my subjects the last year. Not since I started dating my Hank.”

“I can relate to that more than you know.”

“What are you majoring in at Furman?” Clare asked.

“Psychology.”

“That’s cool. So you want to be a psychologist?”

“I have no idea what I want to be,” Patrick said, something he hadn’t really admitted out loud to anyone. “I’m interested in a little bit of everything. I went undeclared until recently when I was told I had to declare one. I picked the subject I liked best, but I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I’m going to do with a Psych degree once I’m out of school.”

“My friend Brianna’s older brother has a Psych degree. He works with the mentally handicapped. A case worker or something.”

“Well, that’s an option. I’ll probably end up as a barista at Starbucks or something.”

“At least, you’ll get a discount on those expensive drinks.”

Patrick found this conversation surreal, like earlier when they’d briefly discussed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. A discussion of favorite subjects and majors, as if they weren’t prisoners in this hellhole. Again, he reminded himself that this was a coping mechanism, and it was in his best interest to help Clare cope.

“So, you and this Hank serious?”

“Yeah, I never met anyone quite like Hank. My parents hate him, though.”

“He a bad boy?”

“Not at all. They say they don’t like him because he’s too old for me.”

“What are we talking? Forty-five, fifty?”

This elicited a weak, sputtering laugh from Clare. “He’s eighteen, only three years older than me. That’s not the real reason they don’t want me dating him, though I know they’ll never admit to it.”

“What’s the real reason, do you think?”

“His family is from Niger. They’re Muslims.”

“A Muslim named Hank?”

“It’s a nickname. His real name is Haneef.”

“Well, in the current political climate, a lot of people are feeling iffy about Muslims.”

“It’s not fair to judge him by his parents’ religion. Hank doesn’t even believe any of that crap.”

Patrick had made his way back to the door. He had found no weaknesses in any of the stones, not even anything small enough to give him a sliver of hope. The only weakness he’d found anywhere in the room was the plaster wall, but even if he could get through it, he’d only end up in another cell. One of those out of the frying pan, into the fire situations. He slumped to the floor, exhaustion seeping into his bones now that his little project was finished.

Exhaustion and hunger. His stomach rumbled again, the sound of distant thunder forewarning of a storm on the way.

Clare continued to chatter away about religious intolerance, but Patrick tuned her out, retreating into his own thoughts. He estimated it had taken him nearly an hour to go around the entire room, and it had probably been at least five or six hours since he’d awaken here. Clare had guessed he’d been unconscious three hours. So approximately nine hours since he’d been brought here, nine hours since his abductor had left the premises.

“Clare,” Patrick said when the girl paused to take a breath, “did Big Daddy say anything to you before he left this time?”

“I told you he—”

“I mean other than the ‘It’s a boy’ thing. Think, did he give you any indication where he might be going that would take him longer this time? Even something like, ‘See you tomorrow’ or ‘It’s been nice knowing you.’”

She was quiet for a moment, apparently scouring her memory banks. “No, nothing. He told me I had a new brother then I heard him go back up the stairs. A few minutes later the car started up and he was gone. I assumed he’d be right back like all the other times.”

“Damn it,” Patrick murmured. He stood and walked back across the room, stopping at the spigot. As another sharp hunger pain jabbed at his abdomen, he looked down into the bucket, happy to note that the dog food looked unappetizing, the smell of it making him wrinkle his nose in disgust. He knew if this went on long enough, that would change and the dog food would start to look and smell like a four-course meal in a swanky restaurant.

Ignoring the bucket for now, he hunkered down and twisted the spigot’s valve. Cold water gushed out in a torrent, splashing the floor and creating a puddle. He cupped his hands under the spray and brought the water to his lips, gulping it down. He figured if he filled up with enough water, that might help stave off the hunger for a little longer.

“That sounds good,” Clare said, a note of longing in her voice.

Patrick shut off the flow, wiping his dripping hands on his pants. “What’s that?”

“The water . . . sounds good. Bet it tastes good too.”

“A little metallic but beggars can’t’ be—” Patrick stopped speaking abruptly, his mouth snapping shut with an audible click of his teeth. He looked down at the water that had pooled on the floor, spreading out to create a puddle that darkened the cement. “Clare, do you have a spigot over there?”

Another laugh, this one devoid of humor. “No, that’s an amenity only available in your suit.”

“But you can’t have gone without water for all the time you’ve been here. What have you been drinking?”

“Big Daddy put a large thermos in here. He usually fills it up when he fills my bucket.”

“You may have to ration for a bit,” Patrick said. “How much do you have?”

“Nothing. I drank the last of it yesterday.”