Finding Me (10 page)

9
______________

Trapped

“D
ON’T MOVE!”
the dude shouted in my face as I lay on the floor. His spit flew into my eyes and his breath stank like beer. He grabbed my purse and threw it into a corner of the pink room. “I’m coming right back!” He ran into the next room, and I could hear him looking for something in the closet. I tried to scream, but when I opened my mouth, no sound came out. And I mean
none.
My hands shook like I was caught in an earthquake.

I was in a full-blown panic. My body was paralyzed, but my mind was going crazy.
Come on, girl, you’ve gotta do something!
I thought. My eyes fell upon two metal poles, one on each side of the room. A wire was strung between them, like a clothesline. Not even a second later the dude was back, lifting a heavy stool through the door. He set it down next to me. In his hand he had two orange extension cords. My heart was beating so hard, it felt like it was about to fall out of my chest. I started to struggle up to my feet.

“Lay still!” he yelled.

I gagged and almost threw up. He sat on the stool and grabbed both of my legs. I went wild, thrashing around and trying to fight him off, but he was too strong for me. He wrapped one cord so tightly around my ankles that it cut into my skin. He didn’t say a single word while he was tying me up, but he was breathing hard. My brain was going nuts:
How could this be happening to me? How do I get out of here?
As he went around and around my ankles with that cord, sweat dripped down his chin and onto my shirt. It smelled like a nasty mix of pee and car oil.

After he tied up my feet, I couldn’t feel them anymore. He yanked my arms behind me as I screamed and tried to punch him in the face.

“Please, just let me go!” I begged him, tears running down my face.

“Shut up or I’ll really kill you!” he shouted.

He wrapped my wrists together and pulled my hands and feet together in back with the cord. Then he looped the cord around my neck.

“Stop it!” I tried to yell. But the cord was cutting off my air. As I lay there tied up on the floor, I figured he was about to hook me to one of those poles. But he suddenly unzipped his jeans, pulled down his pants, and whipped out his penis. His gut hung down below his flannel shirt, and he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“You’re only going to be here with me for a little while,” he said as he started jerking off. Every time he moved, his jeans fell down a little more. The harder he pumped, the more he ran his mouth. “I really just want us to be friends,” he said. “My wife and kids left, and all I want is for someone to be here for me. I need you.”

My pulse was going out of control. My hands and feet were numb, and my face was wet from all the tears. Snot was running down my nose. I had been
scared crapless many times before, but nothing came close to the terror I felt as I lay on that floor. I was sure I was about to die.
Oh
God, why is this happening to me?

Desperate, I opened my eyes and looked up at the window. Right then the dude pointed himself right at me. “
Yeees
!” he screamed out. A big glob of semen sprayed all over my shorts.

He sat down on the stool, and for the longest time he just rested. His jeans had slid all the way down to his ankles. He leaned his head against the pink wall and took a bunch of deep breaths.

“Now I need you to be still so I can put you up on these poles,” he finally said. He got up and pulled up his pants. Then he started taking off my sandals. I began praying the only prayer I knew. “Now … I lay me … down to sleep,” I said. “I pray … the Lord … my soul to keep …”

“Stop making noise!” he shouted. “No one can hear you!” But I kept on praying. “If I should die … before I wake …” He smacked me hard on the side of the head, and I got real quiet.

He threw my sandals into the corner with my purse. Then he rolled me over onto my stomach as I tried to squirm out of his reach. He tied the second orange cord to the one around my hands, feet, and neck. Then he hoisted my body up to the long wires between the two poles and tied the cord behind my back to the wires. When he was done, I was raised up off the floor by about twelve inches, facing the window. It felt like he was hanging me up for show—like a trophy on a wall. A minute later he stuffed a stinky gray sock in my mouth and put duct tape all the way around my head to keep it in place. Through the sock, all I could do was moan—and hope that someone would hear me.

“I’m gonna get us some food,” he said in a very calm voice. Mr. Hyde had suddenly gone away, and Dr. Jekyll was there to take his place. “You stay right where you are,” he said. “Don’t leave. And don’t make a sound.”

How am I going to make a sound when you have my mouth taped shut?
I thought frantically. He turned on the radio that was sitting on the dresser and cranked up the volume so loud that it hurt my eardrums. Then he slammed the door and stomped down the stairs.

Over the noise of the radio I heard his truck’s engine rev up. I thought maybe I could undo the cords, so I started swinging myself back and forth. But all I did was make myself very dizzy. From where I was hanging, I could see other people’s windows across the street.
Can anyone see me?
I thought. Since I didn’t have my glasses, I couldn’t see very well. I tried to scream again, but I was pretty sure no one could hear me over the thumping noise of rapping from the radio.

I looked around the room to see if I could reach something that could help me escape, but that was impossible because of the way he had tied me up. I could see a few girls’ clothes through the open closet door. I remembered that Emily had told me about her little sister, Rosie, so this must have been her room before their mother moved them out. There was a picture of a mermaid lying on the floor. It looked like it was painted by a kid. Under the mermaid it said “Ariel.” Maybe his daughter made that for him. How could a man with two daughters, and one that I was friends with, do this to me? Emily seemed to think her father was okay—did she have no idea he was a pervert? I knew now that he’d lied about her being in the house, but maybe she’d come over later. Had Deanna gone back home and told everyone I had vanished? My mind raced as I hoped to God that somebody was already out looking for me.

A
S
TIME
WENT
BY
I went from feeling numb to feeling like someone was sticking a thousand pins and needles all over my body. My head started throbbing from the loudness of the radio. By the time the sun went down the psycho hadn’t returned. I had started to feel pretty sure that when he did come back, he was going to kill me. All I could think about was my sweet Joey—and if I would ever see him again.

Morning came, then afternoon, then another night passed. He left me hanging there for
what seemed like more than a day
. My belly ached from hunger. I was thirstier than I’d ever been in my whole life, and my mouth was unbelievably dry with the sock crammed into it. I smelled bad because I had peed on myself. Twice. And I had passed out a few times with that cord choking me. If he was ever back in the house during that time, I never heard it. I was probably out cold, or maybe I couldn’t hear it because the radio was so loud. When he finally barged in the door, he was holding some kind of sandwich in a yellow McDonald’s wrapper.

“You’ve gotta eat something,” he said. He turned down the radio. Then he suddenly ripped the duct tape from my head and removed the sock. Some of my hair came off with the tape and I screamed, it hurt me so bad. He took the wrapping off the sausage sandwich and tried to shove it into my face, but I pressed my lips together and shook my head from side to side. Then he grabbed me by the jaw and tried to force it in.

“You need to eat!” he shouted.

What if he’s put drugs in the food? What if he’s going to poison me?
I kept my lips closed as tightly as I could until he finally threw the sandwich down.

He undid the cord that was attached to the wire, and I crashed painfully onto the floor. I started crying again and tried to sit up. My limbs were so numb, I couldn’t feel them.

“Lay still, you little slut,” he said. With one hand he unwound the cord around my neck, and with the other he held me down. When he unwrapped the cord from my ankle, a stream of blood ran down my foot.

“I need you to get up,” he said.

“Are you serious? I can’t even stand up!” I shouted.

Before I could say another word, he picked me up and slung me over his shoulder. Grunting, he carried me into the small white room next door. Over in the corner there was a stained queen-size mattress with no sheets. He slammed me down on the mattress and stripped off all my clothes. For the next hour straight, as I screamed nonstop, he raped me. And then again. And again. And again. He hurt me so bad that the mattress was soaked with my blood. At first I tried to kick him off and scratch his face with my fingernails, but there was no way my small body could fend off such a big man.

“Please don’t hurt me anymore,” I said, sobbing, when it looked like maybe he was slowing down. I thought that if I tried to sound sweet, he might let me go. “I just want to get back home,” I told him. “I don’t think you’re a bad person—you just made this one mistake. If you let me go now, we can forget about this.”

But at that point he laid his sweaty naked body down next to me and started talking, almost like he thought I was his girlfriend.

“I really wish I didn’t have to do this to you,” he said quietly. He sighed and even started to cry a little. Dr. Jekyll was back.

“My wife left me. I didn’t mean to beat her, but it’s like I ain’t got the power to stop myself.” I stared at him. “I got molested when I was a little kid. And nobody did nothin’ about it. That’s why I started jerking off. That’s why I started watching porn. I just want one person to stay here with me.”

While he went on and on with this nonsense, I kept my eye on the door. I was hoping I could somehow make a fast break down the stairs. But because of the way he had me trapped in the corner of the mattress, I couldn’t get around him. I didn’t say a word at first. But then I said, “Why don’t you get a girlfriend? Just because you had a bad life doesn’t mean you have to do this kind of stuff. Lots of people have had tough childhoods.”

He didn’t look at me. Suddenly he jumped off the bed, picked up his jeans, and pulled some cash out of one of the pockets. “There’s your payment for your services,” he said, throwing down a few dollar bills. After that he left the room.

My
payment
?
I had no idea what he was talking about. He went across the hall. I stumbled to my aching feet, but before I could reach the door he was back. “Where do you think you’re going?” he said. I backed up onto the mattress.

He was holding my purse. He turned it upside down and emptied everything onto the floor. “How old are you?” he asked. I didn’t answer. “What’s your birth date?” I still didn’t say a word. So he got down and searched through all of my stuff until he found my wallet. He pulled out my ID and stared at it for a long time. “You’re twenty-one?” he said.

I shook my head yes.

He stared at me. “I thought you was much younger!” he shouted. “I thought you was a prostitute!”
I guess he thought I was a hooker. Maybe that’s why he was throwing money at me. Maybe he’ll let me get out of here now
. He was so pissed off that he threw the ID across the room. After a minute he came over and sat on the edge of the mattress. “Look, you and I are just gonna be friends, okay?” he said. My hands started to shake. “You’re not gonna be here with me no real long time. Just maybe till Christmas.”

I could feel myself getting dizzy.
Christmas? There’s no way in the world I can be here till Christmas!
I started to cry, and the truth of what was happening hit me like a thousand knives in my gut.
Oh my God. I am trapped here in this psychopath’s house
.

“First I gotta see if I can trust you.” He gave me my shirt and underwear but not my shorts. He stared at me as I put them on. My tan underwear, the pair I loved because they had butterflies on them, were wet with pee and stained with blood. My shirt still smelled like his vile sweat.

After I was dressed, he put his hand on my arm. I pushed him away, but he yanked me by the hair and pulled me up from the bed.

“No!” I screamed. “Let me go!”

He just ignored me and dragged me over to the top of the staircase. I didn’t know where he was taking me, but I couldn’t imagine that it could be much worse than what he’d just put me through. I was wrong.

10
______________

The Dungeon

C
REAK. CREAK. CREAK.
He dragged me down the old wooden stairs to the first floor and stopped for a minute. Then he pulled me over to another door and undid a padlock. It led to a staircase, one that was going down.
The basement—that’s where he’s taking me!
My whole body started to shake. Just thinking about going to the basement scared the shit out of me. In all the horror books I’d ever read, nothing good ever happened in the basement.
This might be my last stop
. I held my breath, closed my eyes real tight for a second, and tried to imagine I was with my huggy bear.