But for the moment she had no opportunities. Her ankle was raw. She had no tools to relieve herself of its chafing bondage. He had left her water and food, and he had not come back for some time.
Where is he?
Mak picked up her plastic water dish and drank from it, feeling the cold liquid slide down her throat and into the base of her hollow stomach. She ate the bread, and scooped up the remains of a cold TV dinner out of its foil tray with a spoon. Her nameless captor clearly did not trust her with other implements—glassware, forks, knives. Spooning a TV dinner and drinking out of a cat bowl; she had been reduced to this. Her life had brought her to this point.
Mak put the foil tray down, and became aware of a creeping numbness in her limbs, her brain and her heart. She had, for the moment, lost interest in reversing the spread of that natural anaesthetic. The man who was holding her captive had left her to ponder her fate. He had been gone for a stretch of time that she guessed to be equal to a day in the language of her pre-captivity life. In that time she had really begun to
believe that she might never make it out of the dark little cellar alive. Her hope was waning with every passing hour, and her inner strength was crumbling in the face of the futility of her attempts to find a way out. She had being trying to reach her captor, and had so far failed. He had walked away from her, and she was still chained up there, no better off than she had been on day one. He could come back at any moment to finish her off. There were no white knights and no guarantees, and if Mak could not save herself from this place then it was over for her, and this whole strange journey of a life she had experienced would have finally reached its end. At thirty, her life would end in a dank, foreign cellar, after being held captive for a number of days she could not accurately document, for reasons she did not understand.
There are no white knights.
This reality penetrated to her core. Some primal belief, some childish ideal had not fully been extinguished until now, despite her harsh years of experience. Funny, she thought, how, despite everything she knew, some part of her female psyche had still held the tiniest fraction of hope that a white knight would come charging in, as in the fairytales of childhood. An angelic Jesus figure haloed in white light and song. A Prince Charming. Or the more rational but no less naïve idea of the far-reaching, infallible long arm of the law. The cops rushing in at the last moment to save every hostage and put the bad guys in jail.
No. Mak had never been one to wait for miracles. But now that she had truly acknowledged their non-existence, the lack of hope saddened her deeply. She recalled a quote that had always stuck with her—attributed to Helen Keller, she was fairly sure:
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in
nature
. There was no security here, in this life of Makedde’s, or in the limited world she was bound to in this dark cellar. There was no security. In her life, the few fleeting scraps of security she had clung to had turned out to be sad illusions. Her mother was dead. Her father was far away. Her sister had always been distant. She had no children. No husband. No land. No home. And she would die at thirty in this cellar.
You’ll die here.
She was losing her will. Her sense of self-preservation was wavering.
From some distant place, cocooned in her numbness, Mak observed her internal crumbling dispassionately.
You’re losing your mind. Really, finally losing your mind.
Mak woke with a start.
She’d dozed off again. She didn’t know how long she’d been resting on her mattress, her eyes closed.
She was not alone.
Her captor stood before her, and at the sight of him she felt fear fly through her organs—her heart thumping, her brain jolted. He loomed over her with his incredible physical mass, and the pocket of his pants bulged. For an instant she feared he would sexually attack her. But no. He pulled a packet of cigarettes out of the pocket, and she saw something else too. Something metal. A round metal keyring. There was a small key on it. It would be the key for her ankle.
The key.
And quickly the metal ring slipped back into the fabric of his pocket as he removed a box of matches with his monstrously large hand. If she had blinked, she would have missed it.
‘Thank you,’ she said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. ‘Oh, thank you. You are so kind.’
He had been away for some stretch of time, and had
returned with a packet of cigarettes and a box of household matches. Where had he gone?
She saw the corner of the door, ajar at the top of the stairs.
‘Share one with me?’ she suggested, moving over on the mattress in the hope he would join her.
‘I don’t smoke,’ he said flatly.
Neither do I.
‘Well, thank you,’ she said again, and accepted the cigarette, taking it between her fingers and reaching for the box of matches clumsily, knocking it out of his hand, emptying its contents on the stone floor, half a dozen matches scattering across the stone.
‘Oh,’ she said, as if embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry.’ She gathered what she could and put them back in the box. She drew one match across the side of the matchbox and it lit. She held the cigarette between her lips and touched the match to the end. The flame was strong and red. Inviting. Makedde had never smoked a cigarette before, only the occasional cigar, and those had always gone out on her and needed relighting. She was not much of a smoker. With a touch of anxiety, she drew the cigarette smoke in a little and blew it out of her mouth without inhaling too much.
‘Thank you so much. I was dying for it.’ She coughed, and tried to recover herself. ‘I thought I’d quit, but…I was really missing it,’ she tried to explain.
He looked at her, watchful.
Behind his cold gaze she thought she sensed him weighing up the situation. He was a man much larger than her. She was unarmed, and still bound at the ankle. What could she possibly do if she got closer—give him a cigarette burn? Surely his pride would allow physical contact with her, if he at all desired
it. He was difficult to reach, she could see that, but was it so impossible? He was still a man. There was another angle she could try.
‘I still don’t know your name, but I feel I know you.’
He continued to watch her, not moving.
‘I’m lonely down here by myself. I hope you don’t mind if I talk a bit.’ She
was
lonely, and she did want to talk. If she was going to die in this place, she wanted to be heard. There were things she wanted to say to this man, or say for herself, she didn’t know which. Mak shifted to one side of the mattress, indicating that she had made room for him. ‘You can sit down, if you like. My name is Makedde.’ She had told him her name before, but she repeated it so that this man might know her, perhaps even understand her. She needed to understand him, and understand what was happening between them. ‘I’d like to know your name, but if you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay.’
He hadn’t killed her yet. He hadn’t harmed her. What was in store for her? What was the plan? Was he waiting for something?
He did not answer.
She tried again. ‘Have you ever lost someone?’ she asked.
He appeared surprised by her question. Mak knew that he was older than her. Chances were that his parents were in their later years, or had already passed on. Perhaps she could reveal some part of herself to him, and he would reciprocate.
‘I lost my mother,’ she told him. ‘She died when I was a teenager. Cancer. It was a rare form of cancer called multiple myeloma. Have you heard of it?’
He shook his head, signalling that finally he had engaged with her.
A cigarette and a shake of the head. Connection.
It was a
small miracle. Inside, she rejoiced. She felt part of herself break loose, find hope. She felt emotions begin to surface again.
‘I want to tell you this because…because I don’t know why I’m here and why you’re keeping me, and if I am to die, I want to talk about my mother first. Jane was her name. Jane Vanderwall. She was my inspiration, my everything.’ He did not stop her, so she continued in a queer ramble. ‘I hadn’t heard of multiple myeloma, either. But then I was barely sixteen, and there were many horrors I hadn’t yet heard of. Multiple myeloma is more common in older male patients, but she was only forty-three. The doctors didn’t see it coming, and neither did we.’ Her throat began to tighten as she spoke. She felt the precursor to tears—tears for her mother, tears for Andy, tears for her crazy ruined life that seemed always to deal her the greatest horrors and injustice. She didn’t care that she would cry. Why should she hold back? Who could care? Days or weeks down in that cellar, and she could not possibly care any more whether this man saw her cry. ‘They gave her a bone marrow transplant. That was her only hope, you know, although, at the time, the risk was extremely high, much higher than it is with the procedures they use now. Her brother gave his marrow. He was her best match. The transplant was so hard. They kept her in the leukaemia ward with the other bone marrow patients, and many of them were children. Everyone there was bald. Some of the visitors were even bald; they’d shaved their heads for their siblings or friends, to show support. She was in there for months, fighting. There was a chart on the wall that I didn’t understand. White blood-cell count. Graphs. Numbers. And the whole time, for months, my father refused to leave her side. Even though he has a bad
back, he slept in this crappy little fold-out cot next to her, holding her hand. They talked, and she suffered, and they talked some more, and eventually she couldn’t speak any more, and he was alone, holding the hand of the woman who’d been his wife—my mother. And, I remember…’ Now a single hot tear cascaded down her cheek. ‘…I remember how we held hands and formed a vigil around her in her last days. My father, my sister, Theresa, and I formed a circle around her. I held her right hand in mine, and it was swollen and warm, like a balloon filled with hot water. It didn’t feel like her. The room smelled strange, the air filled with chemicals I couldn’t place. Her face was puffy and slack, nearly unrecognisable. Her eyes were closed and her mouth hung open, with tubes going down…’
Mak’s lips trembled a little but she steadied. Warm tears began streaming from her eyes, flowing uninhibited. She did not sob, but she let the tears fall, not bothering to wipe them away.
‘They had her on a respirator by then. And once her own breathing failed completely…’ She frowned, with the effort of keeping her voice steady. ‘She’d fought so hard. She did all the right things, and she died.’
For a time Makedde sat still on the mattress, her face streaked and wet. Neither of them spoke. She noticed that her cigarette had gone out. It had bent in her fingers. She had forgotten it during her story.
Her captor took another from the pack and lit it for her. She leaned forward and he placed it in her lips, his fingers brushing her face briefly.
‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ he finally said. ‘I lost my mum, too.’
His voice was deep and gravelly, but cracked a little, perhaps with emotion? Or disuse? She could not be certain he was being genuine. She could not be certain of anything.
She shifted closer. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Losing your mum is hard. No one can replace her. Was it recent?’ she dared to ask.
The look in his eye changed. He stood up, disengaged.
Dammit, not again. Don’t go away and leave me here…
‘You don’t have to go,’ she said softly. ‘We can talk about something else.’
But it was too late. He was already leaving, and with that look in his eye that spoke of some deep internal conflict.
What was his plan? Had the Cavanaghs sent him, or was he acting alone? What was in store for her? When would she be executed, or…?
She needed to reach him.
‘Please…’
She needed to reach him before he carried out whatever terrible task he had been postponing.
Mak stood. She put the cigarette on the ground.
‘Please don’t go.’ Her tears were running fast now, pouring down her cheeks. ‘I’ve been here for a long time. I can’t tell how long, because there are no windows. But I know it’s been a long time. You’ve fed me. You’ve given me water. You haven’t harmed me,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to hurt me. You’re kind. You’ve been nice to me.’
He stopped at the base of the stairs and looked at her. She saw in his eyes that she was getting some reaction.
‘I’m lonely down here.’ With shaking hands, she undid her wool coat and slid it off her shoulders. ‘I want you to know it’s all right if you want to kiss me.’
He frowned, and took a step backwards, all the time staring at her.
‘You have me here because…because you want me here. You
want
me. You’ve got me. Just don’t leave me alone any more, please. I’m lonely. I want you to stay.’
Mak licked her lips deliberately. His eyes watched the movement of her tongue.
She gestured at the chain. ‘I can’t go anywhere. Just stay with me. Please. You’re big and strong.’ She said this as one compliments a man, not as one describes a monstrous creature. ‘I’m not frightened of you. I know I’m yours. But I’m not scared of you.’
He took a step forward. ‘I don’t…scare you?’
She looked him square in the eyes. ‘No.’
And it was true. She was no longer scared. She had discovered the darkest parts of herself, and she wondered if she could ever truly be scared of anything again.
‘I don’t want to be alone any more. Stay with me. Hold me.’
He moved closer, and she did not flinch. Her right big toe began to tingle, precisely where the surgeon had carefully reattached it. It had been severed by a scalpel at the hands of a murderer. Andy Flynn had saved her that time. There would be no saviour now. There would be no happy ending. It was too late for happy endings.
‘I want to. Please…’ she whispered into his ear and pulled him close. Her lips were dry, cracked, and they met his and found new moisture there. She unzipped her jeans with one hand, running her other around his thick, knotted neck, over his skull, feeling the scars beneath the fuzz of his short hair. He was missing part of his ear. She licked at the lobe, and ran her tongue across his scarred cheek.