Papa
T he farmhouse was cold. Reina wasn’t sure if the heat was set any higher than forty or fifty degrees, wasn’t really sure if it was on at all. She and Lilly had their coats on, yet still spent the time under the blankets on the bed to keep warm. They played games, colored, and Reina told her stories. There were pads of paper, crayons, and a few other things to keep the little girl occupied. They slept a lot. It was hard for Reina to keep track of the time passing.
Thankfully, there was a bathroom in the room they could use. Reina found it disturbing that Lilly wore a dress with no underwear below. Lilly hadn’t mastered pulling her pants up and down by herself, even though she was fully potty trained. Her mom, knowing this, left her to fend for herself in the bathroom. As Reina helped Lilly in the bathroom, realizing Lilly hadn’t wiped herself well while she’d been in there and helped to clean her up, her anger at Lilly’s mother grew.
Reina checked the closet. Nothing inside. She’d been hoping to find something she could use as a weapon. There were two windows in the room. She looked out of both. No other homes in sight, just the barren leaf-stripped trees and overgrown scrub brush for as far as her eyes could see. She wondered if the view from a different side of the house would show any other homes nearby.
There was a twelve pack of water that someone had taken the time to loosen all the caps and a stock of various food items on one of the tables, many of them already open. Unsure how long they’d be there, Reina rationed the food, but did try to make sure that she and Lilly had a variety of food, alternating protein bars and fruit pouches with an occasional bag of chips and sweet treat whenever they ate.
Reina was sure at least two days had passed since Blake and Stella had left them there. No one had returned. Reina was dozing when the door opened. Blake came into the room.
“Reina, come with me,” he said, his voice icy.
Reina had a really bad feeling about this, but she didn’t want to scare Lilly. “Okay,” she told him. Lilly slept beside her. She shook her a bit to wake her. “Lilly, sweetie, I have to go for a short bit. Go back to sleep. Stay under the covers to stay warm, sweetie.” She kissed her on her forehead.
When they were in the hallway with the door closed, Blake, who held her arm, relocked the door. “Why’d you bother waking her?”
“I wanted her to know I was leaving. I didn’t want her to wake up alone and be afraid. You really don’t know anything about kids, do you?”
He shrugged off her remark. He pointed down the staircase. “You fight me, and I’ll throw you down the stairs,” he warned.
“I won’t,” she said. Then she walked willingly down the stairs beside him.
That other man was not in the front room. Stella was not there either. The rest of the house was quiet. He led her to the front door and opened it. That was when that bad feeling she had turned into fear. It was gray and frigid outside. The cold air invaded her the second he pulled her out of the house. A beige sedan was parked in front of the door. The SUV was nowhere in sight.
He popped the trunk open with the push of a button on the key fob he held in his hand that was not holding her. They were just a few steps away from it. “Get in,” he said, pointing to the trunk of the car.
She pulled against him, leaning away from the car, and defiantly shook her head. “No.”
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way where you get hurt.”
They appeared to be alone. Could she overpower him, get Lilly, and drive them out of there? She remembered the turns they’d taken once off the interstate. She knew she could navigate them back to civilization. But what if she didn’t succeed? Would he take it out on Lilly?
“Last chance,” he said.
She nodded and stepped towards the car. She grabbed hold of the edge of the trunk as though she was going to climb in and then at the last second used the car to push against, to give herself leverage as she kicked backwards, kicking him in the crotch with all her strength. She followed up, coming to her feet and grabbing him by the hair on his head and pulling his head down as she thrust her knee up.
In the corner of her eye she saw, too late, the other man who’d been in the house, rush up beside her, a gun in his hand that was swinging towards her head and the painful impact. That was all she remembered until she opened her eyes to darkness. She had the sensation of movement and felt nauseous. Her head hurt, too.
By the time the movement stopped, she had come out of the fog and remembered all that had happened. She felt around her immediate area. She knew she was in the trunk of the car. The dark gave way to light when the trunk opened. She found herself staring at Blake’s face.
Without a word, he reached in and pulled her to a sitting position. “Get out,” he said while pulling on her to help lift her from the trunk. She wobbled on her feet, holding onto the car to combat the dizziness she felt. With no words spoken, he pulled her away from the car. They were on a gravel road in a small clearing in the trees. The sky was a dark gray, either it was about to snow, or night was creeping in. She wasn’t sure which.
He pulled her up a little rise, her feet stumbling on the uneven ground. She barely saw the hole in front of her when she felt him push her and she fell forward, down into the deep hole. She landed hard on her right side. She lay there, stunned for a few seconds. She heard the unmistakable sound of a car door closing, a car’s engine turning over, and tires crunching on gravel, growing softer and softer. Then silence.
Shock was what she felt, mostly. Had that just happened? Had Blake just pushed her into a hole in the ground? She stared straight up at the dark gray sky and mentally gauged how different parts of her body felt. She wiggled her toes and then moved her legs. Her right shoulder, which she lay on, was sore. But she wiggled her fingers and then moved her arms. There was no intense pain as she did. She didn’t think she’d hit her head when she landed. She was quite sure her right shoulder and hip absorbed the brunt of the landing. And the ground beneath her appeared to be dirt and the remnants of snow covering grass.
She slowly sat up, paying attention to how her body felt as she did. She was sore and stiff, but she felt no intense pain anyplace. From the seated position, she took in her surroundings. Though the ground beneath her was dirt and grass, the walls of the hole of the perfectly circular eight-foot-wide hole were made of or lined with metal. It was like a metal tube was standing on its end in the hole.
She pulled herself to her feet again, focused on how her body felt as she did. In the back of her mind, she knew she could have been badly injured and could make it worse by moving around too much. She looked up. The hole had to be ten feet deep. What in the hell was this place? How long had she been unconscious? She rubbed her throbbing head. Her hand slid to the back to feel over where it hurt the worst. She wasn’t surprised to feel wetness and stickiness on the back of her head. When she viewed her finger tips, she saw blood. Only then did she let the tears fill her eyes, as they’d been threatening to since she woke in the trunk.
Blake had pushed her into this hole and left her. Was he leaving her there to die? Or would he be back? Leaving Lilly alone in that bedroom was horrible. Pushing her into this hole and leaving her was heartless, truly evil. If he didn’t come back, would someone find her? If not, how would she die? Would it be the cold that got her? Or would it be from starvation or dehydration? She heard the howl of a coyote in the distance. Or would a wild animal fall or jump into the hole and kill her? Eat her alive? That had to be the worst scenario she could think of; the worst way to die, being eaten alive.
She pushed those thoughts from her mind. No! She was not going to die here. It was cold, but she had on a coat. If she kept moving, she should keep herself warm. It wasn’t supposed to be too cold the next few days if she remembered the forecast correctly, lows in the upper twenties. So, she shouldn’t freeze to death.
Dehydration was a risk, though. Could she collect her urine and drink it to stay hydrated? Gross. But if it kept her alive until she could be found, she’d have to do it. She glanced around the ground. There wasn’t even anything to collect it in. That was out. There was a little bit of snow on the ground. It would melt in her mouth, but there wasn’t very much of it. Okay, so dehydration was a real risk if she was here too long.
She paced, trying to get her blood pumping to stay warm. “Help! Someone help me!” she yelled as loud as she could about a dozen times. Then she listened hard for any sound. Nothing.
It was getting dark out. It would be pitch black in less than an hour. Reina wrapped her arms around herself, cold, afraid, alone.