Chapter 6 Marla
MARLA
I stared at the phone. It felt so foreign in my hand, like an object from long ago that I hadn’t thought about in ages.
When was the last time I held a cell phone?
When was the last time I checked my social media, or sent a text message, or even looked something up online?
I scrolled through what was on the phone, which wasn’t much.
It was pretty locked down, though I didn’t expect any differently from something they designated as a burner phone.
There was a folder of games on it, though.
“Huh,” I said softly as I pressed on the file.
It opened, and there were a few games that I assumed could be played offline. More specifically, however, there was an entire subset of games called ‘offline games.’
I clicked on that one, and it opened a menu with at least a hundred different options of things to play.
I was enamored.
I’d never been a phone game player. Hell, I’d never really been a technology person. I used as much technology as was required of me at the library.
The library.
My old job.
I shook my head. No. My old life was gone. I was a new person now. I’d seen things. Experienced things.
I missed my books.
“No,” I whispered to myself as I clicked on the first game in the lineup.
Tetris.
I moved the pieces around and dropped them into place. I smiled a bit as the pieces disappeared. I’d never had the best spacial abilities. I was one of those people who struggled just to get a car trunk packed neatly. But Tetris wasn’t so hard.
Though some of the shapes infuriated me.
“The hell am I supposed to do with that shit?” I whispered to myself as that upside down ‘L’ shape came into view.
I hated that shape.
After snuggling down onto the closet floor with my extra blankets and pillows, I pulled one up to my shoulder.
I backed out of Tetris and opened up a game called ‘Alien Shooter’, and my eyes widened.
This was the pew-pew game I used to play all the time in the ice cream shop where I grew up.
They had a Pacman arcade, and this shooter alien arcade thing.
I giggled a bit as I killed the little alien dots on the screen.
“God, that sound.”
His voice startled me out of my trance, and I jerked as a small gasp fell from my lips.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said as I leaned over a bit, peering through the small slitted crack in the closet door. “It’s just nice to hear you doing something other than screaming and crying.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “You owe no apologies. I’m glad that you’re getting a little more comfortable.”
“I’m trying, I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
“Hey,” he said softly before I heard his office chair creak.
I watched his body disappear before his shadow came into view through the grated cracks in the folding wooden door that his closet had.
I watched as he crouched down and lowered his voice. “You don’t owe apologies for anything. I hope you know that.”
I nuzzled down against my pillow. “I know.”
“After everything you’ve been through, you deserve your emotions. So you feel them however you need to feel them.”
He’s so strange. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he said before I watched his shadow stand up.
I kept my eyes on as much of him as I could until I saw him sitting back down in his office chair. He peered over at me, and I could’ve sworn there was a grin underneath the beard that he donned.
Why did I care?
I never heard a man say the things he said before.
His words were kind, and he said them with such conviction that I almost believed them.
I wanted to say something back to him. I wanted to come up with a magical set of words that would somehow thank him for everything he and this group of guys had done for me.
For us, really, since according to his ramblings, I wasn’t the only woman they saved from this ‘syndicate.’
My stomach rolled at the word.
It felt like I should have said something to him, but I was a librarian, once upon a time.
We weren’t good with words. We were good with books.
We worked in a place that didn’t require so many words.
We read them, sure. But reading them and putting them into practice were two different things in a librarian’s world.
I just snuggled back down against my pillows and blankets and went back to blasting little alien dots out of the sky.
For a while, when I first got to, well, wherever the hell I was, I was so wary of him. So wary of his presence. He came and checked on me every once in a while, just standing in front of the closet, like he saw right through it. And at those moments, I held my breath.
At least, I used to.
But I grew accustomed to his presence. He became a bodyguard of sorts.
He brought me all my meals. He didn’t let anyone talk to me.
If I ever got startled, I could always count on him to speak up and say something about it.
He tailored everything around me as much as he could, and sometimes, I thought I was dreaming.
Sometimes I expected to wake up in the mornings and be back in my cell.
Or strapped to one of those beds.
Or dangling from the ceiling.
I shivered at the thought.
But his presence was something I sought solace in.
It felt like no one could get to me so long as he was around, and I liked that feeling.
Everyone had access to me back where I was held captive, and I mean everyone.
It felt nice, being in the presence of a man that didn’t want to touch me.
Every time he left for something called ‘church’, however, I felt vulnerable.
Every time he left to go get me a meal, I curled up into a ball and stayed completely silent until he was back.
Even just his trips to the bathroom made me tense until I heard the toilet flush.
Over the course of my time in this place, I found that I didn’t like it when he left me alone any longer.
Though I knew sometimes he just had to.
A man’s gotta poop, you know?
I giggled to myself again as I killed the boss in the alien shooter game that I was playing, and he chuckled back in kind.
I liked that sound. It was rough, like tires over gravel, but it had a lightness to it that reminded me of the sun.
When I yawned, I knew it was time to plug the charger in.
I exited out of the game and used the phone as a light so that I could find the outlet he had spoken about.
And when I found it, I got the phone plugged in before I scrolled through other applications that were downloaded onto the burner phone.
I found one called ‘sleeping sounds.’
I opened it up and found all sorts of things.
Café sounds. Ocean sounds. Thunderstorm sounds.
Forest sounds. I could merge any of them.
I could pick which sounds I wanted louder than the others.
And after adjusting a few settings and testing some things, I settled on a nice ocean sound with rain pitter pattering in the background.
Something nudged through the crack of the closet door. I stared at it for a long moment before I recognized what it was. A tennis ball, slightly worn, the felt gone soft with use. It sat there in the thin strip of light, just inside the door, like it had been placed rather than rolled.
I heard the weight of something large settle against the other side of the door.
I gathered up enough courage and slowly reached for the ball and pushed it outside the crack of the door.
As I let go of the ball and started to bring my hand back, the same massive dog I’d seen before licked my fingers quickly and laid down.
I sat there for a while listening to the dog breathe as he fell asleep.
I couldn’t explain why but having the dog’s presence there made me feel just a little bit safer.
Once I settled down, I was out within seconds.