Chapter 1 #4
I tried to follow Gideon’s advice about sending my mind somewhere else.
I sent it to the world I used to know. The one where Gideon had gotten the gun turned around in time and shot every one of these men dead.
The one where the sirens came—signaling order and protection and safety—before this horrible man had gotten my pants down.
The one where I was smart enough and strong enough to find a way out, to slip away from all these men and run to another house to call for help for me and Gideon both.
That was the place I went to in my mind—imagining stories of my being saved over and over again—while these men did what they did to me.
It wasn’t over with the one man. There were several men in the room, but not all of them took their turn. Maybe they weren’t interested. Maybe they were worried about the orders not to hurt me. There was conversation going on, but none of it I understood.
In the end, there were three of them.
You get to the point where the mind just disconnects from the body. I suppose it’s a way for us to protect ourselves, to convince ourselves that what happens to our bodies doesn’t really matter.
Everyone with any sense knows we are more than just our bodies, but we are our bodies too. The Greeks were right about a lot of things, but they were wrong about this. Our bodies are part of us—a true part of us—and what happens to them can change the whole of who we are.
Sending your mind away doesn’t really make it better.
I don’t even know if I was conscious the whole time. Maybe it’s a bitter blessing—not to be aware of every detail, for the world to become a nightmare blur.
Afterward, they dropped me back into the room. And it was the strangest thing. That I was back where I started—in this cold, gray room, waiting for the morning when I would be ransomed and when some nameless boss would come to kill Gideon.
He was still there, still lying where I’d last seen him.
It didn’t really take that long. For the bottom to fall out of the world.
I managed to fasten my pants and pull my torn shirt closed over my chest. Then I crawled over to Gideon.
Even in the dim light of the room, I could tell he was in terrible shape. Blood was dripping and smeared all over his face, and one of his eyes was swollen shut.
It was hard to feel anything—anything at all—after what had just happened to me, but I was aware of a glimmer of something that wanted Gideon not to be dead.
“Gideon,” I managed to say. My throat hurt with the one word. I reached out to touch his bloody face.
Slowly he opened his eyes. He made a grunting sound that might have been a question, but I couldn’t understand the word.
There was a torn piece of my shirtsleeve that was hanging on by a thread, so I tore it all the way off and used it to try to wipe the blood off his face. Some of the blood was drying, and I had no water, so I wasn’t really successful.
“What…” This time his grunt took the form of a comprehensible word.
“Are you okay?” I asked. I knew I should care. I did care. He was a good man, and I wanted him to be all right. I just couldn’t make myself feel like I cared. I couldn’t make myself feel anything but numb.
He was still out of it, his mind not really working. “Did they…” he began, clearly trying to focus on my face and make his brain function correctly. He was starting to shift, assessing his condition.
“Yes.”
That was all I had to say. I saw his expression change. If he’d said he was sorry or asked if they’d hurt me or told me I could get through it—if he’d said anything at all—I would have hated him.
He didn’t say anything. He struggled to sit up, and it was obviously hard for him. I helped him mindlessly, mostly because it was a thing to be done.
“How hurt are you?” I asked, still trying to wipe blood off his face after he’d gotten to a sitting position against the wall.
“I’m fine.”
That was obviously a lie. “How hurt are you?”
“Arm broken. A couple of ribs cracked. A concussion.” He spoke tersely, but he wasn’t angry. I’m not sure I would have minded if he was angry. I don’t think it would have broken through my numb stupor.
I kept trying to wipe the blood away, frustrated when some of it was too dried to come off.
“You don’t have to do that,” Gideon muttered, closing his eyes for a moment and breathing deeply.
I didn’t stop.
He reached up and gently lowered my wrist.
I wanted to do it. It was a thing to be done. So I briefly fought his hand.
There was no fight in me though. I wasn’t sure if there would ever be again.
I whimpered and hugged my arms to my belly. I kind of rocked there for a minute.
Gideon sat in silence and watched me. I could tell he wanted to say something, to do something. At one point he reached out to touch me, but he pulled his arm back even before I shrank away.
Eventually a kind of darkness closed in.
A darkness I wanted, one that swallowed up everything that hurt.
I didn’t really pass out, but I lost the edges of consciousness and ended up slumped over Gideon’s lap.
It didn’t feel like he was touching me, and it was a little softer than the hard floor.
Even with his broken bones, he didn’t try to rearrange me.
They found us like that a few hours later when the FBI located the house and burst in to save us.
Just a little too late.