Writing Wednesday: Taking Zoey

  Small unedited bit from my current WIP.  Let me know what you think.

     I slept though it was fitful.  I had nightmares I couldn’t really remember.  I only remember waking ever so often in a cold sweat although my closet was cold as my captor had not provided me with a blanket and I hadn’t bothered to put my clothes back on.

      I woke to him entering my prison, saying nothing.  He put a lamp on the floor and ran an extension cord out to the rec room.  He turned it on and stared at me for a moment.  He threw a bag to me and said, “Here.”  Then he scanned my quarters and said, “I’m going to work, clean this mess up while I’m gone.  And don’t try anything stupid.  Champ is here just waiting for the chance to attack.”    Then he closed the door, locked it, and left.

     I looked in the bag.  Inside were a pair of pink sweats, some slipper socks, and underwear.  I pulled the underwear out and inspected the package.  He bought the largest size he could find in the girls department.  They were pristine white some with flowers, some striped.  I tossed them aside.  No way in hell was I going to wear those and give in to his perverted fantasies.  I slipped the sweats and slippers on, then started picking up pieces of glass and porcelain and placing it in the now empty bag.

     There were some good sized chunks among the debris.  I began carefully inspecting each piece one by one, searching for the perfect weapon.  I finally found it in a big hunk of glass, curved and broken into a perfect point.  I slid it under my mattress and picked up the remaining fragments.  I put my own clothes inside the bag, never wanting to set eyes on them again, and tied a knot at the top and placed it in the corner by the door.

      I sat for a minute looking around the room now that it was light.  I didn’t really get a look at it when I was tossed in the night before.  I had a wall to my back, a wall across.  Inverted stairs made up my sloped ceiling.  The stairs never meet the floor, it ends in a small crawl space.  There was enough room to lie down in, but not enough to sit up and there was a door around the corner at the end.  I wriggled toward it.  There was no handle, just another crawl space.  I tried to get my fingers between the door and wall and pry it open, but it wouldn’t budge.

     Staring at it for a while, I imagined what was beyond.  Maybe shoe boxes full of photos of him and his daughter in happier times.  Her stuffed animals and clothing packed away in neat obsessive little boxes, tied up with string.   Her dead body.