I look over my shoulder, my vision blurry with tears as I try to locate Otis.
“Otis?!” I scream.
The warehouse helps in screaming his name too.
“Silence!”
Now, the metal walls ring with Conrad’s voice. Each replay makes me wanna shrivel up and die.
“You’re a naughty girl, Carmen. You’re also very lucky.”
Conrad is talking to himself. I’m not listening to a word. Otis is here somewhere and I need to find him. My arms are chained, not my legs. So I need to focus on using them.
I run into the darkness like a chicken with clipped wings.
And then the darkness throws me back. Wait…no. One of Conrad’smenis throwing me back. There have to be at least thirty of them here. They materialize out of nowhere and stride forward to form an intimidating semi-circle around me.
Conrad grabs my chains and pulls me back toward him. “Everybody’s luck runs out eventually.” He extends his vision past me to snap his fingers at one of his nameless men.
The man disappears into one of the shipping containers, the metal clunking of something grabbing my attention. Wheels grind against the floor, growing louder until the mysterious object being dragged against the floor makes it out of the shipping container.
Otis.
They strapped my two year old to a chair and taped his mouth.
Tears fall from my eyes, blurring my vision. But I still see Otis strapped to some deadbeat office chair that’s probably hosting several diseases. His hair is messed up, black in parts, like they’ve dipped the ends in soot.
He doesn’t have any bruises, and there are no medical emergencies I need to worry about, but his eyes take my heart and crush it to a thousand pieces. He looks hopeful. As soon as he sees me.
“Mommy!”
I know what he’s saying even though I can’t properly hear because of the tape. He thinks I’m coming to save him.
My pulse stammers, knocking the life out of me. Would it be so bad to collapse onto the floor and surrender?
Ummm. Yes when your son is counting on you to keep it together.
Since I’m unable to wipe the tears from my eyes, I resort to a squinting technique and hope the O’Neills don’t think I’m too crazy.
Because they seem to like crazy.
I was running around on stage desperate to make myself look like a convict, and all Conrad could think wasmineas he stuck his blackboard into the air.
“Mommy!” Otis yells again through the tape.
“It’s okay, buddy. I’m not gonna let them hurt you.”
“No,” Conrad says. “You’re not.” He gives me another one of his foul looks. The kind of look that makes you wanna tear the skin away from your bones.
“I’m giving you what you want,” I tell him. “Now let Otis free. This is no place for a two-year-old.”
“Do you think of me as some kind of fool?”
I go to fold my arms over my chest but realize I don’t even have the freedom to give Conrad poor body language. He has taken that right away from me.
The first of many, I suspect.
I ignore the fear that’s creeping back into my gut and play dumb, even though the voice inside of me knows all.
