He grabbed my chin, and tugged my face toward his, jerking my neck back at a horrible angle. “I can make that happen if you’d like.” He smiled with a perfect set of pearly whites.
I choked and started screaming again.
The woman started barking at the man in Russian so that I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t hard to comprehend, though when the man slammed my body against the wall next to the stairs, face first, and stuffed a rag in my mouth. I tried to move, to make it to those rapid gunshots, but with my hands handcuffed behind my back, I wasn’t going anywhere. He tied another rag—bandana, maybe—between my teeth and around my head, keeping the rag inside my mouth, muffling my shouts.
He picked me up over his shoulder and started racing after the woman who had disappeared down the stairs, instead of up to my escape. I bounced on his shoulder, wiggling, so my ribs took the brunt of it instead of my stomach. And looked around the dark area. We had gone through some door, and it appeared as if we were still in the heart of the city, going through old subway tunnels of some sort.
No matter how hard I fought to get free or tried to surprise the man holding me, he hung tight, never once faltering on his grasp on me. After a half hour, I was ready to pass out from all the jostling and my head being upside down, the blood rushing the wrong way.
I was so dizzy. I barely noticed when it felt like we were going up in jerking motions. I blinked and realized that we were. He was climbing a ladder with me still over his shoulder. Someone gripped my hips and I groaned as I was lifted into the night, above ground.
The woman said something in Russian to a new man in a mask, and I glanced around dizzily. We were in a dark alley. I was thrown into a trunk of a car, hitting my head again, enough to have my vision blur completely as the trunk was slammed shut.
I was pretty sure I had lost my other contact as I regained consciousness. I rolled around in the trunk as it drove to hell. I searched the best I could, trying to find one of those buttons you always hear about in the movies that release the trunk door, but not everything in movies is true. Case in point, this fucking car didn’t have one of those buttons or handles.
I was jostled for an undetermined amount of time. The road was smooth for a while, but after some time, I could tell we were driving on a gravel road. I could hear the crunch of it under the tires and pings as tiny rocks hit the underside of the car. And they drove. And drove.
And my fury built. And built. Higher and hotter like an inferno.
They wanted what belonged to Daniil and me. They wanted my babies. My babies that were growing strong and healthy inside me. Against all the risks. They were healthy and mine.
When the car stopped, I pushed onto my back and waited. As soon as the trunk started to open, I took in a deep breath through my nose since my mouth was still bound, and kicked up as hard as I could. I heard a deep shout as the trunk caught whichever man in the face, and I kicked again, pushing and rolling out of the trunk.
My landing was what did me in. I could have had a chance to run, but I landed funny on my arm. I heard the pop even as I felt my left forearm snap, the bone just breaking like a twig under the fall. I screamed, the sound muffled, even as my forehead thumped on the gravel road.
A slew of curses—they had to be—in Russian were being hurled at me as the man I had hit held his face and the woman came around the side of the car. Tears were rolling down my cheeks as I saw her boots stop right in front of my face.
I choked, trying not to pass out from the pain as she bent down and asked sharply, “Trying to run? Pathetic attempt.”
I was lifted off the ground when the other man came over, the woman talking with the hurt man in Russian. She said something in Russian to the man holding me, and his grip on me changed. Landing right on my hurt arm. It was too much. Before I could even look around to see where we were, the pain took me under and I passed out for the third time today.
Isolation. Completely and utterly cut off from the world. Never had I…
I stared into the darkness. Once upon a time, I had joked with Daniil, my love, about a third world prison for an insane man. And now I lay in a room far worse.
How long I had been here…I had no clue. There were no windows. I had checked in the darkness. The walls were made of solid stone. I had checked in the darkness. There was no lightbulb on the ceiling that was only five feet high. I had checked in the darkness.
The room was small. Maybe seven feet by eight feet. It had a tiny door that I envisioned Alice in Wonderland might have used when she was shrunk. The only light shined around the edges when I assumed it was daylight outside. It reminded me of a room I had once seen on a job. A ‘bomb room’ as the old, filthy rich man had proudly told me. Just in case WWIII ever occurred, he would be safe. I had thought him crazy. The only one of his kind…well, except for the President of the United States since he had a whole mountain for that.
But now, I knew that I had been wrong.
Someone else was just as crazy as that old fart.
And it was my prison.
I lay on my side and didn’t bother trying to move from the cold stone. There was no comfort here. I had been stripped bare, naked, with only a blanket for warmth. On that first night, the man who had threatened to fuck me threatened again to rape me as he tore my clothes off, saying it would keep me from running again.
I had felt such fear that night, almost grateful when the woman had come into this small room, stopping the man’s taunts and actions. He hadn’t gotten close to raping me, but if she hadn’t walked in, he probably would have. Terror. I had felt terror.
Now, I felt nothing.
I wasn’t sure I could remember what terror felt like. I knew I had experienced it, but the memory just wasn’t there. Blinking, watching the room undulate, my stomach growled as I played with a stone on the floor. My shackles—shackles were definitely what they were—clinked with the movement, sounding loud even over the constant stream of Russian music that filtered like Hell’s music through the door, echoing in my cave-like prison.
I knew they did that on purpose. After the first few days, when I had fought the man who lifted me out of the sewer hole and brought in my meals and changed the two buckets in the room—one with water, one for shitting and pissing in—they had started putting music outside the door to slowly drive me crazy. They weren’t too far off.
I squinted, singing along to the song I had heard a million times now, shivering and watching the walls move. I had become an animal of sorts in those first few days. Survival and pissed off fury, my only emotion. When I had emotions. That was why they had bolted the shackles to the walls and put me in them. The chains reached a few feet, but not far enough for me to do anyone harm that came in to change the buckets or set down my two meals a day.
I eventually told them two meals were not enough. Not nearly enough, considering the portions they put on the tiny plate, but they hadn’t listened. Or they didn’t care. The woman told me as she shaved my head again that it was enough to keep the babies strong—and not me. She had been right.
