Chains

                                                          C          H          A         I         N         S

                I was dreaming. But when I awoke and went to open my eyes it was dark. I went to touch my face but found my hands were restrained behind my back. Did one of them prick me with a needle while I slept? Now I was blindfolded and bound and felt an arm guiding me blindly over a rocky terrain. My shoes struggling to keep hold of the earth. Stones bounced away from my scraping unsteady gait and the drumming in my ears was louder than my breathing. I felt like I would slip more than once but all those times I was held steady and pushed to keep going. It felt like a mile walk and a new surface greeted my feet. Up three steps. I heard the creaking of boards. Wood. Then the sound of jingling. Keys. Another creak. Door. Click. Light. Below my blindfold I saw a halo of it while a scrap of carpet winked through the pea sized peephole I had. The older one lift the cloth from my eyes and I took a minute to blink away the brightness and blurry edges of my vision.

                My first thoughts were for Hinata. The youngest once had he thrown unconscious over his shoulder, she was probably drugged again. I gathered perhaps she had awoken and panicked or they had administered a drug into our system as we slept on the way. But I didn’t feel the after effects of any drug that was meant to subdue ones muscles. My limbs weren’t heavy, my head foggy, and I certainly didn’t have a hard time coming back to myself. One of them had delicately fastened my hands and tied off the cloth around my eyes. Perhaps it was the younger one who could glide room to room silently with those heavy boots of his. I could imagine those secretive willowy fingers managing the capability to tie silent and swift sailor knots.

Up the stairs in a strange house. Down a carpeted hall with gold walls. Through a door. And a snip to my bindings, a lock of the door, and the receding sounds of his footsteps and I was left by myself for the first time in days.

                The room was quaint. It wasn’t filthy or a crack house. This house was tended to. Perhaps a safe house the pair could duck down in when going about their business. I barely had to wipe away the dust from the window. I didn’t have a view to the front of the house, whichever angle I was exposed to is trapped by the huddle of thick brush and trees. We were somewhere in the wilderness. This was a foreign animal to me. Something I rarely dealt with. I was a city dweller. Put a doctor whose only swam within a sea of people, in the middle of an actual ocean, she may just drown. I laughed bitterly to myself. No. No sense in going mad just yet. I wasn’t equipped to know how to survive in the forest. I wasn’t ignorant of the dangers that lurked through the rib of the trees at the heart of the dark wood. I could run. But what if there was no civilization for miles and miles? I would starve or be food for another animal. Sensible thing was to hold my ground here.

                There were copious incidences where I had to be present when the police swooped in for rape cases to make sure they handled my patients with sensitive prodding’s. Always they would go too far and press the still raw shock and my patients would lash out or shut down. The framework of their questioning was quite similar. Like us medics, who follow our own silent knowing and speak in our practices language that outsiders had no clue as to what it was we were relaying to one another, so too had they. The police and detectives has a rapport that involved getting to the facts. So here was what I could ascertain from those conversing’s: details matter. So I took inventory.

                Okay Sakura. This is just like taking stock of the medicine that’s left in the “chill room”.  

                Victorian style home given the shape of the windows, but altered obviously to ban ones escape. The drill holes to the bars outside the panes seem to be newly drilled. Faded paint by the natural sunlight, has thick coats of cranberry red. The archways that hold the room up also support my theory that the house is Victorian. They give sharp angles and the higher walls that open the space up too are a dead giveaway. There’s been minor touches of repair that’s been done over the years. Such as the faint scratch marks in the far corner of the wall by the door have been layered with thick swatches of newer cranberry but fail to evenly conceal the indents someone’s nails made. I shudder at the thought. Someone was here---someone who probably was in my situation and wanted to get out. How long did this stranger that I sympathized with reside confined in these quarters? I hug my own frame a little tighter subtracting into myself. Keep going.

                Mattress---they have serial numbers that can be tracked. If I could rip the tag off then if I got out of here I could give it to the police so they could catch these rat bastards. I made careful work fitting my fingers under the folds looking over every inch of the rectangular plush block and found nothing. Just the very sharp precision of a knife or scalpel that left a stunted torn edge where the tag was sewn in. Clever. I had a working bathroom and sink so at least if I got thirsty I could cup my hands under the tap and use them as a makeshift cup. I could also relieve myself and shed the thin sheen of mud and sweat on my skin. I look in each crevice for a camera. I test it by shutting the lights off looking for a blinking red light. They could be the size of a fly and hidden or shaped into virtually any spot. But I was hoping due to the lack of my findings that I was entrusted with my privacy.

                I had avoided looking in the mirror long enough. Yet---even as I steeled myself I knew that the woman who would look back at me would be---this vulnerable pathetic thing that two men caught by chance. Had I been more careful in Hinata’s apartment we could’ve avoided this whole travesty. I knew this feeling well. Travesty. I had viewed it so many times in my patients, now here it was presenting itself to me. It was easy to give encouraging words to them when I wasn’t wracked with it…but this sensation was bridling and sickening. No one was here to urge it away with contact. No generously warm hand upon my back, no hands reaching to get me back on my feet, and no soft soothing words that would get me through to tomorrow. I felt like a pile of garbage. A heaping lump of helplessness. I was not part of the plan. I had to keep reminding myself of this solely because my fate with the two brothers was still undecided.

                Hinata---I had to trust that there was a grander plan for her than to be tortured or harmed. After all they went to the trouble of making sure she got here after all and didn’t threaten to mame her. So assuming my hypothesis is correct, she should remain untouched until these two assholes achieve whatever their real target is. It was obvious they wanted to tap into Hinata’s family fortune and who could blame them? She was after all a vulnerable target living on her own and her family had a vast expanse of relatives but they were protected by hired hands. I had been to many gala’s and charity events where I witnessed the crazy spectacle that was performed when they made their introductions when mingling.

                Despite the sleep I got, there was still a heavy weight in my bones. It wouldn’t be productive just to pace about waiting for them to come through the door, they might not even reenter the room today. So I did what I felt was logical and tried coming back to civilization by bathing until all the knots in my muscles smoothed out, and my inner center was aligned. As I lumber to the bed and collapse on the dusty topping of the comforter I imagine all the ways this could’ve been prevented. Somewhere in my tumble of thoughts I fell asleep and by the time the faint buzzing and humming in my head came back to me the sun was rising just outside my window. So I was on the east side of the house.

                I thumbed through the stocked closet sniffing at a few articles noting they looked worn and already used. I refused to wear garbs that were in the service of others before me. The cloying scent of softener and detergent was fresh enough to note that the clothes were washed and dried but the stench of fear and sweat within them couldn’t be so easily masked. The sharp click of the lock turning against my dubbed door drew my attention away from the closet. My nerves were already rattled but seeing that smug face of the younger brother somehow managed to renew the stinging irritation that tug on the nerve endings. Within the spans of his fingers the tips held up a tray as he worked the door with his free hand.  

                There was a primitive grunt that came from the permanent scowl of his lips. This man seemed to only speak in the Neanderthal language and used the edge of his lips often to narrate his sharp canines that lay at the curve of his mouth to express his irritation. It was me who should exude those feelings, not him. If I was so inconvenient then he should dispose of me instead of acting like I was a stain on his clothing.

                “You’re awake early.” I got the feeling even if I did answer him that would be as far as the conversation went. It was more a statement to regard me with the distain he felt while carrying out his chore. God forbid I needed to eat. I made sure to keep my distance while he set the platter on the nightstand. The contents made my stomach curl with a new fury of hunger since the fast food feast a day ago. Proper nourishment glistened in the yoke of the sunny side egg, and within the crumbling wheat of the toast still crackling with melted butter and heat, and of course the rich scent of bubbling fat on the bacon hit the small pit where my hunger always clawed. My stomach giving a defiant growl of need. I felt my lips dryly pucker wanting to wrap around the glass of orange juice sloshing around with ice cubes beneath its pulpy surface. His dusky eyes lingered on the open door to the bathroom. Moisture still clung to the walls sweating against the warmth the room provided. There was a faint perfume of jasmine that I used to scrub over my body until the soothing scent lulled me to sleep.

                “Next time turn the vent on. And---you should change into something else.”

                “I like my clothes just fine thank you very much.” I turned away from the incompetent ape turning my nose up at him. Moments later the door closed and the lock fastened back in its place banishing me back in my room alone. I got to work deleting the contents on my plate reveling in the tended care whoever cooked this had made. The effort of the fluffy white of my egg, the melted butter that didn’t cling in a cold spread which usually was raked with the outlining teeth of the knife, and the bacon which edges were deliciously brown and crisp.

                People need contact. This law is absolute. It doesn’t have to be physical, it can be a simple exchange of conversation, or just lingering in a room, but we need it. That was one of the reasons why most terrible people were cut off from it. Why people went insane and were pushed into padded cells. Why it was one of the cruelest forms of punishment. Isolation leaves you alone to your thoughts and despite studies and tests the darkest corner of your mind will eventually claw their way to the front of one’s mind. I was stuck on a spin cycle that was ruthlessly tumbling me around. It was a week since my confinement and only the youngest came in to swap out the trays and replace it with platefuls of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He didn’t linger, he didn’t speak, he only cast me dubious stares and took his leave not bothering to tell me when he was supposed to snuff me out.

                The days had begun to blur together and I lost track of which day of the week it had been. I was becoming numb. I was slowly going insane! Finally on the tenth day I shed my pride and initiated the first move to have contact. I was so bold as to snag my fingers on his sleeve. Half out of my mind I realized what I had done and was trying to rationalize why I even bothered to do that. Maybe Hinata was stronger mentally than I was being but---I just needed something, even if it was a scrap to use!

                My eyes danced up the sleeve of his arm. I met his eyes and saw the irritation on his face. A sculpted brow was raised, and those damned lips were threatening to curl into a snarl. Did I really lower myself to the dredges just to talk with a man that couldn’t be bothered with me? A man that touched every fiber of my being infusing it with pure hate that I had stooped so low as to want his attention? Nothing could mask my own self-loathing not even this creep could eclipse it. My fingers twitched in the folds of his sleeve and my throat felt parched. The words were bogged down in my larynx thanks to me not using my voice for a full week. What should I do? I felt a bead of sweat form against my temple and I couldn’t look him in the eye. Only the floor beneath our forearms.

                “What?” He grated dryly. There was nothing I could do to right the situation I put myself in. More than anything I wanted to crawl under the bed and wither away into a dried husk. The seconds I wasted stretched into an uncomfortable length and finally I got my guts to force the words free from its dam.

                “Stay.” Stay?  Really? Where did that submerged word even rise from? What depths did it drag its miserable belly from? Now the gap in this bitter floundering display was even more degrading than before. I expected him to complete his ensemble with that signature scowl of his but I saw something flash through his eyes. Pity? Now I reared back disgusted. I didn’t want his pity nor did I need it. How dare he lecture me in the ways of loneliness with nothing more than a speculative passing glance. I dropped his sleeve sitting back on the bed dreading the time I would hold by myself in but a few more brief moments. Self-torture would be easy and natural. I was a weak whimpering little girl once begging my father not to go out the door for work and felt a fire barrel through me when I was in school. I crawled to get my degree and pushed through the pain and insomnia that came with drowning in papers and essays. I remember the crude bunching nerves of my fingers when I pushed passed the pain to get the last lines of my chemistry homework done. That was far easier than stomaching what I had done now.

                I was a doctor. I stomached all sorts of laserations, gaping wounds, gashes, plugs peppered and embedded in the skin, and nothing was more strenuous than my will that had slipped away from me in a momentary lapse of weakness and clouded my judgement. All for what? A few seconds of this scums time?

                “You wanna stretch your legs?” He banned eye contact. His eyes sweeping off of me and to the corner of the room. His words crucified me in sharp nails that impaled my conceit. I could feel the terrible twitching aching in my palm to slap that smug expression off his face. But the physical pain in my joints that had grown lax with its new confinement itched to get outside. To take in fresh air, to walk outside of the small square of the room. I refused to acknowledge him further with words so I only nodded but he motioned towards the door. Maybe he was screwing with me. Maybe if he was this slack with letting me freely go out into the hall, at some point he had stopped locking the door. But I heard the deadbolt on the outside turn in place. I suppose I never truly tried the handle, but my depression would only deepen if my theory was true. I got to my wobbly legs, the weight of the used garments subjected me to yielding to the clothing provided for me. Were the past occupants allowed to roam outside?

                There was a path where the brush had been cut and shaved away causing a bald strip in the dirt leading through the winding trees. My hands had been bound behind my back and my lead was held four inches away from me in the younger one’s tightly gripped hold. I hated the fact I was the one who was meant to lead and he had a good advantage watching me. There was a nakedness in being vulnerable like this. True, I should feel some semblance of power being the one to lead the way but it becomes stripped by the weight of bondage and the foreboding feeling that he can eye me as much as he pleases without my knowledge.

                I distracted myself by taking in the sights. The soft glow of orange and yellow fanned its fingers warmly over my cheeks and brow. The saturated earthy smell graced my senses but the slack mud under the structure of my sneaker squelched each step threatening to swallow my foot ankle deep. I stuck to the drier patches already hardened from the burning afternoon sunlight. Fauna laid lazily in the darker curtains of the forest. Squirrels and small chippers skittered across our path more than once and the toe of my boot rolled over the hard shells of fallen acorns that were usual for this time of season. I may be ignorant to the way of surviving the bowels of the woods but I was observant when it came to the change of seasons. Summer liked to shake off its adornments like acorns, pinecones, needles, branches, and other things to let its skin be closer to the surface of the sun to soak up and store vitamin c for the winter that would follow the sparse brief flicker of summer.

                The soles of my shoes were slippery and caked in mud, I felt the wet cold contents of the mud pied earth squish uncomfortably between the jam of my toes. My feet were wet and yearning for a warm shower. The traction no longer connected to the solid ground and I was slipping up more than usual. I felt gravity yanking me to the ground and I knew I was about to eat dirt. I cried out but it was wrung out of me when his arm wrapped around my stomach. My thought was minute but it was a small tell he exposed in that action. It meant maybe I wasn’t going to be totally disposable. Then again this could be a hike to my death.