Caged Birds

CONTENT WARNING: This piece includes mentions and descriptions of physical and sexual violence towards children. It deals with trauma. If you are uncomfortable with the aforementioned topics, please do not proceed. Reader direction is advised. This will be your only warning.

One night, I wanted a bird. I wanted to buy a shiny silver cage so it couldn’t escape. I wanted it all to myself.

Several nights later, I gazed blankly at the shafts of moonlight that filtered through a grimy, broken window, its glass scattered on the rotting wooden floors of a soulless room. Every breath I took pulled mold and must into my lungs. Every movement I made triggered a resting stick of dynamite to explode and shoot crippling pain through my small body. Hot tears slid down my cheeks and onto the floor with all the silence of a snowflake…and a dagger sliced through my heart.

How I longed to feel a snowflake in my palm again.

Through the paper-thin walls coated in peeling paint came the languishing whimpers and choked sobbing of another tormented soul, a soul whose face I had never seen in the eternity we’d been captive for, yet I felt I’d known her for my whole short life. Her favorite color was indigo. She preferred cupcakes over cookies because she adored the buttercream icing bakers topped them with. Her favorite season was spring, and she missed the birds that rested in a nest on her windowsill every year. She yearned to hear their twittering and watch the chicks learn to fly again. She told me everything, and, in turn, I did the same.

I shifted my weight to my arms, pushing myself into a sitting position despite the exploding pain that filled each movement. 

“Odette?” I whispered, my exhausted throat burning as I spoke.

Odette forced her sobbing to cease.

“Everleigh,” her quivering voice replied. 

“Why are you crying?” I questioned. 

Odette hesitated, then whimpered, “He has a knife. He pushed it up there.”

“I thought he only had the gun and the baseball bat.”

“So did I! Well, until tonight.”

Silence fell between us. Another sob escaped Odette.

“Everleigh,” she whispered, “I can’t do this.”

“Odette, no!” I nearly screamed as panic flooded my shaking body.

“Everleigh, I can’t! He’s going to kill us. He’s going to torture us, and then he’s going to murder us both. I think—” she choked on her words “—I have to give up.”

“Odette…” A fresh wave of tears spilled from my eyes. My throat burned as a sob bubbled its way up to the surface and broke through my quivering lips. 

“You may have a chance to escape, Everleigh.”

“No!” I pleaded. “Odette, I won’t escape here without you! You need to be with me.”

“Everleigh…”

“Don’t you want to see Rome? The Trevi Fountain? You said it was incredible. You wanted to throw a coin in it to guarantee you would return to the city one day,” I quickly recalled. We’d had the conversation one rainy afternoon when our clothes were still intact, and hope was fierce in our hearts. 

A painful silence fell again. Two light taps sounded on the ground. Odette’s tanned fingers peeked through the little hole where the floor met the walls. I stretched my hand to the ground, using my uncut nails like talons to anchor myself to the woo and pull my body towards the wall. My leg dragged uselessly along the splintering floor behind me as I finally reached the wall. My hand dropped to the floor. My light fingers curled around Odette’s. 

“We’re going to escape,” I whispered, my forehead against the wall, “and when we do, we will be together.”

Odette took in a shaky breath and choked back what I could only assume to be more tears. 

“You can’t promise that, Everleigh,” she whispered back.

“I can. One way or another, Odette, we’ll escape. Together.”

I squeezed Odette’s fingers, and her responding squeeze gave me all the hope I needed.

We were birds trapped in a cruel cage, and we were going to create our own way out.

——

On a moonless night, the door to my prison swung open, banging off the wall and kicking up more splinters on the wooden floor. In the doorframe stood the embodiment of evil— a tall man of thirty-three with dark, unkempt hair, dirty clothing, and petrifying blue eyes. He stormed towards me, his heavy footsteps threatening to make the floor cave in, and snatched me by the arm. His grip threatened to break every bone in that spot. Ruthlessly, he dragged me across the floor as splinters covered my arms and legs. Moments later, I was cast into the air and left to crash down onto broken tile floors and a pile of shattered glass. A cry escaped my lips.

“Listen here, you wretched rat,” the monster growled.

Click. 

“I heard you the other night, y’know? Said you were going to escape, isn’t that right? Said you’d get out of this alive, didn't ya?”

Heavy footsteps slowly came towards me as I struggled to regain some level of balance. My hands were filled with glass and splinters. Warm blood dripped down my face in small streams and stained the shards of glass below me. 

“Well, y’know what I say to that, you little bitch?” 

Cold metal pressed against the back of my head.

“First, I’m going to kill you. Then, I’m going to pump your little friend full of lead!” 

Odette screamed and pounded on the door of her cage, but the monster didn’t turn around. He certainly didn't remove his gun from my head— he shoved it into my skin, forcing me back down onto the glass. He grabbed the collar of my shirt and flipped me over, slamming me into the glass and shattered ceramic of the tiles. 

His zipper came undone.

My ruined sweatpants were pulled off, and my legs were exposed to the cold, stale air. 

“Just one more use out of you, sweetheart,” hissed the monster.

Odette’s screams turned to frantic, shrieking pleas, yet I was unable to respond as I was slammed repeatedly down into the glass. My vision blurred with tears that burned my skin. My body was overwhelmed by pain— pain from the monster, pain from my cries of anguish, pain from the knowledge that the monster would never feel any remorse for what he’s done. He brought a dangerously strong hand up to my vulnerable neck.

I curled my glass-filled hand around his wrist. 

I relished in his disgusting sounds turning into shocked screams. He yanked his hand away, and I snagged my chance to shovel glass and broken tile up to his face as he clawed away at it. I shoved myself into a sitting position and kicked at the sharp pile with socked feet, my grin widening as he fought to remove it from his skin. On the ground in front of him lay the sickeningly familiar jet-black handgun he shoved against my neck, the same handgun that rendered my leg useless. 

Adrenaline traded my pain for a numbing rage, and I dove for the gun.

The monster shouted, but my bloody fingers locked the gun in a death grip. His filthy hands pried at mine. His violent words demanded I release the gun. My shrieks declared I would do no such thing. 

BANG!

The monster howled as blood poured from his chest. 

BANG!

Another window shattered. I was cast up into the air by a filthy claw– the gun was slipping from my grasp! Odette wailed and battered her door. The monster roared, his claws digging into my skin as he tried to retrieve the disgraceful weapon of destruction he’d used so many times before.

BANG!

I dropped like a dead weight into the ruins of a rotted table, and the monster staggered back into a dirty end table, knocking it to the ground. Suddenly, the space was filled with terrified, anguished screams from the monster. The distinct scent of burning infected the air. The rotting wall erupted into flames.

So did the monster.

“Everleigh!” Odette screamed from her room. “Everleigh, fire!” 

My arm hurled the gun far into the other end of the doomed cage. My brain reasoned that it was so the monster couldn’t attempt to use it again. My good leg shoved me up and pulled me away from the monster and the rapidly spreading flames. 

“Everleigh!” Odette’s shouts came again, accompanied by frantic yanking at her doorknob. 

“I’m coming!” I screamed, reaching out to find the entrance to her cage. A metal sphere suddenly touched my palm and, summoning every bit of strength in my body, I pulled. The flames licked at my feet and the remains of my clothing.

“Everleigh!”

“Push the fucking door!” 

POP!

The cage door was open. Odette jumped out, grabbed my arms, and ran full-force to the massive, mahogany front door, the only thing standing between our freedom. 

The monster howled and screeched as the flames devoured him. 

Those same flames raced to engulf the entire prison. 

The pair of us crashed through the door and were sent flying away from the burning prison to tumble into sopping wet grass. 

We watched the flames tear it to nothing, watched the place of our eternity of suffering be devoured by the extraordinary heat and light. The monster’s final cries for help were drowned out in the blaze. 

“We…lived?” Odette managed through her gasps for air.

Hungrily gasping at the clean air, I answered, “Yes,” and burst into tears. I wrapped my arms tight around Odette as tears poured from her eyes. 

That’s how the Red Cross found us, sobbing and hugging in the wet grass as rain began to fall from the sky. We were wrapped tight in a blanket as frantic paramedics tended to this wound and that, and determined cops pushed us for answers to their questions. We answered together each time, but the cops soon gave it up and said something about a follow-up interview. 

I looked at Odette, the only person in this world who would ever understand the horror we faced, and uttered one simple statement:

“You have beautiful eyes.”

——

“Ev, have you seen my sneakers? The ones I bought the other day?” Rebecca called, whipping open the doors to our dorm room’s closet. 

“Top shelf,” I called back. I grabbed one more hoodie off my bed and slid it into my scarlet suitcase. After a final check, I zipped it shut, pulled it to stand, and rolled it to the main door.

“Ah, got them,” Rebecca confirmed, taking down a brown shoebox from the top shelf of the closet, then piped up, “Oh, Ev, make sure you bring your leg charger.”

I snapped my fingers and muttered, “That’s what I almost forgot.”

I returned to my bed and unplugged a thick black charger connected to a large black charging block, the charger for my leg. As I slid it into my carry-on backpack, Rebecca’s voice piped up once again.

“How long did you say you were leaving again?”

“Ten days,” I answered. “I wish I could go longer, but it doesn’t work with our schedules. I’ll be back by Wednesday.”

“Got it. Ugh, I’ll miss you, girly,” Rebecca whined.

“Don’t worry,” I replied, offering a smile. “I’ll be back before you know it, and I’m getting you a souvenir, remember?” 

Rebecca confirmed this for me while I pulled on my backpack and strolled back over to the door. A few moments later, she joined me, car keys jingling in her hand. 

“Got everything?” She questioned, to which I nodded.

“Yes, I do.”

“And all your self-defense gear is in the checked luggage, right? They won’t let you through security otherwise.” 

“Yes, it is,” I sighed. 

I wish I didn’t need it.

“All right,” Rebecca chirped. “Let’s rock and roll!” 

——

All the therapy in the world will never make being alone in a crowded public area feel right. That feeling of true safety died when I was eleven. Rebecca had dropped me at the entrance. I’d gone through the security on my own. The plane was taxiing.

People are looking at me. 

Yes, I’m sure they’re staring at the famous kidnapped eleven-year-old girl who made it out alive with the other missing twelve-year-old girl. No amount of hair dye could change that fact— the news had broadcast our faces for the world to see until our parents demanded they let us properly ‘heal’ from the trauma. 

Yeah, ‘heal.’ 

‘Heal’ like my leg never did. ‘Heal’ like how Odette’s body never could. ‘Heal’ like the nightmares and flashbacks will never allow us to. We were eleven and twelve. ‘Heal’ how? 

Odette, my dearest, I thought with a smile. Your gift is wrapped in indigo wrapping paper– I made it myself to ensure it was perfect— and filled with lilies and sunflowers instead of tissue paper. Those were the flowers you picked at the gardens because their colors were the prettiest. Odette, my light in all of the darkness, I hope you’ll love every bit of the gift.

——

“Everleigh!”

“Odette!”

My suitcase tipped over onto the tile floor as I sprinted into her arms, both of us toppling to the ground with bright smiles and the first genuinely joyful laughter I’d uttered all year. We laughed with our arms wrapped tight around each other, with our minds not giving a good goddamn who was staring and whispering and asking someone if we were the girls who never asked to be famous. When we finally pulled ourselves off the ground, Odette’s smile widened.

“You have beautiful eyes,” she giggled.

“Hey, that was my compliment to you!” I teased, hugging her once again.

“We have so much to talk about!” Odette said, jogging past me to retrieve my abandoned luggage while I grabbed hers off the carousel.

“Yes, yes, we do! Will that be before or after we see the Trevi Fountain?” I asked, to which Odette lit up even brighter than before.

“You remembered!” She exclaimed.

“I told you I’d never forget a single thing you’ve told me, didn't I?” I replied, my vision blurring slightly with the happiest of tears.

Two caged birds had finally been set free.