When He Comes Back

***

He only comes back at night, when the moon turns a blind eye to the happenings inside this prison cell which he calls a room.

He only comes back at night, and when he does, his mood is unpredictable. Yesterday, he was kind and loving. He asked me what I wanted for dinner even though we both know he doesn't trust me enough to make decisions. He put his arms around me and embraced me as if we had a connection, as if I wasn't trapped in this cell with nowhere to escape and no one to talk to but him.

Tonight, he comes back, and he is angry.

I know what it's like to live with an angry man like him. My father and he share an uncanny resemblance; and with men, the anger is always on their shoulders, as if they're carrying this invisible weight of difficult emotion like a yoke on their backs. His footsteps are heavy as he approaches the door and types in the passcode on the keypad, and soon his aura overtakes the quiet semblance I've created in the cell while he was away.

He's silent as a stone on the edge of a river, but there's a flood inside him. A flood that, against my better judgment, I have an urge to calm.

"How was your day?" I ask, deciding to break the agreement we had that I wouldn't speak unless spoken to. When he's angry, I can get away with little things like that as long as I'm catering to him.

"Horrible," he says. "I nearly cut off my finger on the machine in the factory." It is now that I notice the white cloth wrapped around his pointer finger. It is stained with crimson.

"Let me see," I offer.

He knows I don't mean any harm, but he is apprehensive anyway. I don't see a reason for this behavior. It is I who should be apprehensive, having just been greeted by my enraged captor. It is I who should have the right to be on edge, having not seen the light of day in three months and six days. I rely on the lone window on the ceiling of the cell to get me by, but I do not pretend that it is enough.

He settles on the loveseat while I sit on the floor at his feet. He unwraps the cloth and I can see a long, deep gash extending from the pad of his finger to the large knuckle.

"Don't touch it," he snaps as I reached to cradle his finger in my palm.

"I'm sorry."

He quirks a brow at me, his mouth pulled into a tense frown.

I messed up. I deserve the whip.

"I'm sorry, sir," I correct myself.

He grumbles something I cannot hear and stands up, stepping over me and walking over to the kitchen sink where he washes off his finger with water. He does not place a bandage on it. That's my job, and he is angry. So I will suffer watching him suffer, and he will punish me because today he is angry.

Like most days of the week, I know that tonight I will make good friends with the whip.

***

It has been five months and twelve days since the day I tasted the tape on my mouth and felt the tools in his trunk clash against my body as he drove the red pickup truck. Five months, twelve days, one hour since I made it here to the Room, to the cell, in a location that not even God knows of. If God were here in this place, I wouldn't meet the whip or have bruises on my chest or be greeted with fluctuant acts of kindness and fury by my captor. God is not here, and I am alone.

He does not count as company. He is a man. A man with graying hair and a face so pale and sunken in that out of the corner of my eye, he looks like a skeleton.

I am a skeleton too. I have not eaten properly in so long, and the grumbles of my stomach have become both white noise to me and a pleasure for him to hear. He likes to watch me suffer. No part of my five months, twelve days, and one hour here has been consensual. I am a skeleton and soon I will disintegrate into the dust that streams through the beams of light granted to me by the Window Above.

***

When the police come, it has been twelve months, fifteen days, and seven hours since the cell became my home. When the police come, that thin veil between the real and the metaphorical is shattered like the glass of the Window Above. He lies unconscious under the window and the beams of light shine delicately upon the delicious crimson blood careening from his skull. When the police come, I am a silent mess and reality tastes like a long-lost song, like a word on the tip of your tongue that you just cannot remember.

The police lights flash and I am having flashbacks until I remember that it has only been two minutes since I bashed his head in with the help of a fork and my own two fists, so "flashback" is perhaps not the right word. I am simply reflecting on the memories of the cell, the Room, as it has made itself known to me. Fresh air tastes like the jewels on Heaven's gate and perhaps God was here all along and I was simply closed off from him by the man with the traumatic head wound.

Trauma is a difficult word, but here, it is appropriate.

The police are angels bounding from the gates of heaven and the badges on their uniforms gleam somewhat maliciously because I think to myself, how has it taken them this long to find me? Yes, trauma is certainly an appropriate word because I have left all the pieces of myself back in the Room and as the chilly wind bites at my exposed hands, I realize that I, standing here, having nothing left to my name. All the pieces of myself have been consumed by him and by that malignant Room and even by the Window Above, which is now covered by yellow police tape. They inspect the Room and I cannot help but feel the need to lock myself back in it just for the chance to recover my identity again.

Because he made himself my identity. He did so when he put the tape over my mouth and when he drove carelessly so that the tools in his trunk gave me bruises and when he used the whip on my skin and left scars. I carry him with me in every step I take. His actions are permanently marked on my skin, and I cannot move, I cannot move. I killed him, I killed myself and not even the Window Above can show me what it's like to have everything and suddenly have nothing at all.

Trauma. They say it like a prayer, with hushed tones and tearful eyes. Their lips taste the tragedy of my situation and I am drowning in it and I can feel the dirt under my hands when I fall. They loom over me, the police, and their badges taunt me like children on a playground.

I will never recover from this, never recover from the questions they ask me and what the description of my situation sounds like said aloud. I cannot bear to see the flashes of blue and red lights because the red looks like his blood and oh God, where have you been?

What have you done to my reality?

***