The Boy From The Bedroom

Chapter One

It’s my thirteenth birthday today. Mum said I’d get a cake, but she never keeps her promises - like the time she swore I’d get to leave this room. I think Mum is sick. I was grounded six years ago for using the telephone. Our little Labrador Maxy was yelping from upstairs. 

I wish I could cuddle him. It’s lonely in these prison walls. There’s a hollowness in my stomach for some reason. I eat plenty of honey soaked sandwiches everyday, but it’s like an empty wishing well. My tears stopped bucketing from my eyes years ago. I could have showered in them to wash off this toxic urine that has caused tiny potholes in my leg. 

In the ghostly, cold nights I hear the faint echoes of screams. They sound so real that the hairs on my body perk up. I yank the sheet over my head and clench my eyes so I can’t see through it. The voices distract me from the rotting cabbage effusing from the linen.

Chapter Two

I hear a thump! It sounds like someone fell on the floorboards in the hallway. Needles prick my bloodstream. My face feels purple. Mum and I are the only people in the house, I think, I hope! I’m terrified of strangers — they’re not friendly.

There’s a scar that traces my spine. I can only just see it when I twist my neck to the point it might snap. The gore has dried to the carpet. 

A year ago, Mum’s boyfriend bashed down the door but stumbled over the mattress that was leaned up against it. When he tripped, his dagger outstretched and sliced me deep. He was drunk. I think it irritated him because he snarled at Mum when she caught him harassing me. She protected me, but still repressed me. I wish I knew what I had done so wrong.

I tiptoe to the tiny peephole I dug in the wall with a syringe. I snuck it in my pant pocket when I was permitted to use the bathroom. It was sitting on the basin; she wouldn’t notice — she has too many to keep track of.

To my nightmare, laying lifeless in front of my door, the body of Mum. I feel a sense of freedom. My empty wishing well poured buckets of tears down my face. I loved you Mum. I know you were just sick!

I grab the syringe and quietly penetrate the plaster to enlarge the peephole. It takes a few days with all my strength, to make a noticeable impact. My stomach is turning inside out. I’m starving and I’m paranoid there’s someone in the house. I have to be nifty if I want to get out alive. My limbs and bones almost scramble to fit through the hole. I grit my teeth to keep the sorrow from spewing onto Mum’s corpse. I sneak to the front door. The lock clinks abruptly and I hear a roar from upstairs. My heart is a hungry beast in a cage. My perspiring hands fiddle to turn the doorknob. The footsteps of a caveman pound the staircase. Come on stupid door. For what feels like the first time in my life, a stroke of hot sunlight. It fists my face. I sprint half blind toward the neighbours house. It’s separated by acres of meadow. My joints are feeble. My tongue is coughing desert sand. 

A horse starts galloping up behind me. I don’t turn around — I need to hide. 

“HEY KID! YOU ALRIGHT?”

I didn’t recognise the voice. Glancing at the parameters front and back of me, my footsteps slow. I mouth, Help Me! My voice felt numb. The horse neighs. The ranger hops off. I tremble as I explain the situation. He frantically calls emergency on the device he pulls from his cargo shorts. He unscrews a bottle cap and encourages me to drink. A car blares down toward us from my house. The driver cusses and the tires screech around the bend, out of sight. 

Chapter Three

“You saved my life,” my voice shakes as I lay infirm on the hospital bed.

Police interrupt and ask for permission to interrogate me. I explained that a random man locked me in a room for weeks and I suspected he killed my Mum. I saw her laying lifeless at my bedroom door when I finally managed to escape using a syringe. 

After the party left, I lay unpeacefully alone with the tunes of a beeping monitor. I feel isolated knowing there is no one to collect me. No one knows me. I’ll be sent to live with strange kids.

I hate strangers. The ranger returns to give me a bowl of fried rice. It’s mouth watering. The doctors offered me a sandwich earlier, but I strongly declined saying I wasn’t hungry.

The ranger was nice to me. A concept that was distorted in my mind. 

“The name is Henry.”

He reaches his hand for a hand shake. I stare at him in confusion. 

“This is a handshake.”

He firmly grips my hand and gently shakes downwards once. Is this a gesture of love? 

I stayed at the hospital for a few days. They told me I was dangerously malnourished. I didn’t answer any of their unimportant personal questions. They asked about the massive scarring. I blamed Mum’s boyfriend, but it wasn’t their business. 

Henry would visit a few times out of his own will. He kept me updated with the news about the incident. Apparently they arrested a man who they suspect held me hostage. I was in the centre of media attention.

This story would go down in the history books if they knew what really happened.

Chapter Four

My final day in hospital, they signed me up to an orphanage. I told Henry when he visited. He ambled up to the front office. My curiosity soon followed after him, now that I was moving fluidly. My joints felt like they had been oiled. I caught a glimpse of their conversation. As I approached the counter, Henry smiled down at me. 

“Thanks ladies.” 

“What’s happening?”

“I have a present for you.”

He told me to wait here. He turned multiple corners, I think he was heading to the carpark. I sat on my bed twiddling my toes. He appeared with two hands behind his back and a sneaky grin. 

“Ta-Da.”

He held a few documents in front of me. I couldn’t read them. My face went blank. 

“You’re adopted… by me.”

Tears leaked through the barricades of my eyelids. I had never had someone to call ‘Dad.’ It had always been Mum and me. 

For the upcoming weeks I was in and out of the police station, until they finally had all the evidence to indict the abductor. It turned out to be Mum’s boyfriend. I stood by my initial statement.

The press eventually stopped bothering us after a year or so. Thank goodness because I had bad anxiety around people — I passed out once. Henry decided it was best that I get home schooled. He set up an area by the back sliding door so I wouldn’t feel claustrophobic. 

Every so often I’d be referred to the psychiatrist for my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Often in the night I’d think I hear screams and jolt out of bed and pound on the door to get me out. Henry looked exhausted — I knew I was a load to manage. I felt guilty I put him through this.

Coming up to my eighteen birthday, the PTSD would settle. Henry’s wrinkles would start to roll out. He was effervescent again. He paid for me to get a tattoo on my eighteenth. In handwriting across my chest, his name. This attracted the media’s craving to capture the heartfelt story. I later read about it in a newspaper and my heart lifted.

Chapter Five

It’s been three years now. I’m studying visual arts. It soothes the nightmares when I can pour my feelings like paint, onto a canvas. Thanks to the press, I was able to become a well recognised artist adored by millions. People seem aggressively interested in the insights of what life was like as a hostage — they’re my most sold paintings.

Henry passed away a few months ago from heart failure. He was supportive — clapping at my successes, and raising me up during my downfalls. I tried to hold in the tears, as I sat with my face in my palms. I filled myself with gratitude. I have countless paint smeared portraits, crafted from memory. He was my hero and put more effort into me than one could ask for. I’ll never be able to return the favour. 

At twenty-one years old, I’ve learnt a lot about moving on. When the voices are wildin’ in my head, I stare at the colourful portraits of Henry. Screaming turns to giggling and it feels like I have a friend.

To this day, eight years later, not one person knows what truly happened to me… except Henry.