Trapped

I stayed up most of the night due to Allison's constant crying. Since I was up, I tried comforting her multiple times. When the sun seemed to be rising, he strolled into the room; Allison went ballistic.

"Would you shut up?" he asked her while closing the door. Yet she continued to sob. He marched over to her, and I looked down at my lap. I heard a loud slap. It was a slap across the face. His voice rose in anger. "You gunna be quiet?"

She whimpered a 'yes'.

I wanted to yell at him and defend her, but after these few days here, I learned to keep my mouth shut. He then walked over to me and dropped four pieces of what looked like pumpkin bread onto my lap.

"A little treat. You get to have her share of bread, too." He shot a look over at Allison, satisfaction evident in his voice. He then walked over to my chair and untied my hands. What is he doing? I pulled my hands in front of me to look at them.

I almost lost the little food left in my stomach when I looked at my useless, broken left hand. It just hung, limp and crippled. Two of my fingers were bent in different directions at the knuckles. Dried blood stained my hands. I looked at the deep cuts in my wrists. It reminded me of when I put a small ponytail on my arm for a while: It would leave a impressed, tender, red mark. Except these were ten times more deeper, thicker, and severe, and it stung a lot more.

He came back around and held out two glasses of water. I took only one with my good hand.

It dawned on him. "Right, you jacked up your other hand." With that, he headed towards the door with the second glass of water.

"Can I have the other water?"

God, Allison. Why'd you have to ask that?

"Sure." He walked in front of her, glass in hand. "Open up." I knew where this was going. I looked over to see her opening her mouth. I noticed the tear stains glazed over her face gleamed in the light of the morning sun coming through the window.

Don't, Allison.

He splashed the water in her face as he had once done to me before. She had the same reaction I had, from what I could see. He proceeded to the front of the room, fixing his eyes on me. "In about two seconds, I'm going to tie you up again. You better eat fast. What, you thought I'd leave you in here alone, hands untied?" He pursed his lips and shook his head.

I looked down at the food in my lap and the glass in my hand. Then I looked up at Allison; I felt guilty eating in front of her, but what choice did I have? So I downed the water and scarfed down the pumpkin bread, which was quite stale and bland. Quickly, he tied my hands again and left.

"Sorry," I said, unable to look her straight in the eye.

"Yeah..." There was a long, awkward silence.

Several minutes later, I was looking at my lap when she broke into a panicked-sounding whisper. "Leslie!!!" I looked up from my lap into her face, where I saw Allison, her hands untied-- free-- in front of her.

I replied with only one word: "How?"