Captive by Jennifer de Guzman

    One of the things that I think while I sit here is People are going to make a lot out of this, when they find out. And they will find out, there's no way out of that. There's only what it is that they'll find out to wonder about, what kind of story this will be. Will it be a shocking tragedy or an incredible triumph of the human spirit? They have a profile already, no doubt, and it is accurate -- white male, late twenties, early thirties, quiet, unassuming. God, so typical. When they find out about this, when the stories are all over the news, I will be the victim. The victim did not know her alleged... what? There's where the potential words come in -- abductor, captor, sure. But will it end there? Assaulter? They use that word sometimes, as a euphemism, so they don't have to say rapist. Killer? Murderer? And why do they use "her," the possessive pronoun? Because I define him, I realize. What they call him will depend on what happens to me -- what he does to me.
    I think I think about too much while I sit here. But what else is there to do? I think, and I think about what I think, about how I think. About how I can disconnect and see what is happening to me in a cultural context, how I see events as parts of a narrative. I think about details a lot because if I get out of this, I will have to remember. The terror has worn thin, so I notice now that my hands are cold and numb, that my wrists are raw from the rope, that the hard edge of the chair presses into the backs of my thighs, that my legs seem no longer part of my body. He realized I was cold and put a blanket over my shoulders and pulled woolly socks onto my feet, hiking socks, the kind with red tops and red stitching on the toes. He took away my shoes. I am in a basement, definitely, and far away from anything else -- I must be, because he didn't care that I screamed and screamed at first, didn't seem to even notice as he trudged up and down the stairs, hauling down buckets, one empty, one full of water. He did this as if bored, as if doing chores.
    Sometimes I think about how I must not be the only one, that I am in the basement of a serial killer, that I fit some kind of profile myself. He likes to kill a certain type of woman, and I fit that type. That's typical in all sorts of ways, not just of killers but of people. We all have our types, I suppose. I think about how this is such a ridiculous thing to think about when I'm tied to a chair in the middle of the dark concrete basement of a man who doesn't speak to me or even really look at me. Then I think, We all have our ways of coping, and I think it sounds so granola crunchy sunshine and that I must be in some kind of shock because I'm so calm. But if I were in shock, would I be able to think that I'm in shock? Or would I be like the people on TV, shivering under blankets, all blank-faced and pale? Maybe I am. When I think about it, I notice that I am shivering, but that's probably just because it's cold. I think that it's lucky I'm not like Barbara in Night of the Living Dead, who went all hysterical when the dead starting rising and attacking people and eating their flesh, especially when she saw the zombie with the driving gloves who was her brother.
    At this point, I realize that I'm saying very quietly over and over, "They're coming to get you, Barbara!" and I make myself stop.
    Once in a while I think of things that I feel guilty for thinking about because they're not anything I should think about, not in the situation I'm in, like how I can smell myself, a human animal smell, how my hair falls in tangles around my face, how my eyebrows must be atrocious, it's been so long since they've been tweezed. These are things I probably will not share if I tell people about this.
    I think about Stockholm Syndrome, too, and wonder if I could ever come to identify with him, since he doesn't talk to me. I wonder if he can talk. He had a haircut recently. I noticed that and gagged, as if the thought came from my stomach and rose in my throat. Too much like the intimacy of domesticity, little things noticed. I might have said, "Oh, you got a haircut," and he might have answered, "Yeah, at that place near the drugstore. They do a good job for being so cheap." And then I might have said, "I hope you remembered to tip the girl," and he might have gotten indignant and questioned why I thought he was some kind of Philistine, has he ever given me a reason to think he wouldn't tip the girl? And there might have been an argument, one that's not really about tipping or not tipping haircut girls, and we might have said really horrible things to each other, things that eat away at your mind when you think that you were capable of saying such things.
    So when he comes down again with food for me -- slices of apple that he puts into my mouth with his fingers (people will be interested in that, and why not -- a reversal of the myth) -- when he comes near to me, I say to him, "Did you get a haircut?"
    My voice is very thin and dry, rising to a squeak on "cut," a voice that's been all screamed out, all cried out. They're the first words I've said to him in a long time, and the first words ever that aren't a plea. The words feel unnatural coming out. It's not just that I'm talking to him. I've lost the habit of normal conversation, of saying anything I'm thinking.
    He stares at me, shocked and repulsed, as if I've done something amazing and unnatural, like a mass of writhing snakes has fallen out of my mouth instead of just words. His hand, the one holding an apple wedge out to me, trembles then twitches, and he drops the apple. It bounces off my foot onto the floor. We both look at it, the flecks of dirt clinging on the white flesh. He stoops to pick it up, and as he does, he turns his head up to me and nods jerkily, then shudders. He falls onto the floor and curls up, shaking, gasping for air with sounds like, "Huh huh huh huh." He does this for what seems like a long time.
    "Hey," I say.
    He keeps shaking. The plate he brought down lays next to him on the floor. Several apple slices, which I really would like to eat, remain on it. After a while, he stops shaking so violently, twitches, then is still, breathing heavily. Eventually, he gets up, brushes the dirt off his hands on his pants and picks up the plate. He takes a slice of apple and holds it out to me. I don't say anything to him this time. I take the apple with my teeth and chew it without looking at him again. He feeds me all the slices silently, as always, and then leaves, his steps on the basements stairs weary.
    How to explain that? I wonder. How to tell someone that when the man who had grabbed me off the street and tied me to a chair in his basement lay shaking on the ground, my only thought was, Oh god, don't let him die? I am alive because he has not killed me; I am alive because he feeds me. He is the only thing that sustains me. What will they make of that thought? It's not typical, it doesn't fit. It makes me the victim, and the thought makes me cold. Again, I move my wrists in their binds, but the rope only digs deeper and the blanket falls from my shoulders.
    The only way out is to be found, and then have my story the latest in news crawls, all of this either reduced to a sentence or drawn out and scrutinized. What if I had been the one to tie him to a chair in my basement? What would people think about that? I know what they're going to think about this, and it's going to be all the typical things. Once this stops happening to me, it will be something like that, something people talk about, something they tell each other. Is that comforting or not? I don't know.
    But now -- I hold my breath to hear -- now there is a slam and there are heavy footsteps over my head and muffled shouts and crashing and more footsteps and more shouting, clearer now. I don't know if any of the voices are his. Can he speak at all? Make any sound besides the panicked huffing? More footsteps overhead, more shouts. A thud. And then terrible moments of silence before I know I'm saved, they're coming to get me after all, before the boots are on the stairs and the voice is calling down the stairs, calling my name. I lick my lips and shudder a breath before I answer, feeling already millions of eyes on my flesh, and wondering what I might wish for to avoid that scrutiny.

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