Chained (19 page)

Chapter 21: 
Twisted Words and Twisted Minds

“Travis.”

“Yes, Master?”

“What was the result?”

“The test was negative.”

“It's been over six months.”

Travis sighed.  “I know, Master.”

“You know what happens if the girls don't deliver.  Have you been giving her the fertility drugs?”

“Yes, Master.  I increased the doses as you asked.”

“She's got one more month.   Put more of the meds in her food. If she isn't pregnant by then, she needs to be replaced.”

“Yes, Master.”

They're giving us fertility drugs?? 
It shouldn't have surprised me, but it did.  Was it just Rachel, or was I unwittingly eating them in my food as well?  The thought made me sick.  It was all I could do to keep my eyes closed and continue pretending to be asleep.

“I've got a delivery.  I'll be back this weekend.  And, son?”

“Yes?”

“We aren't nursemaids.  Either the girl lives or she doesn't.  Now stop moping around.  You have work to do, and there's plenty more girls where that came from.”

“Yes, Master.”

A door clicked closed, and I cracked one eye open.  I was lying on my bed, and Travis was sitting in the chair in the corner with his elbows propped on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him.

Travis noticed my open eyes, and jumped up to kneel at my side.  “Sarah?”

As my consciousness fully returned, so did the pain of my injuries.  “What...what happened?”  The last thing I remembered was getting out of the truck in front of the waterfall.

Travis seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.  “You fell.  You slipped on a rock, and you fell against a tree.  You've been unconscious for nearly a day.”

I shifted in the bed, and the pain brought tears to my eyes.  It felt like all of my ribs and my back were broken.  I tried wiggling my fingers and toes and looked down.  They were moving.  I sighed gratefully.  I wasn't paralyzed.

I pushed the blanket down and lifted my shirt.  My entire torso was red and purple with bruises, as were my arms.  My legs felt banged up as well, and there was a spot on the back of my head that was quite tender.  That was probably why I was having trouble remembering. 

I was wearing sweatpants, not the jeans I had worn on the trip to the waterfall.  So Travis had changed my clothes too. 

Travis looked a lot more nervous than I would have expected over a simple fall.  “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah.”

Travis patted my shoulder and jumped up, closing the door quietly behind him.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, groaning with pain and almost giving up on movement right then and there.  But I desperately had to use the bathroom.  I shuffled slowly across the room, avoiding the mirror until I was ready to absorb what I was going to see.

After washing my hands, I braced my hands on the sink and raised my eyes to look at my reflection.  I took in the mud caked in my hair, the hand-shaped bruises on my wrists.  Probably from where he'd dragged me from the water.

The weird one was the bruise on my cheek.  I knew what the shape of a fist looked like, even on skin.  My cheek wasn't scraped, as I would have expected from an impact with a rock or a tree trunk.  The only laceration was a small split on my cheekbone.

He had punched me.  So if I had fallen, it had been because of him. 

I sighed, and ran cold water over my fingertips before pressing them to my aching cheek. 
What did I do this time?

I slowly and gingerly pulled my t-shirt over my head, and twisted to see my back.  I could see where I had hit the tree.  A rug-burn looking abrasion on my hip, covering the yellowing bruise of Travis's last “punishment”.  A deeper gash on one of my shoulder blades.  Three of my ribs on my right side were particularly purple.  Those had to be the ones that were fractured.  It hurt to breathe in anything more than shallow, slow breaths.

I savagely pushed away the pang that gripped my heart when I saw my belly, still soft and marked from where my son had grown inside me.  What had it been?  Four months?  A little more?

At least he's alive.  And probably safer than I am.

Pulling my pants up to my knees revealed shins that were scraped and bruised.

I'm more bruise than whole skin,
I thought sadly.  The thought flitted across my mind that Travis really was going to kill me soon if he kept doing this.

He doesn't understand,
I thought bitterly as I pulled my clothes back on. 
All he's ever known is abuse.  He's always so sorry afterward.  It's Master's fault, really.  He's the one who taught Travis how to “love”.  How can a child ever be any better than his parent?

Suddenly I was intensely grateful for my parents and desperately sad that I had never accepted the reality of the God they served until it was almost too late.  All along they had been teaching me the most sacred form of love possible, and I had ignored it.  Travis had never had a chance to be a decent person.  But I had.  And I had wasted years rejecting the incredible gift that God had given me in the form of the people who raised me.

They probably thought I was dead and burning in hell right at this very moment.  A lump formed in my throat as I thought of how they must feel.  That was the worst sort of hopelessness...knowing they would never, ever see me again. 

God, give them peace,
I prayed, staring at my battered reflection in the mirror. 
Please give them peace, or let me escape, so that they won't spend the rest of their lives thinking they lost me forever.

I heard the door in the bedroom open, and I walked slowly out of the bathroom.  Travis was standing there with a breakfast tray.  The highlight was a little crystal vase with a flower in it.  A white carnation, the petals tipped with pink.  It was so beautiful.

“Oh, you're up!”

“Yeah.”  I shuffled to the bed and sat down slowly. 

“I'll just leave this here.”  Travis set the tray down and straightened, scrubbing his palms on his jeans.  “Do you need anything else?”

I just shook my head.  Nothing that would be safe to ask for.  Travis nodded and left, blowing me a kiss as he closed the door.

When the food was gone and I lay curled up between the sheets of my bed, I wondered if it was worth it to ask Travis if I could have my Bible and my journal back.  Or new ones.  The old journal had probably been destroyed by this point.

***

I woke from napping to realize that Travis was lying next to me on the bed.  He was gently brushing my hair back from my face. As I stiffened slightly and prepared to move away, I realized that he was talking.  Not to me, or at least if he was, he didn't realize I could hear.

“I know Master said there are plenty more girls where you came from, but I hope you know I don't believe that,”  Travis whispered, his breath on my forehead.  “My father barely even sees you as human.  He doesn't know that all girls are different.  I do.  I know you're different from the rest.  I don't want to find another girl.  I want to keep you.”

Pretending to still be asleep, I rolled over and curled into a ball so that my back was to him.  I heard Travis sigh, and his weight left the bed.  As he left the room, he said something in parting that I could barely hear.  It sounded suspiciously like “I love you.”

This isn't love.  Love is gentle and kind and patient and sacrificing.  Travis, this is not love.  I don't know what it is, but whatever you feel for me is about as far from love as feelings can be.

All hope of sleep was gone for now.  I got up and headed for the shower. 

Later, as I stood in a corner of the kitchen and watched Travis make dinner, I mustered the courage to ask about paper and a pen.  That seemed safe.   Hard to believe that it had been over six months ago the last time I had written in my journal.  The time I had spent chained in the basement with nothing to pass the time seemed like yet another reality that I had no connection to. 

Travis gestured at a drawer near the pantry.  “There's some notebooks and pens in there.  You can use them, if you like.”

I pulled the drawer open and took a notebook and a pen.  “Thank you.”

He looked up and smiled at me.  “Of course!  What are you going to write about?”

I shrugged. “Just stuff.  I just like writing.”

Travis looked back down at his hands, deftly chopping carrots before dumping them in the steaming pot.  “We should write each other letters, remember, like we used to?”

Inwardly I sighed.  I could imagine this wasn't one of the things that would go well if I refused.  “Sure.”

My heart hurt to watch him.  He was humming to himself as he cooked.  He looked so innocent, so young, so handsome...so
normal.
 

But I guess if abusers looked like abusers, they would all be caught before they had time to truly hurt anyone.

I sat across from Travis once dinner was ready, looking at him across the nicely laid table with the pillar candles that burned between us, releasing their vanilla scent into the air. 

I was having a “romantic” dinner with a man whose looks would have half the female population in the country fighting to be his girlfriend, and all I could think was: 
I'd rather eat toast and bologna in the safe silence of a barn stall than sit here wondering which of my words will flip the switch and trigger a beating that could finally be the one to cost me my life.

So I sat, forcing my hands to be still and not tremble, answering questions as simply as possible and claiming a full mouth whenever I could.  I fought the acid of nausea in my stomach and forced the food down my throat so that he wouldn't question why I wasn't eating. 

Apparently it didn't work.  Or maybe the churning in my stomach was showing through in my face.  I really did feel like I might be sick if I had to keep eating.  The food tasted weird.  It couldn't be the drugs Master had mentioned—I'd watched Travis the entire time he was cooking.  We were eating and drinking from the same sources and Travis seemed fine.

“Are you okay?”  Travis asked, looking at me with concern in his eyes.

My stomach heaved, and I pressed my napkin to my mouth.  No, this couldn't be happening.  I would
not
throw up.  I nodded mutely, staring down at my plate with revulsion.  The carrots, peas, chicken and toast might as well have been worms and dirt for all my stomach was rejecting even the thought of them.

Finally I couldn't handle it anymore and I clapped both hands over my mouth, bolting to my bathroom where I barely made it to the toilet before losing everything in my stomach.

Each spasm sent shards of unbearable pain through my body as my bruises and broken ribs protested the movement.  By the time my stomach was empty, I collapsed sobbing against the toilet, begging to be able to pass out. 

I looked up to see Travis in the doorway.  He obviously wasn't sick.  It wasn't possible to have a virus...I never left the property.  Then what in the world...

My heart sank into my aching stomach as the only other possible answer hit me like a load of bricks.  The welcome spots of darkness began to prick at my vision and I slid to the floor.

No...
  I thought. 
Not again God, please.  No, no, no....I can't do this again...

Chapter 22: 
Beginning and End

Four months.  It had only been four months since my son was torn from my arms.  That was a time I tried desperately to ignore and forget, because I feared to keep remembering would kill me.  Even thinking about that time made me feel like I couldn't breathe.

September 16
th
.  It has been exactly one year since I was taken.  365 days.  52 weeks.  An eternity and a lifetime.

How is this possible?  How can I have lived this life for an entire year?  I am alive, but at what cost?  Most days I fear that my sanity has completely deserted me, because how else could I keep living?  But then I hope that it has, because I don't want to die.

I won't be able to plead sickness forever.  Already I know Master suspects.  I see it in the way he looks at me.  Like a prized cow that is soon to head to slaughter.  I can almost see the dollar signs dancing in his eyes.

If Travis suspects, he is good at hiding it.  I think he doesn't know.  Usually I can wait until he leaves the room before I throw up. 

I dread the day when he decides to rape me again.  What if I throw up on him?  I know how angry that will make him.  I know he will hurt me.

Oh, God, I can't do this again.  I'm not strong enough.

I woke that night to a distant sound.  I sat up in bed, my ears straining.  There it was again.  It came from outside.  I got up and pushed the window open a few inches, placing my head in the crack.

“Help!  Someone, help!”  That was Rachel's voice.  It was quickly accompanied by Tanya's scream.

Heart pounding, I shoved the window closed and bolted out of the room.  I grabbed a throw blanket from the couch and wrapped it around me against the chill.  I threw the front door open and leapt down from the porch to the dusty ground, my bare feet avoiding the rocks with skill even in the dark.  The bite of early winter was in the air.

I had recognized that scream.  I knew it.  I had made it, only a few months ago.

I put my shoulder to the barn door and shoved.  The heavy metal squealed in protest, and I slipped in as soon as there was enough space.  I flipped the switch that flooded the barn in orange light from the lamps that hung from the ceiling far overhead.

“Tanya?”  I called as I reached the stall in which she lay.  She was in shadow, writhing in pain.

“Help her!”  Rachel cried, her fingers wound through the mesh on the door and her face pressed against it.  “It's the baby!”

“No!”  Tanya wailed.  “It's too soon!”

I slipped the latch and moved into the stall, kneeling before Tanya's prone form.  She was right.  It
was
too soon, by well over three months.  A baby born this early had very little chance of survival even with access to a NICU and top-notch medical care.

“Tanya?  What's going on?”

Tanya groaned and lunged almost into a sitting position, gripping her belly between her hands.  “Oh, it hurts.  Help me!”

I took her hand in mine and let her grip it until the contraction passed.  “Okay, I have to look.  Is that okay?”

Tanya nodded mutely, sweat pouring from her pale face.

I pulled the blanket back, and was greeted with a sight that made my stomach turn.  Blood soaked the blankets beneath the pregnant girl.  It was too much blood.  Way, way too much.

This all passed through my mind in an instant.  I also saw that Tanya was, in fact, in labor.  The baby would be here within minutes.  There was no going back now.

“Tanya, I need you to push.  Can you do that?”

Tanya shook her head, crying out in pain.  “No!  It's too early!”

“You don't have a choice.  The baby is almost here.  I need you to push.  Now!”

With a groan, Tanya curled around her belly and pushed.  I counted for her, breathed with her, held her hands.  I encouraged her when she relaxed, and held her each time she leaned forward.

All too soon, the tiny body came sliding into the world, still encased in the amniotic sac.  I had never seen a baby so small.  For a moment I could do nothing except stare in wonder.  He was so tiny, so perfect.  His little chest moved rapidly up and down as he breathed the water that was his entire world.

Tanya cried out, and blood began to gush faster from her newly empty womb.  I gathered the baby into my hands and the sac popped, splashing fluid all over my arms and clothes.  I wrapped the miniature body and limbs in a corner of the blanket and moved to hand him to Tanya.

“No,”  Tanya groaned, pushing me away.  “Take it.  I don't want to see it.  I want Rachel.”

I stumbled to my feet, the tiny baby cradled against my chest.  I moved to Rachel's stall and slid the latch.  She pushed past me and hurried to Tanya's side. 

Alone, I stood in the center of the barn, staring at the little life cradled in my arms.  I could barely feel him among the weight of the blankets.  His chest moved and he cried, a weak and mewling wail.  I touched his thin, pink skin with a fingertip, and gasped when he reached up and grabbed my finger.  He was so tiny.  His little fingertips on mine reminded me of the first kicks of my own son.  Like the gentlest of butterfly kisses.

“No!  Tanya!”  Rachel screamed, and I rushed back into the stall.  Tanya was lying limp and ghost white in the straw, the blankets between her legs soaked with blood.  She wasn't breathing.  Rachel leaned over her friend, sobbing bitter tears. 

My lungs would not draw breath.  Still cradling the baby, I stumbled out into the main part of the barn.  Travis had just entered and was advancing rapidly toward me, his eyes wide.  I motioned to Tanya's stall and staggered out into the night.  I collapsed to the ground against the side of the barn, tears streaming hot down my cheeks.  A single light shone down on me, illuminating the impossibly small features of the baby I held.

As Rachel wailed inside the barn, I sat and stared at the dying baby in my arms.  I was determined that this one, at least, would not die alone.  For as long as he lived, he would know that he was noticed.  He would know that he was loved.

As the baby struggled and gasped for breath, I took him from the blankets and placed him directly against the skin on my chest, against my heart.  I gave him my heat, willing some of my oxygen and my strength to pass to him. 

“You are loved,”  I whispered, the tears burning on my face, my heart feeling as if it would stop beating altogether.  I could barely speak around the huge lump in my throat.  “You are loved, little one.”

As the moments passed and the baby's strength began to fail, I begged God to take him.  “God, give him peace,”  I whispered over the tiny, beautiful head, over the miniature fingers and toes.  “God, take him where he will never be hurt, where he will always be loved.”

The baby drew one last, gasping breath, and then the only movement was the fluttering of his heartbeat against my skin.  “Go in peace, little one,”  I murmured.  “Fly like the butterfly.  God's arms are waiting for you.  It's okay.  He will love you more than you can ever imagine.  Say 'hi' to Jenny and little Essie, okay?  Tell them I miss them.  Maybe Jenny will be your mommy in heaven.  She's a good mommy.”

Gently, quietly, God welcomed the baby into His waiting arms.  I sat unmoving until I was sure that the new soul had been reclaimed by heaven.

There are moments where time seems to stop, where nothing of the outside world can intrude.  This moment was one of those, where the minutes I sat with the baby in my arms seemed to last forever and I felt as if a tiny piece had broken from this world, a piece no less important because of its size.  For that single moment I knew no pain, no joy, no sorrow.  All I knew was that I had witnessed a soul pass into eternity, and God's kingdom had grown in number even as the Earth had experienced a loss that none besides me would ever mourn.

I looked up to see Travis walking from the barn.  He carried Tanya's body in his arms, while Rachel cried and screamed in the barn behind me.  I rose and followed.

The first rays of dawn were staining the valley sky pink as I followed Travis around behind the barn, to a spot near where the flat ground turned into hill and soared up toward the sky.

There was a hole already dug in the ground.  It was like they had been prepared for someone to die.  I briefly wondered if it had been me, the day after I had “fallen” in the stream.

Travis lowered Tanya's body into the hole, and motioned me forward.  I stepped toward the depression in the earth, baby's tiny body cradled to my chest, my eyes so blurred with tears that I could barely see.  Carefully I knelt at the edge of the hole and placed the baby at Tanya's side, placing him so that he was cradled in the crook of her arm.  If she could not love him in life, perhaps she would be able to love him in death.

Then I stepped back and watched as Travis took a shovel and began to fill in the shallow grave.  I stood with my arms wrapped around my stomach, painfully aware that I had lost my blanket somewhere in the chaos.  I shivered violently in the chill air as I watched Travis dig.  Sweat gleamed on his forehead in the growing light of dawn.  I could still hear Rachel crying, the sound echoing in my ears and through my bones.

As Tanya's face was covered and the body of her baby disappeared beneath the dirt, I began to cry again.  My chest and my stomach ached with the pain of loss. 

How can you so deeply love someone who you have barely met?  How can such a small hand  so deeply touch a heart?  How can such a short life burn so brightly in someone's memory?

At least he is safe now.

When the hole was full, Travis turned to me.  My body still shaking from the force of my crying, I did not resist when he gathered me into his arms.  He moved as if to lead me back to the house, but I was frozen in place.  My feet wouldn't move.  Finally he picked me up in the same way that he had so recently carried the body of my fellow prisoner.  He carried me across the yard and into the house, where he laid me on the bed and knelt next to me.

I knew I was going to be sick if I didn't stop crying, but I couldn't stop.  All I could see was the memory of that tiny body cradled against my chest.  All I could think of was another new life destroyed.

I didn't even care when Travis climbed into the bed with me, holding me to his chest.  I didn't have the strength to push him away, and no matter how much I hated him in that moment, I wasn't sure I could bear to be alone.

When he began to hold me in a different way, for once I did not resist or fight.  Even this was preferable to being alone in the darkness of the room and of my soul.  I was afraid I would descend into insanity completely if I was alone.  So I let him hold me and I cried into his arms.  Something broke in me that night.  After I thought there was nothing left in me to break, I was proven wrong.  Another piece of my heart was lost, chasing after a soul no longer in this world.  Another string of my sanity was broken, bringing me one step closer to the separation from reality that was the only thing that could relieve the pain.

At some point during the night, I woke from sleep to find Travis snoring next to me.  I pushed myself upright and searched the floor with my feet for my pants before walking into the bathroom.

When I returned, I couldn't bear to crawl back into my bed with Travis lying there.  Instead I sat on the chair in the corner, leaning back to watch him sleep.  He looked so peaceful.  Pure.  There was no trace of evil or malice on his face when he slept.  I could almost forget the pain his hands had dealt.  I wished I could forget.  Wouldn't life be easier if we can just forget the bad things?  If we didn't have to hold onto the darkness from the past. 

Maybe not.  After all, as someone once said, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

I sighed.  I placed my hands on my abdomen, over the still invisible life that grew within me.  I rubbed my belly gently, remembering Tanya's baby lying in my arms. 

You are loved,
  I thought to the little one inside me. 
You are loved more than you can ever imagine.  I will love you to the end of my ability for every day that I get to hold you, in my belly or in my arms.  You will always be loved.  Always.