25 Chapter 25th

I rose slowly, carefully accounting for all my sores and taking the time to rub my hand on the most poignant areas, nursing them. My head ached the worst, but I touched it and nothing wet moistened my fingers, so I knew I would be fine… for now. Maybe I'd soon be wishing I had broken my neck on the fall. The air grew scanty as panic rose – it grew impossible to breathe!

All around me was darkness, thick and smothering, like tar. My challenge at hand, then, was to descend the rest of the stairs safely and feel around for the pull switch of the lamp, all before I suffocated – for it seemed I would. Fortunately, it wasn't hard to find – With a click, faint yellow light bathed the main area of the basement, failing to scare away the thickest shadows among the old, dusty furniture, under the stairs, inside every crevice and around every piled box… but it was enough for me to situate myself.

And as soon as I did, reality returned to terrorize me again:

"Shit…" I mumbled timidly at first, then growing in despair. "Damn it…"

One single heartbeat dropping out of rhythm, and my breathing would pick up as well, full-blown panic setting in:

"No… No! This can't be happening…"

I looked around the basement… no phones, no exits, no escaping.

"Oooh no! What have I done?!!" My voice grew shaky, as did my limbs. "I have to try… I have to get out of here…" I moved around, determined, agitated, but aimless. Growing desperate, I found my way back upstairs, I shook the knob, I slammed the door: "Let me out of here!!!"

The wood shook on its frame, but it wouldn't budge. I screamed on, I slammed on, until my hands ached and my throat failed me. Then, I brought both hands to my head and crumbled, sliding down to the floor and drawing up my knees. What had I gone and gotten myself into? How could this be happening? If only… if only back then, when this fear – a very small fraction of it, really – first hit me, I hadn't returned – If only I had turned around, walked the other way, stayed away, suspicious as I was. If only I had listened to that cop. What the hell did I come back for? Why the hell did I need confirmation, without accounting for what waiting around for it would cost me?

I still had his card in my back pocket – the cop's. I retrieved it and climbed downstairs, to stand right under the light and read the letters and numbers printed on them, as if that was of any importance – I had no way of calling him. Instead, I just clutched it in my hand, the memento of a chance I could have seized, but didn't. His words rushed back – killer. Rape.

"Nooo…." Stomach-churning fear had me moaning again, it agitated bones, muscles and sinew alike – I paced around the basement, thinking what could I do, how could I survive this situation? I had felt that fear before – raw and urgent. I recalled all the times it haunted me in my young life. What silly reasons had inspired them before now? Silly, indeed, all of them: The second dose of a vaccine shot when I was 7 years old, one I anticipated with great anxiety ever since taking the first one; Following my older cousins up a ladder to the roof and then being far too scared to turn around and take the first step down, certain the turn would steal my balance and I would fall: the torture was such, that I'd bitterly regret having climbed up in the first place. Childish, wasted fears – fears of a coward mind! How often I'd panic over trivialities, then kneel down and pray naively to some force I had been taught to ask anything from: "Please God, help me out of this one! If You do, I'll make sure to never find myself in this situation again!". I never pondered on whether the prayer worked, never stopped to take in how exactly I made through those fears… never said 'thanks', I guess. Now I didn't believe in tiny miracles. If God was there, he was too busy with more important matters to care about me, and I would be too ashamed to pray for it, when I had entirely brought this upon myself!

So many things could have happened to steer me away from my current fate, and the retrospective past seemed so close – just barely out of reach! – that I began obsessing about all the ways I could have avoided this moment: Had I not been at school that final day, none of this would have happened. Had I not gone with Danilo during the holidays, I'd never have even met Chris. Had I returned home with Suzie, had I walked away from that poker game a little earlier… My mind ran over all the 'what if's' with such skill, for a second it felt like I could undo my lot if I just concentrated on them hard enough.

To escape Chris… a killer. My heart sunk with cold dread. I was surprised, shocked… and yet, it had always been there, I was just too blind to see – those eyes, strange and cold… His very interest in me, when there was so great a disparity in age, position, smarts… How irresistible he was, how overwhelming his influence, how unlikely his stories, and my persistence in taking them all in as long as he'd give me his attention, his fingertips brushing against my face, playing me… like a disease eating away at my brain. I punched myself in the head once, twice… I pulled my hair in desperation, I paced about some more:

"Idiot, idiot, idiot!! How could you be so stupid?!"

I was so in love with him, so in love then that I dreaded the idea of him going away to work elsewhere, never coming back, so that I'd never see him again. If only he had left… I'd have forgotten him. Sure, it would hurt – I could feel it, just by thinking about it: the pain of losing sight of him, when he was all I could think of. But the pain would go away eventually. He wouldn't give me something to remember him by… like a scar, or a trauma… or the end of my life! "Idiot!!! Stupid!!!"

Why did it have to be me? Of all those girls?

"Because I gave myself to him on a silver platter" – my thoughts worked to aggravate me. All I did was give, and serve, and finally, I'd give him the last thing I could: I'd be his victim, stiffening away at the morgue.

"Noooooo!!!" I squeezed my eyes shut, the idea making me nauseous. I had to do something! If I tried hard enough, I just might find a way. "Yes!" my spirit rose again, "Think! Just think!" I wasn't very good at that, but I knew that house better than Chris ever could! I knew the basement, I used to hide there a lot when my mother was angry at me. I knew those piles of furniture and equipment stored away forever – they'd been relevant once. There had to be something there that could help me escape!

I scurried through old drawers and cupboards – an entire assortment of rusty tools sat at my disposal, I just needed to get creative: A sledgehammer might buy my freedom if I smashed the doorknob… Conversely, I could nail the door shut and keep Chris outside forever. But… no: he'd just kick the door down and come for me.

Hairpins could be fashioned into lockpicks, couldn't they? I could silently unlock the door, like in the movies – they made it look easy enough. I'd just shove it into the hole and move it around – that would do, wouldn't it? Trying hard enough, not giving up, that was key… it should do the trick, right? God would do his part in showing me how, the Universe, or… I don't know, some force, even a Disney Godmother I didn't know I had; something had to come and pull me through!

"Please…" I begged whatever, clutching that hairpin as hope.

I climbed the stairs, pulled my hair behind my ears, looked through the keyhole… I could see nothing but intrusive light. Then, I slid the pin inside, tried to feel something, waited for divine guidance… it didn't come. Frustration did. I crouched down, looked through the door gap: I could distinguish the feet of the table, the chair, the well-lit kitchen on a sunny Sunday afternoon… And finally, I could see Chris's boots. He sat there. Waited. Watched. Guarded. There was no hope… even if I did manage to open the door, my body still remembered his strength – his size. I couldn't get past him. I was scared away from the only possible exit from that place. "God!" I crouched down, hugged my knees and began rocking back and forth.

"Dig!" The idea hit me, out of the blue.