Prodigal

Chapter 11

11

Rachel woke up. It wasn’t the first time, she knew, yet she couldn’t remember the previous times, or where she was. Now, she was cold and alone in a dark so black she couldn’t see her finger touch her nose. In fact, she missed and touched the side of her face. Her chest ached, like Fat Justin had been sitting on it all night. (Not that she ever called him that. In addition to being huge, he was mean, and he was in the eighth grade, so she was afraid of him.) Had she eaten anything? Rachel wasn’t sure. She felt like she had—like she had eaten a lot—but she was also hungry. She reached around in the dark and found a wrapper next to her. Holding it to her nose, she smelled oatmeal and sugar, and suddenly realized that yes, she was hungry. Very hungry. She licked the inside of the wrapper, but there was nothing left. She needed more food.

She rolled over onto her hands and knees. The surface beneath her was squishy, like a bed or a couch, and it was covered with something flannel. There were blankets tangled around her feet, too. Whatever she was on, she could feel the edge. She scooted over to it and started to jump down.

But maybe there was something else down there, something that wasn’t a floor at all. Maybe there was just a space that went on forever. That’s what it felt like in the dark.

Now she was just being silly. She could probably reach the floor if she got flat on her belly again. Slowly, slowly, Rachel stretched her hand down… and touched bare wood. Grit stuck to her fingers as she traced the seam between the boards. The clench in her stomach relaxed a little as she wiped her fingers on the seat of her pants. Just a regular dirty floor.

Rachel leaned forward and swung her legs down, thinking to stand, but instead she fell on her face. It scared her more than it hurt. She touched her nose (it was easier to find when it was throbbing), but there didn’t seem to be any blood. She turned sideways, and that’s when it registered that one of her legs was still on the bed.

She hadn’t been clumsy.

She was tied to the bed.

No, no, no, no… She started to whimper, a relentless, rhythmic sound like the two branches that rubbed together outside her kitchen window when the wind blew.

But her whimpering wasn’t the only sound in the room.

Rachel tried to hold her breath—to hide, to hear the other sound—but she couldn’t. Her breath was a rattling wheeze, not under her control anymore. The pressure in her chest grew. Because she wasn’t alone.

A light came on, bright as a sun, and kept getting brighter through her closed lids. When the blaze leveled out, she blinked and shaded her tearing eyes with her hands, slowly pulling them away until she could make out a shape.

A man shape.

A familiar man.

She heard herself saying, in a voice that was not quite her own, “Please, daddy, please don’t hurt me.”