If Only She'd Loved Him

Saturday 1:35 pm

Megan felt at the cuff around her left wrist.  It was firm, but it didn't pinch her skin.  That gave her some hope, so she tried sliding her hand out of the metal only to feel it dig in.  Angry, she shook her hand, rattling the chain.  She'd gotten free before.  She could do it again!  Of course then, she'd had the assistance of her handy dandy paperclip.  What did she have now?  Crayons, some magazines, a can of soda and chips.  None of this was going to help her now. Megan snapped her arm up against the bed board, slamming it into the iron bedpost.  Pain jarred her wrist, slapping away the voice in her head.  I hate him!  I hate him!  If it takes the rest of my life, I'm going to make him pay for this!  Slowly, she slid her wrist back towards the bed.  Metal scraped as it slid down the bedpost.  The sound grated on her nerves.  It reminded her of the night he'd taken her.  How helpless she'd felt.  Helpless, like she was now. 

Stop it! Calm down, she told herself, just calm down.  She closed her eyes trying to regain some control.  She took deep slow breaths, breathing in and out of her nose, like she'd been taught from yoga, forcing herself to relax.  It took a little while, but it worked.  In a few minutes, her wrist had subsided.  She decided to look at the magazines he'd left her.  She was stuck, didn't mean she had to be bored too.  If only she had some music, something to take her away from the silence.  Megan hated silence.  Often she'd talk just to fill up a void.  Silence was threatening.  People needed to talk, to communicate.  When things got quiet, things got bad.  Her parents had always started out yelling, then her father had just stopped, refusing to continue.  Her mother had responded in kind.  The chill, the tension was unbearable.  Megan had felt like her head was going to burst as she stuffed it under a pillow, praying that the yelling would begin again.  Even screaming was better than nothingness.

Nothingness.  The word began to worm its way into her mind.  He can do it.  He can make me into nothing, and no matter how I fight, or I how I cry, he can still kill me.  There is nothing I can do about it, nothing.

Megan began to shiver, to shake.  Her body turned into a block of ice.  She felt like she was being chiseled apart.  Helpless to do anything but wait for Erik to chip away at her.  Destroy her piece by piece.  She screamed.  Screamed, until it ripped through her lungs, scratched them raw and dry.  Screamed, until the pain from crying out hurt worse than the terror inside her. 

And then nothing—a cry of pure primal pain, and yet it changed not a thing.  She was still handcuffed to a bed.  She was still alone.  She hadn't affected the universe one whit.  The realization brought a new clarity to her.  Screaming wasn't going to help her now.  The only thing that was going to help her was herself.  Her thoughts began to move forwards.  Think, Megan, think!

Erik hadn't gagged her.  That meant he wasn't worried she'd be heard.  She had waited a few minutes after she'd heard his car leave before she tried crying for help.  It wasn't out of the realm of possibility for him to test his trust in her.  He could have stayed outside, lurking, waiting to see what she would do.  He could even be outside her window now, peering through a crack in the shutters past those black bars at her.  Megan struggled to sit up higher and look out through the boarded window.  But the bed was too low, the handcuff chain too short, and she couldn't see out the bars.  Paranoia crept back in and found a home.  Erik was out there.   She was positive of it.  He'd probably just driven down the road and returned on foot.  He was never going to mail her letter.  Jean would never see it.  Wouldn't know what to do when she got it.  She was going to die here!  Again, she began to panic.  Erik was going to kill her when she slipped up, when he figured out she didn't love him.  Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust. No!  she shook her head so hard her teeth rattled.  I'm not ready to die.  I'm not going to let this happen.  But what should I do? Breathing hard, she tried to think clearly.  It's not what I should do, she decided. It's what he wants me to do.  But what is that?

Her hand brushed up against her skirt.  She hated it, ugly frilly thing.  It was decidedly Erik's taste and not hers.  His fantasy idea of what girls should wear.  She paused, stroking the material.  Fantasy, that was the key.  That was what Erik wanted from her. 

Megan looked around.  She needed to set a scene for when he came back.  Her hands reached for a puzzle magazine.  She wanted it to look like she had relaxed, casually done a few puzzles in her spare time.  She picked up the first magazine: Cryptogrammatical.  Somehow she wasn't in the mood for cryptograms.  She'd played enough word games to last a lifetime.  Discarding that magazine, she reached for Challenge!.  Raising a crayon to her mouth, she chewed on its end, studying the picture in front of her.  Find twenty things wrong with this picture, the caption said.  I can think of one, Megan thought as she circled a cat missing half its whiskers with a red crayon.  Girls who are waiting for their boyfriend's return can usually leave the room they're in.