The Rabbit Hole

Chapter 27

The door upstairs slams shut, followed by a loud scream filled with a burning anger. He’s raging again, pretty soon, if not, in a moments time he’ll be swinging the basement door open in hopes of settling his bound-to-erupt volcano of rampageous anger unto me. I’m too weak to fend him off at this time, and my growing belly won’t make it any easier to manoeuvre around him. Even my chained up ankle plays a role in my deteriorating lifespan. The bruising around my ankle is searing in pain –not to mention my now-infected ear—I can’t move with ease and besides, I have pregnancy feet, swollen, making the grip of metal tighten up in a pythons death hug. The doors are being unlocked, he’s coming in. He comes slowly bouncing down with each step. The stairs crackling under the pressure of his trample. And there he is, with his trademark glare of unshifting eyes, brewing and carrying rage within them like the last time, and the time before that, and before that, and so on. In his right hand is a six pack of Heineken beer –dad’s favourite beer. Oh my god. How long has it been? It’s been a long time since I had any of my family members in my head. I hadn’t thought of them for...I don’t even have a clue how long. Have I really forgotten about them? Mom, Dad, Casey. The three people who mean the most to me have begun to fade. They’ve begun to wither away from my memory. Has the place I used to call home become distant from me? Have I really gotten so used to this hell and have begun to recognise it as home? It’s disturbing to bear the thought of it. Night after night, with no sleep, and if it so happens I go unconscious due to the pain inflicted on me, I dream. I dream of the very same man who’s currently standing in front of me, laying his hands on me one more time, to squeeze the remainder of life in my body and watch as I vanish and leave my lifeless body behind. Those are the dreams I have, endless nightmares from passing out and awakening to another nightmare of reality. Maybe that’s it. It’s all over for me, maybe I should just give up on this fight. Grab this lengthy chain and choke myself with it, because I know, the time will come when he decides to do it to me. Instead of waiting around in angst, I should rather beat him to it.

He twists the cap off the beer bottle and it sizzles out its breath for him. He takes his sip, then he takes a seat on the last step of the wooden stairs. He takes a second and a very long sip of beer. I watch as it goes down his thin neck, the throat going up and down as he swallows. He empties the bottle with his second drink. Dad is twice, maybe three times his size but I’ve never seen him guzzle down a Heineken like that. Maybe I should be grateful that I’ve never seen him do that. Without warning, he flings the empty bottle at my head. The bottle narrowly misses, however I suffer a cut just above my left eyebrow. He guzzles down a second bottle of beer and flings it at me. He carries on like that until he runs out of bottles. He sounds off a disgusting belch and then stumbles back upstairs. That’s all. That’s all he’s done to me, fling beer bottles at my head and hoped for the best. One out of six of those bottles hit their mark, it bounced off hard on my forehead and then crashed as it hit the ground. I gathered extra cuts on my body, mostly on my palms as I kept trying to maintain my balance by setting my hand on the ground, turns out there was always glass wherever I placed my hand, go figure.

Samantha enters after a few hours. Most of my blood have dried up, the only blood that’s wet is from constantly moving and fidgeting. The glass shards are all over, it’s like sitting around a mine field, one slight movement is a painful mistake. However, unlucky for me, I’m cold and my body is forever shivering, getting cut on a regular. The longest I’ve gone from not getting cut is approximately five minutes. Samantha sets the bucket of sanitised water on the ground, grabs the sponge and begins to tend to my wounds. I still can’t figure out why she’s always doing this. Giving me meals and tending to my wounds. She knows exactly that all of it is just going to happen again, that her caring is all in vain. My death is inevitable, I can practically hear the vultures circling the dark clouds above me. She dabs my wounds, setting off more fidgety movements, adding to my cuts. The sting of the sponge against my open wounds is its own torture. “Sorry,” she whispers each time I flinch in pain. “Please stop.” I say to her in a hush, my strength has already ran out, I don’t have enough to speak in my ordinary tone.
“Does it hurt that bad?” she asks.
“No. It’s just pointless.” I state, “You tending to my wounds is just pointless. In a few hours time he’s going to come down to add on to the scars. It’s just pointless...you should just leave me here to die.”
She grabs hold of my hands and gazes into my already faded eyes. “Don’t give up, Heather.” She says warmly.
“Why should I not? I’ve been in here for months. It’s pretty clear that no one is out there looking for me. They’ve already given up on me. All that’s left is for the other shoe to drop, and my lifeless body will be found in a hole somewhere.”
“They have not forgotten about you. They are probably out there, still searching. You just have to fight.”
“Fight for what? I have nothing to fight for.” I say to her. She places her hand on my belly and says to me, “Fight for this life growing inside of you.”
“I don’t think I have any fight left in me. I can’t do it...not by myself.” I say, and in that second I see it, it’s still shrouded with doubt and fear, but it’s there, still in her eyes, she too, wants to fight back. She stares at her hands in silence, considering her decision. “You won’t do it alone. I will help you get out of here.” She says.
Finally, after days of prodding at her heart, weeks of nudging at her compassion and months of trying to get her to trust me, it finally happens. She’s decided to help me at last.