Stay Inside

12. Hannah

I dreamt of colors, of red and cream and silver and black stirred together, pouring onto surfaces and dripping from the edge. I dreamt of gore, of blood, bone, and viscera. The images faded behind a muddy gray-brown fog before a memory arose from a deeper well.

I was seven. It was Christmas Eve. My tummy was full on ensalada and tamales. Our tío was staying with us that year. He was my father's brother. He was skinny and sick-looking, missing some teeth and spotted with sores. Mom told us he was going through a rough time. I didn't know "a rough time" meant coming off meth. He had too much wine that night and started talking, well, ranting to me, my brother, and sister. He subscribed to many conspiracy theories, secret societies, ancient aliens - the sorts of things we neither knew nor cared about. I just remember being frightened by the intensity in his voice, the spit that flew from his scabby lips before my father pulled him away.

He died from an overdose years later. I never saw him, but in my dreams he was strewn on the floor of a dirty bathroom, his body writhing to its final stillness on a checkerboard of sweaty tiles.

My mind flashed through the faces of the rest of my family: my mother smoking in the alleyway behind our home, lines of grief upon her face, my sister seated in a chair beside a window, her head in her hands, my brother beside his van in empty field, blood speckling his skin, David in a disheveled apartment, confusion in his eyes and a shadow drifting closely at his back.

The visions blurred into darkness as the percussion of my throbbing head stirred me from my slumber. Why was I sleeping? At first I couldn't remember. My ears were ringing, a reminder of the gunshot that thundered inches from my right ear. Benton wasn't really shot in the face, was he? That was just another visceral nightmare.

I felt crusty, matted carpet beneath my legs. There was a smell of dust and stagnancy, the nostalgic displeasing funk of a cluttered thrift store. I could see the dust, wafting in air, illuminated by thin rays of sunlight. There was a window. It was obscured by wooden planks and yellowed newsprint. And it was quiet. The walls were muffled with foam mattress pads and quilts in shades of burnt orange and olive green. There were drawings of an amateur artist pinned proudly to the fabric.

At first, my understanding of my surroundings were too dreamlike to grip me with authentic fear. Then, I felt the weight of the shackles around my wrists and ankles. A shard of metal reflected light into my eyes. And there was the boy who had struck me, who had murdered Benton and dragged me to his lair. His icy eyes seemed to glow through the darkness. There was a machete in his hand and he stood in the open doorway with the twisted posture I would expect from a TV serial killer.

I screamed.

It was an unusual sound to come from me. I wasn't much of a screamer. I didn't shriek with surprise or delight as my sister often did. My response generally ranged from a delayed "Oh shit," to laughing out of discomfort. But there I was, screaming in the face of unknown horror.

He pounced upon me and I kicked back at him. I felt wet blood on my legs before feeling the pain of my shins bouncing against his blade. Words returned to my throat and I yelled for help while cursing at my captor.

I pulled like hell against my constraints without any regard for my wrists and ankles. The heavy steel bruised and tore into my flesh. Whatever he wanted from me, I was resolved to make him fight for it.

He tossed the machete aside and sat on my legs to still them. Then he yelled back at me in a language I had never heard before. It sounded Slavic. I couldn't place it. He meant to intimidate me, yet there was also panic in his voice. Either I was fighting too hard, or I wasn't the victim he imagined me to be. No, I decided, he was worried about how much noise I was making. He didn't want anyone coming to my rescue. That only made me scream louder.

He pushed off of me and pulled a gun, a pistol mere feet from my face.

My voice cracked to a whimper.

I remembered the fatal end of Benton Stuart and the bullet that passed through his skull. The memory of the gunshot echoed on repeat. Anxiety was overtaking my whole being. I could hardly think. He wasn't just going to kill me, was he? He had taken me for a reason. But maybe if I was too loud, he would decide I wasn't worth the trouble. Maybe he had already decided that. Maybe he was about to pull the trigger.

He said something to himself, more words I couldn't understand. Was it Danish? I couldn't place it. He looked scared. Sweat dripped from his dark hair and collected on his upper lip.

He pulled a roll of duct tape from the windowsill. I watched his finger sit on the trigger; trembling with unsettling indecision. I stared into the black barrel. And I was frozen as he wrapped tape around my mouth, sticking it tightly to my lips and hair. He wrapped my legs as well, carelessly bandaging my bloodied calves together to limit my mobility.

I listened to his words as he worked, as if in doing so I could somehow piece together a reason for what he'd done or for why I was there.

"Goer liebyister von und umehai," he said, still shaking his gun at me. "Hash lo go hat von cunar? Sarityn- pram hine go stauka."

I had spent a lot of time studying language. One might say too much time. I knew how to identify most languages as I heard them. It sounded in parts Russian, German, and Japanese. There was no consistency to it.

"Eya, sarit," he continued. "Tet hat ume gryna hashvon go, tet pallynas. Felet erer krow wi pallyn tet. Qitan hatsun go von, ume hine go koranos."

He looked at me expectantly, and I stared back at him, more lost than I ever had been in my life. What did he want from me?

"Qitan tet!"

I jumped. It was the loudest he had yelled. His face was red and the tendons strained in his neck. I thought then and there that he would pull the trigger. I imagined the tragedy of my death being a brief story on the evening news. I imagined my mother having to identify my body. Or worse, never being found at all. A tidal wave of anxiety and panic washed over me and I struggled to breathe as I uncontrollably sobbed.

The boy only stared at me, his head cocked to one side like an intrigued puppy. It was like he was an alien studying human emotion for the first time. I'm not sure how long he stood there, but after a while, he lowered his gun, retrieved his machete, and left me alone.