After dinner a few hours before, she had asked Natalie to call her as soon as the screen test ended. But there had been no late night ring. Something had to be wrong. Something must have happened to her friend. She could imagine no other explanation.
Her heart still raced but her breathing slowed to normal. She turned toward the white glow of the alarm clock on the nightstand next to her bed and read the time.
2:07
She put her feet on the floor, found her bathrobe and stood. Even though the dream had faded, the dread remained and she needed a diversion, something to help her relax. After all, everything was probably fine and Natalie would provide a perfectly rational explanation in the morning.
She threw her robe over her shoulders, walked out of the bedroom, and turned down the hallway toward the kitchen. There, she lifted a ceramic cup from behind the cupboard door and poured milk over a couple tablespoons of instant chocolate powder. The fragrant elixir calmed the violent visions that attacked her thoughts and, as she placed the cup into the microwave, she took in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
While she waited for the beep, she stepped to the window over the kitchen sink and pulled back the white laced curtains. A full moon beamed unabated in the clear night sky several hours above the eastern horizon. Her eyes were drawn to a pair of headlights as they came into view down the block and they followed them as the car passed on the street below beneath her third-story window. Her heart weighed heavy when she realized it wasn’t Natalie’s car. As she watched the taillights come into view on the passing vehicle, though, she saw Natalie’s Toyota parked across the street.
Natalie began to regain consciousness. It felt like she was waking from a troublesome sleep. She couldn’t remember the day or whose bed she slept in. Nothing about the moment resonated with reality. With her eyelids closed, she tried to place herself in familiar surroundings. What did her bedroom look like? Was there a window with a streetlamp outside, did it look out on an alley filled with trash dumpsters or was there a window at all? Did she wake to an alarm clock, traffic on a busy street or a rooster’s crow? Something about the rooster struck a chord. Somewhere, the distinct sound of clucking and pecking, whether past or present, brought a memory forward.
“Where am I?” she asked out loud and her voice bounced back in a confined, tinny space.
That surprise reminded her of her apartment and she realized that she couldn’t be at home, or at least not in her bed. The surface beneath her was inflexible and cold. She opened her eyes and found total darkness. No streetlamps, no neon display on her bedside clock, no nightlight glowed in the bathroom.
Next she felt her head throbbing. She didn’t feel as if her mind swam in a pool of delirium so she knew she hadn’t been drugged. She turned her head to the right to stretch the knot she felt swelling the back of her head. But when she settled it against the hard floor, a pain stabbed at the base of her skull with such intensity she had to roll back.
Then she became aware of a constant hum like the sound of an engine and beyond it, muffled male voices, even occasional laughter came from somewhere close. She strained to make out distinct words but it seemed a wall separated them.
A restriction in the movement of her arms and legs became the next realization, yet within the restraint she was able to move with certain limitations. She touched her chest. Why am I naked? A soft fabric pressed gentle against her hand. A blanket? She found an opening and pushed her right arm free. In the darkness she felt around until her hand brushed against cold steel and support ribbing inches above her.
Like an unexpected camera flash in a dark room, she was struck by a blinding awareness of where she was and why she was here. The terrifying brutality of the attack swept over her like a tidal wave. And to add to it, now she had been abducted. Most likely she had been thrown into the trunk of the dark sedan she had parked next to at the warehouse, doubtless on the way to more brutal attacks and possibly death. She recalled that during the violence, she had vacillated between wanting to live and hoping to die. Death finally had seemed more preferable than living with the vicious memory, and knowing her credulity had drawn her in.
Now that death seemed to be a real consequence to her gullibility, the reality burst into her consciousness like a famished grizzly bear clawing through a camping tent on the scent of food. Death had never consumed her before. She knew someday she would span that threshold, but like most people it would be a bridge crossed in the distant future after a full life of joys, pleasures and occasional disappointments. The future now, though, was difficult to fathom when just living each successive minute not only brought with it a satisfactory sense of accomplishment, but also the terrorizing sagacity of her probable demise.
_____
©
Jearl Rugh 2012
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