I’ve come to accept that what we love makes us weak. I’ve learned something else on my own though, ever since becoming a prisoner of this black room—what we love is what kills us too.
I want to die. My will to survive has been extinguished. My hope of being found has been consumed by this black world. Even my anger has been tempered into something so dull I can’t feel its heat boil in my veins anymore.
I’ve been missing for weeks. Maybe months. Hopefully not years, but I know that along with hope, I’ve lost all sense of time. The chance of finding a missing person after one week is one in one hundred. The chance of finding a missing child in my situation after the same time is one in one thousand.
Every day that ticks by, those odds get worse. Every second that ticks past feels like another nail pounded into my coffin. I’m dead to the world. I’m practically dead to myself.
A few sleeps ago, I woke up and couldn’t remember my name. It passed in a few moments, but in that span of grappling for my name, I came to realize that I’m slowly breaking away. Piece by piece is falling into a black abyss I’ll never be able to collect them from. They’re gone forever.
Nothing can be plastered into those crumbled places either. Nothing. So when the last of me crumbles away, I’ll just be gone. Too empty to even become a ghost.
Gone. That’s what I feel like.
Dead. That’s what I wish I could be.
I haven’t screamed in dozens of sleeps—that’s how I now measure time, in sleeps—because screaming doesn’t do anything but hurt me. I’ve stopped kicking at the walls in hopes someone will hear because hope was the first thing to wither. I don’t claw at the walls anymore, looking for a weak spot, because I know the only weak thing in this black world is me.
What I love has made me weak.
It’s what I’m holding on to that’s responsible for wishing myself dead. If it weren’t for the life I had that I’m still clinging to, this wouldn’t be such a stark contrast. If it weren’t for everything and everyone I loved back in that life, I wouldn’t feel like I’ve been dropped into the worst place on earth.
Maybe if I don’t cling to that life so hard . . . maybe if I don’t hold onto those people I loved . . . maybe if I don’t still grasp how crazy I loved him, this will be easier. Maybe if I build a wall between the two worlds, I can find some shadow of a new life.
Maybe if I saw at that life and them and him until I’ve severed the connection, I can move on . . . to whatever life this is.
I cry again when I think that because I know I have to do it. It’s the only chance I have of being let out of this place that’s gnawing at the very marrow of my soul. I need out of here before I become one with the black, and I’ll never be able to accept this life while I’m holding on to the old one.
I curl up more tightly on the mattress. My muscles feel kind of dead from underuse, and my body feels the same. At the same time it feels softer, it feels bonier. I can count my ribs now, and I can’t lie on one side for too long or my hipbone starts to ache. My body, along with what it encases, is withering away.
I don’t have long—at least, I don’t think so. I’ve started sipping at the water now, and I’ve nibbled on the bars, but if it isn’t the lack of water and food that does me in, there’s no shortage of backups. For all I know, he’s planning to kill me. I know if I had access to something lethal, I’ve been in dark enough places that I’d do it. Lack of sunshine, lack of movement, lack of human interaction . . . I’m not sure if those can kill me, but they feel like they can.
“Sara.” That name. That voice. That trio of knocks on that thick door.
He’s wearing me down. He’s trying to break me down. Once he does that and I roll over, I’ll get something as a kind of reward. I know that. Yet another pro-con of growing up around cops.
I don’t know what that reward will be, but more will come if I continue to bend to his will. He demands. I submit. Reward. I know the whole point of bending is to get someone to their breaking point because once they’re broken, a person can build them back however they want.
I know he wants to break me. I know he wants to build me back into Sara, his daughter. I know that’s why he took me because if he did it for the typical reason men abduct young girls, that would have already been revealed. In that way, I don’t have to fear him, but at this point, bending to breaking and becoming Sara seems just as terrifying.
All I’ve got left of myself is my name and the images of the life I had. If I become Sara, all of that goes. If I bend, then I’ll break, and a knife will run across the throat of that whole life.
“Sara, are you asleep? We need to talk sometime. You can’t stay in there forever.” Three more knocks.