An old water cooler.
The remnants of someone’s campfire.
A shredded sleeping bag.
Used condoms on moldy carpet.
We enter a long corridor.
Without the flashlights, this would be can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face dark.
I stop to shine my light ahead, but it’s swallowed by the blackness. There’s less debris on the warped linoleum floor beneath my feet, and no sound whatsoever, save for the low, distant moan of wind outside these walls.
I’m growing colder by the second.
He jams the barrel of the gun into my kidney, forcing me on.
At some point, did I fall onto the radar of a psychopath who decided to learn everything about me before he murdered me? I often engage with strangers. Maybe we spoke briefly in that coffee shop near campus. Or on the El. Or over beers at my corner bar.
Does he have plans for Charlie and Daniela?
“Do you want to hear me beg?” I ask, my voice beginning to break. “Because I will. I’ll do anything you want.”
And the horrible thing is that it’s true. I would defile myself. Hurt someone else, do almost anything if he would only take me back to my neighborhood and let this night continue like it was supposed to—with me walking home to my family, bringing them the ice cream I’d promised.
“If what?” he asks. “If I let you go?”
“Yes.”
The sound of his laughter ricochets down the corridor. “I’d be afraid to see what-all you’d be willing to do to get yourself out of this.”
“Out of what, exactly?”
But he doesn’t answer.
I fall to my knees.
My light goes sliding across the floor.
“Please,” I beg. “You don’t have to do this.” I barely recognize my own voice. “You can just walk away. I don’t know why you want to hurt me, but just think about it for a minute. I—”
“Jason.”
“—love my family. I love my wife. I love—”
“Jason.”
“—my son.”
“Jason!”
“I will do anything.”
I’m shivering uncontrollably now—from cold, from fear.
He kicks me in the stomach, and as the breath explodes out of my lungs, I roll over onto my back. Crushing down on top of me, he shoves the barrel of the gun between my lips, into my mouth, all the way to the back of my throat until the taste of old oil and carbon residue is more than I can stomach.
Two seconds before I hurl the night’s wine and Scotch across the floor, he withdraws the gun.
Screams, “Get up!”
He grabs my arm, jerks me back onto my feet.
Pointing the gun in my face, he puts my flashlight back into my hands.
I stare into the mask, my light shining on the weapon.
It’s my first good look at the gun. I know next to nothing about firearms, only that it’s a handgun, has a hammer, a cylinder, and a giant hole at the end of the barrel that looks fully capable of delivering my death. The illumination of my flashlight lends a touch of copper to the point of the bullet aimed at my face. For some reason, I picture this man in a single-room apartment, loading rounds into the cylinder, preparing to do what he’s done.
I’m going to die here, maybe right now.
Every moment feels like it could be the end.
“Move,” he growls.
I start walking.
We arrive at a junction and turn down a different corridor, this one wider, taller, arched. The air is oppressive with moisture. I hear the distant drip…drip…drip of falling water. The walls are made of concrete, and instead of linoleum, the floor is blanketed with damp moss that grows thicker and wetter with each step.
The taste of the gun lingers in my mouth, laced with the acidic tang of bile.
Patches of my face are growing numb from the cold.
A small voice in my head is screaming at me to do something, try something, anything. Don’t just be led like a lamb to slaughter, one foot obediently following the other. Why make it so simple for him?
Easy.
Because I’m afraid.
So afraid I can barely walk upright.
And my thoughts are fractured and teeming.
I understand now why victims don’t fight back. I cannot imagine trying to overcome this man. Trying to run.
And here’s the most shameful truth: there’s a part of me that would rather just have it all be over, because the dead don’t feel fear or pain. Does this mean I’m a coward? Is that the final truth I have to face before I die?
No.
I have to do something.
We step out of the tunnel onto a metal surface that’s freezing against the soles of my feet. I grasp a rusted iron railing that encircles a platform. It’s colder here, and the sense of open space is unmistakable.
As if on a timer, a yellow moon creeps up on Lake Michigan, slowly rising.
Its light streams through the upper windows of an expansive room, and it’s bright enough in here for me to take in everything independently of the flashlight.
My stomach churns.