“Is she awake?” Someone yelled, with a chorus of “YES!” and “she’s awake!” responses. What was going on?
“Where am I?” I muttered sleepily, wanting to get back to that room full of light.
“Our interrogation room,” the middle aged man on the left, said. I squinted at his name tag, and made out the word Stanley. I didn’t have my contacts in, and that sort of accounted for the blurriness of it all. But I could still see what was reasonably close, so escaping could be an alternative…
“Welcome, Ashely. Since you so recently decided to escape our premises, we need to do a full recovery and find out any breaches in our security, so that nothing of this kind can happen again, as well as your motives for escaping and your thoughts of our services.”
Services? Did he think it was a hotel?
The other man, whose name was Roger, looked up at my sour expression and sighed. He typed something into his laptop, and my stomach growled. I was famished now, having not eaten for a day, and I decided I would not answer any questions until I got some food.
I did not have to put up much of a fight, however, because Stanley raised his left arm and there was a huge bowl of soup in front of me. Not giving much thought to as if there was some sort of poison in it, I devoured the concoction eagerly. It tasted like beef and peas and garlic, and I desperately wanted more when I was finished.
“You can get more to eat when we are through,” Roger said in a rather airy tone. The people in white suits had stopped moving around and watched from both sides of the small room.
“Okay,” I agreed grudgingly, prepared to answer random questions in return for some more soup.
“First question. What is your name?”
“Ashely Solovan,” Was my prompt response.
“Have you ever had any near death experiences?” He inquired.
I thought back to when I had almost stepped in a bee hive when I was six years old, but that was stupid. And then there was the other robbery, when I was with Daddy, but for some reason I didn’t think that would be good to bring up, so I said, “No, I have not.”
“How did you manage to escape from your captivity one week ago?”
One week ago? One week?! It had only been yesterday that I was in the forest…what had happened in that one week time? I was dreaming? In a coma? I was so bewildered, I forgot his question.
“You’ve been asleep in our holding room for a week, Ashely Solovan. Now, tell us how you escaped.”
“I, um, ran out the door…” I trailed off. I didn’t want to implicate Roy for anything. He had saved my life, after all. And that was another mystery. Where was Roy? And why did he do it?
“We had a guard by your door at all times, as well as your door being bolted shut.” Roger rubbed his forehead.
“I…knocked out the guard with my shoe, and…someone forgot to lock the door…” I picked at a loose string on my white robes.
Stanley typed this down. “That would have been Roy,” He muttered to Roger. I listened to their conversation intently.
“Have we punished him yet?” Roger asked. I winced.
“No,” Stanley muttered, “We can’t find him.”
I didn’t know if I should be relieved or upset. If Roy was gone, it meant that I would never see him again. And he would never know that I would have died in vain of his attempts. And I would never thank him, or find out why he’d done what he did…but if he was gone, it also meant that he was safe, for now, and he wasn’t dead, as I had feared in the back of my mind.
“Thank you, Ashely.” Stanley cleared his throat, and looked at me. I felt like he was looking into me, like everything inside of me was laid out onto that white table.
“Take her.”
Silence.
A gasp.
My mouth parted, the breath leaving it.
Slow motion.
Bright light, fake light.
Two men, with big hands. Walking forwards, grabbing me.
Pulling me away.
From that room with the fake light.
To the dark.
It was all over. And a wave of emotions hit me like a train. Sadness, fear, anger, and that one fiery emotion, love.
Which sounds kind of strange, why would I be thinking about love when I was about to die?
But all I could see, hear, and feel was love, and how much I loved my life, and everyone and everything that made it my life, not the material things, like the fashion line or the makeup, but the real things, the real light in my life, the relationships I formed, the things I learned, and the passions I’d harbored, would all amount to nothing. They’d be dust, useless and forgotten, and I would be dead, and no one would really care.
Even though I’d been popular, no one would care if I died, except for a good thing to gossip about. The girls would care a little, but our friendship was never real.
And Daddy. He would care, but not enough.
I couldn’t help wondering if Roy would care. Maybe the only person who would care just the right amount. Which was crazy, because he’d had this happen. In fact, he’d laughed about it. Joked about it. Smiled when I hurt most, and turned away when I cried. But perhaps it was a mask. Perhaps I’d never really known what Roy was feeling, and I never would know.
Even if he’d caused my death, he’d shown me what my life meant. And now that I knew what it meant, I wanted to do something with it. And I couldn’t.
Their hands clenched my arms at the same exact moment, pulling me towards the door, and I was dragged along, trying to fight, but without enough energy, delirious, almost half asleep, yelling “What about the soup?” that Stanley had promised me, still hungry, starting to weep. I was a mess.
They forced me into this little room, a cage, with bars on all sides, and 6 locks. There was a hardwood bench in the corner, and cold gray tiles under my still bare feet. They shoved me in, and I curled up into a ball on the wooden bench, tears falling down my face and loud crying that I couldn’t suppress finding it’s way up my throat. I tried to push away thoughts of anything I’d ever had, trying to think happy thoughts. At least it would be over, I reasoned. At least all this tension and waiting would be over, and soon I could be dead, and maybe I’d go to heaven, and maybe nothing would happen, and I would never feel again.
I fell asleep crying once again, and it was dreamless. I’d been hoping for that room of light and warmth and floating, that one little haven of peace that I had managed in this destruction.
And the next day, when I opened my eyes, I took a deep breath and tried to be ready. Tried to be ready because I deserved all of this suffering. Tried to be ready because soon it would be over, and I wouldn’t have to worry about anything I’d done to anyone because I’d never feel their pain again.
I heard keys at the door of my cage and looked up, wondering if it was breakfast, or my demise.
