Time

Chapter 28

Time

 

Time is unforgiving and long when you are isolated from the world. The light had died sometime during when we both fell asleep. I laughed waking as my eyes adjust to the darkness. There was some light that seeps through the cracks as the boiler lights. I thought I could hear movement above and sometimes a loud truck could be heard. It seemed like days since our father came to check on us, but finding two more jugs of water and a flashlight near the door gave me pause. I looked around the room; I didn’t need eyes to see or feel Jeff presence. I knew he was here with us. He told me he was able to contact Ma in Arizona and she and Pa are on their way back. It would be hours still before they reached the farm or what’s left of it. But Ma had made phone calls to the police regarding our disappearance and anyone that would listen.

Jeff was bad about giving directions that would have helped considerably in all-out search. All he could tell them was I was locked in a closed-off basement in a large building. I tried to get him to look outside to see where I was located. But it never worked, or he refused to make my life any easier stating some rules are meant to be broken and he had already broken a major rule informing Ma. Apparently, it only mattered if I lay dying on the side of a road. Not locked in basement held against my will. We argued back and forth as I yelled that I was as in much danger now as I was lying on the side of the road bleeding out. Apparently, he disagreed not happy considering I had a sturdy roof over my head, a warm sleeping bag, and food and water.

I asked about the extra water and I was startled to hear that my mother was the one that left it and the flashlight in case the bulb went out while I and my brother slept. My question was why? And what did she want in return? After all, she was the one that drugged us in the first place. I wanted nothing more to do with her or her guilt for helping my father put us down here. Jeff said something about her having second thoughts regarding what she and my father were doing. But my father wouldn’t see reason. That’s a first for me that my mother could feel anything but anger towards me, but it did give me pause.

Jeff was right even though I didn’t want to admit it. We did have the basics. Not good basics, but some. We had plenty of army rations even though some of it tasted like we were eating stale cardboard. And the water stayed cool enough even though we had to ration it between the two of us. We were instructed to leave our waste by the door, so our so-called father or our mother could remove it as they threatened us back with the cattle prod. I did try while they were gone to see if the electric fence or wall was real or merely a threat to scare us. It only took once as I got zapped with a simple touch. Thinking I could kick the wall or door down.

I even tried putting the mattress against the cinder block wall and kicking it, finding it was more than solid. Several times we tried yelling in hopes someone would hear us, but something on the other side seemed to muffle our sound. I even tried to bust out as soon as my father opened the door, learning soon after as we both got beat to a bloody pulp for trying it. Like I said “Time” is different here. It could have been hours or it could have been days. I never saw the light of day and my father or my mother would say nothing, and when asked you earned a beating. So I don’t know how long it was before they took my brother away; dragging and screaming as he tried to hold onto me. I took several hits with the cattle prod before I was made to let him go. I remember crying for what seemed hours as Jeff informed me Pa and Ma had been and are still searching for me.

It had to be at least two more days before my father came as he tied my hands and dragged me up the stairs as I stumbled blindly into the sun and into the church house, to the shower room at the end of the building. He made me strip and shower and shoving clothes that I had brought with me in my backpack except for my shoes. I was then taken to another place inside the church on the second floor where a small closet room was, tied and gagged for hours.

I was drugged once more and more often as I was left in that room in total darkness. It was very hot and the air was thin, sometimes I felt I was suffocating. I could hear voices calling my name. But nobody could hear me through the gag. Someone opened the door ran a flashlight in my direction. Nobody saw me behind the fake wall; I didn’t understand how they couldn’t at least smell me. I was angry that no one saw Jeff standing in the room shouting. I smelled of piss and s**t since it had been a long time since I was able to use the bathroom which seemed like days. It seemed longer still when my father came to beat the crap out of me because people were looking for me. It bothered him more that they were tearing the place apart to find me, as he tried to convince them I wasn’t here.

I was happy that they hadn’t given up; Ma was doing her best to find me. Jeff would break the rules and give direction where to find me. But my father kept moving me from place to place. It got so bad they moved me to an isolated campground close to the one they had been using. They did everything to keep them from finding me. But Pa and Ma wouldn’t give up the search until they found me either dead or alive.

Jeff was gone days at a time it seemed and would report that Ma and Pa were close. He had led her to the very spot my father had left me drugged out of my mind. It had seemed like hours since Jeff had led her right to me. Shivering with a high fever and dehydrated, I couldn’t walk, I could barely see out of my swollen eyes from all the beatings. My right leg felt like it was busted tied with a split of wood to keep me from going far. My hands and fingers were swollen from being tied up. But my father left me to die in the woods down a large cliff looking over a ravine. Hoping the drugs would make it impossible for me to escape except by falling further to my death; but what he didn’t plan on was Jeff making sure that wasn’t going to happen, keeping me braced to the side of the cliff. Yet for all intense purpose, it was to look like I had run away while camping.

My clothes torn to shreds, the many cuts and bruises and it felt like I had busted leg from falling; not from a push off the cliff by my father; I was too out of it to say differently and the tale sound so fantastic that no one accepts the Downing’s believed me and Mr. Stringum. Yes, I had very few people in my corner; they thought exactly what my parents intended them to think. It didn’t matter what my 10-year-old brother said when your parents made it look like we were the ones lying.

I don’t remember much as the days passed lying in the hospital room. Ma and Pa never left my side until they were dragged out by the law. I was considered a criminal and a liar handcuffed to the bed. No one was allowed to see me. The wall in the basement had been torn down and furniture stacked back in its place to look like nothing happened. I wish back then we had CSI to find evidence to contradict the lies. It was a month before I was well enough to leave the hospital. I was considered lucky for not having broken my leg and walking away with a small fracture, but by then it was too late. The damage was done.

My parents had won and I was removed from the Downing’s home, and placed in a home for boys yet detained in a holding cell to keep me from running away until other arrangements could be made. Aaron too was sent to his first and only foster home, and the girls were sent to relatives not their aunts even though my grandmother requested and was denied it until Family Court could decide what was best for all of us.

Nothing I said could change the court's minds, proof or no proof made little difference. For the Judge was no longer willing to listen to mine and the Downing’s pleas. They said since had I ran away, I could not be trusted in either home. Even though it was a lie, but my father was right. No one would believe me since I was capable of it in the past. I was a problem child and a child that no one wanted. The Downing’s did everything they could in their power to persuade them and my parents to let me return to them. They fought tooth and nail to adopt me, but neither side would prevail.

New guidelines were set up making it so neither party had a say who got what. I wanted to die that day as I clung to Ma and Pa as they ripped me from their arms. My parents grinning from ear to ear saying “goodbye you murdering b******s” watching Ma slap my father hard enough it echoed across the room. It was the last time I would ever see the Downing’s. I still hope even today that they would find me and take me in their arms and never let me go. But time is cruel and was not through with me. I cried for days until there were no tears left and I would somehow find some more and cry.