Nighttime?

‘And as if we did almost forget about my little…’ It was Kroll. She slammed in with a frosty smile, reeling in a neck too long for its head. She had an aprin and thin slippers, a housewife by all standards, drizzled in food stains. ‘Darling Felicity, how are we doing?’ her face fell to a loose, grave frown. ‘Wow, you’re not looking too well, Fee. Are we forgetting our five a day? It’s very important to stay hydrated, look at you all pasty and rotten. I said you get what's coming to you, after all.'

                Felicity couldn’t speak, and if she could she hardly knew what she would say.

                ‘Goodness, goodness. Let me get this all cleaned up,’ she released a wetwipe from her gaping aprin pocket and mopped up a lumpy collection of puss and blood from the chair beneath her stump. ‘Honestly, Fee,’ she began with a dim, rather motherly smile, ‘you could be doing a hecka-lot worse, given the circumstances. Any way, I bet you’re glad to see me, right?’

                Felicity nodded like a wet dog and Kroll smiled wider, fond of her pet. ‘Well we’ve left you in the dark long enough, figuratively and literally. We’ll get you cleaned up and fed up. Then we have a little treat for you, Harold and I.’

                ‘Puhll’ Felicity said. ‘Puh�"’ she cleared her throat and what felt like a lump of glut as thick as a tumour rumbled and dislodged.

                ‘Scuse me dear I can’t say I understand you.’

                ‘Pills,’ Felicity finished.

                ‘Ah, of course. I hope that’s not why you’re pleased to see me, darling. Perhaps a good morning might have appeased.’

                ‘Guh-guh�"’

                ‘It’s okay,’ Kroll lifted a hand to Felicity’s chin and halted it. ‘Don’t strain yourself dear, plenty of time for that soon enough.’ Felicity realized as Kroll’s hand left her chin that her toothache was grander than she had noticed seconds prior, but it was swallowed shortly by the itchy leg pain. Kroll reached into her aprin and took out a wrapped bag of pills. She bedded two on Felicity’s wagging tongue, and on Kroll’s mark, Felicity was allowed to dry swallow.

                ‘You’ll have more when the time is right. By the end of the morning, I should imagine, depending on how…’ her voice drained and quietened, or Felicity’s thoughts grew louder. There will be enough time for that soon enough. What did that mean?

                Strain?

                ‘Now, I’ll escort you myself but I’m afraid the journey may be a little foggy for you.’ Once again, a hand reached down into the aprin pocket and released a long, thin washcloth. One with the spatter of dried food and washing fluid. She wrapped it around Felicity’s eyes and she was bathed in darkness, once again. She could take it off, but she was tired and didn’t care enough. Neither did she understand the blindfold’s purpose, nor how Kroll would react to such a stunt as taking it off.

                ‘Now, away we go.’

                She found herself sliding with considerable force across the room, the chair bounced and her teeth rattled. The hallway was short, Kroll wound the chair into a room with the door open. The chair rattled against the door frame and found its way inside comfortably, Kroll closed the door behind her. the blindfold unwrapped as Kroll chirped: ‘now.’ It was a bathroom, one of basic standards. It had a sink, a bath and a toilet. A shower hooked onto a contraption on the wall, which was something found rarely up north. ‘I’ll let you get on with any of your business in private but I will be here to supervise and help in whatever way I can, is that okay?’ Felicity nodded sharply.

‘Do you think you need help getting onto�"’

‘Yes, please.’

Kroll knelt and unhooked Felicity at the back and at her left thigh. She lifted from under her armpits, ushering a vast sting across her chest. She took a s**t with Kroll lingering in the corner, with a hand to her face.

How did you get here? she asked herself. Once she had finished she was helped from under the armpits once more, across to the bath she knelt on the floor mat and ducked her head under the route of the shower. Her hair was washed relatively liberally, dead hair crowded at the plug hole like a terrible matted weed. She washed almost entierly in the tub, all except her right thigh which was cleaned later with antiseptic and a fresh coat of bandage. The pain was bearable in short lapses, and she made it biting her swollen bottom lip. After 30 minutes she was lifted back into her chair and strappd in. The blindfold was freshly wrapped and they made their way around and across the long hallway, they veered right into a door. She knew by the DING that it was an elevator. It was particularly well deciphered from the beltch downward it made with the weight of the chair. The trip downward flung Felicity’s organs into discourse suddenly.

                When the DING sounded, they left and wound left. There were orange orbs in Felicity’s vision, but not a shape was to be seen through the fabric. ‘Okay,’ Kroll chirped.

                The blindfold was untied and left to flutter to the ground. Felicity was faced with a bright yellow old-fashioned dial up phones on a polished wooden table. She was at the foot of a staircase that curled up to the second floor, and maybe the slanted ceiling indicated a futher flight.

                ‘You have ten minutes. If they don’t pick up, you can hang around for a while I guess.’

                ‘Ten minutes?’

                ‘I say that because I don’t want to get bored loitering aound here, things to do.’

                ‘What?’

                ‘What?’ they were tossing eachother an exchange of confused looks. ‘It’s yours, the phone.’

                ‘Who am I calling?’

                ‘I don’t know, you’re a mother are you not? Granny, auntie husband. Wife. I don’t care, but do get on with it, I hate being the silent third party in a conversation.’

                The entire, insufferable day, from beginning to end, blew open to something far greater. Maybe not worse, maybe not better. This crazy b***h was giving her communication rights? What for? Silent third party, she wasn’t even going to listen in. This is the stupidest captor in history or…

                ‘What are you thinking?’ asked the Voice. Felicity didn’t reply. She didn’t know what she was thinking.

                Felicity took the phone from its cradle and knocked Kroll a sorrowful expression. ‘I’m afraid I can’t dial the number, madam.’

                Wait. What number?

                ‘You can’t remember your birthday let alone a phone number,’ the Voice mocked.

                There’s a phone number I do know.

                ‘May you be so brash, my dear?’

                9-1-1.

                ‘Oh,’ Kroll said, then laughed choppily. ‘Of course, silly me.’ There was no way Kroll would dial 911 in her own phone. She loaned her hand and hovered it above the phone, presenting a wicked, loathful expression of impatience. ‘Come on, then?’

                ‘I’m sorry, Madam. I can’t remember any phone numbers.’

                Kroll tutted. ‘My poor little pet,’ she lingered back a moment in thought. ‘I have an idea. Stay here, don’t move.’ She jumped excitedly and frocklickecd away in a descending pitter-patter. She was excited in a strange, morbid way. Was this it? was she being released?

                ‘Don’t bank on it. Kroll isn’t going to risk charges. What are the charges for kidnapping and, oh I don’t know, dismemberment?’

                Shut up, she told the Voice. The footsteps drained to silence and Felicity was alone. Rain was driving hard behind her, at what sounded like a thin wall, or perhaps… She tried to spin the chair on the right wheel, crooning backwards in a loose 90 degree shift. She saw an arched hallway leading to an unseen depth, perhaps another large room was at the end. It was a manor, after all. Then there was a door. The door. Marked by a large golden chain-lock, framed by 2 long verticle windows looking out on the battering rain and past it: the driveway.

                ‘Try it, see how far you get on your own.’ The Voice was tired and mocking. Felicity had no intention on making a break for the door, it was metres away and there was no telling if it was locked via key as well as the chain. The chain itself could be undone quite easily with one hand, however. Perhaps if she got close enough…

                ‘Are you serious, Fee?’

                I let go opportunities like this and I’ll be tossed back to rot in my room for how many more days? How many more days… day. The day is too long, it has to end. The evening is soon, nighttime will fall.

                Silence in the manor. Not the snoring of booted male footsteps, not the clanging of cutlery. Only the Voice. That damned Voice. She could make a break for it. she could wynd across and undo the chain. And then what? Kroll returns and catches her with her pants down?

                She could reverse back to the phone. With the chain hanging loose? Kroll’s not stupid. Then again, maybe she was. She was giving her captive free reign on a landline.

                Try it, see how far you get on your own. A flashing image struck her mind, it was her. She was facedown, panting into a puddle. Like the mishandled doll of a violent child, dishevelled on the gravel, her leg curled up into the strap of the chair. Kroll looks down at her like a disappointed mother. ‘Come on,’ she would say. ‘Let’s get you all dry and we’ll talk about what you did. My silly, silly hummingbird won’t be going anywhere for a very long time.’

                Then,  like a desicive bullet, another image: it was the Oaktree through the window. The lingering, foul stentch of her own rotting body. The day never ending. Make a break for it and let night fall.

                ‘You’re an idiot,’ the Voice struck. ‘Stone cold idiot. Always have been, haven’t you? Don’t you agree?’

                Try for the door, pull the handle. Even if it stops at the chain, don’t bother. Just scream. Scream and scream and

                ‘I’m here,’ Kroll announced.

                ‘I haven’t moved,’ Felicity said. Well done, she granted herself.

                ‘So much for that,’ the Voice mocked.

                Kroll bounded back and crumpled herself onto the second stair, peering through the banisters. ‘Could you dial for me?’ she unravelled a small partchment, torn from a larger sheet of paper, with small black print along the centre. ‘You dial then lift the phone, that okay?’

                ‘Fine, who am I dialing to?’

                ‘You’ll see,’ she said with a loose grin. Felicity dialled the long telephone number and with the same hand, unbridled the phone and brought it shakily to her ear. Kroll folded back along the stair like an unravelling strip.

                Bring-bring�" the phone began, loud. Her hearing was worse in her right ear, but there was no wrapping her arm around to the left for the sake of clearer audio, she was cramped enough. Bring-bring---,

                ‘If no one picks up we’ll hang around a while,’ Kroll said. She sounded like a giddy friend at a sleepover, phone your mom and see if you’re allowed to stay, maybe they can pack you some things and then after we’ll play hide and seek or we-we’ll built a matress fort or-or�"

                She’s not your friend, she told herself. But it didn’t sink in. Don’t worry we’ll hang around until they answer they will answer they have to it’s not like you’re going to walk home in that pouring rain your mom will pack you stuff and she’ll drive it along here and we’ll built a matress fort ah-and--

                Bring-bring.

                ‘Hello?’ the phone said.