The Cave

The moment I woke up, before my eyes could even be persuaded to open, I was already aware of three things.

First, my head was pounding—

throbbing

—down the back of my neck. It made me nauseous, and I lolled my head back against a wall, white flashes of pure migraine strobing between my ears to the tune of my quick pulse.

Next, the floor. The cold, hard, jagged floor. Something sharp was pinching my left buttock. It occurred to me sleeping on the cement of my single stall garage would have been more comfortable.

Lastly, and I probably wouldn't have noticed this so quickly if it weren't for the frigid floor, but I was completely without clothes. Naked, as the day I was born.

I'd like to stay my eyes fluttered open, gracefully, like Snow White after her spell-breaking kiss from Prince Charming, but when I managed to tear open the crusty seal of one eyelid, my eyeballs rolled up to my forehead like white marbles. Lifting my head made me dizzy and as I peered into the dank darkness of the room, the sightless vertigo was like a slow, liquid motion of oil and ink. Somewhere, I could hear the soft echo of dripping water and, somewhere much closer, the light and slumberous breathing of someone—or something.

But the full realization of my predicament didn't come into focus until I tried to move...

...and heard the heavy, unsettling jangle of rusty chains.

They were attached to my forearms in wide metal cuffs, strapping my hands high over my head, bracing me to a wall that I was now convinced was made of solid stone. Panic mounting, I whimpered and pulled on the restraints. The links clacked noisily on the rocks and the nearby breathing suddenly ceased. I wrenched down on the swaying shackles, my bare butt lifting off the floor, and the difficulty with which it took to control them suggested they were attached very high up. Listening carefully, I only heard the dull roar of blood in my head at first, but soon the breathing started up again and I relaxed infinitesimally, just enough to try speculating how I got there.

The last thing I remembered was leaving Zup's and driving home. I didn't buy much. A bottle of antacids, a crossword book and a box of bran flakes for the morning. I knew I would live to regret the spicy hunan beef from the Chinese take-out place downtown and I remember pinning the bottle of antacid tablets between my knees, trying to rip off that little piece of foil with one hand while the other was on the steering wheel. Something ran in front of my headlights. Something four-legged. Maybe a dog. I think I clipped it, which is why I had to pull over to look for it.

The rest was a blank. Except...

I remembered the earthy smell of pine needles.

In the darkness, the steady breathing hitched during a great inhale. I held my breath to eavesdrop, my heart crazily defibrillating. Something between a light moan and a sigh alerted me to their general direction: diagonally left, about 12 to 15 feet away. The sounds were vaguely feminine, the lackadaisical noises of someone waking and lazily stretching. And they terrified me.

My chains were jangling again and as I tried to still them, I realized mine weren't moving. I hadn't moved a muscle since the other person in the room began to stir. It occurred to me I might not be the only one manacled to the wall. And if there were others, maybe we could work together to escape...

"H-hello?" I whispered without moving my lips. Admittedly it was a meek sound but it still echoed like I was in the biggest bathroom there ever was. The ceilings sounded very high.

"Oh, you

are

awake," she said. Her voice sounded smooth, but hushed and I wondered if I should be relieved she didn't sound absolutely petrified.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said.

"How long have you been here?"

"I'm not sure. A few weeks?" she guessed.

At least she sounded healthy. Someone was taking care of her. The question was:

who

was taking care of her? I didn't have time to ask. A rhythmic clicking began bouncing off the high walls. With a sinking horror, I realized they were footsteps.

"He's coming," she said. She didn't sound exactly tense; more like anxious.

"Who?" I hissed.

"Don't talk to him. And

don't

look him in the eye."

"What? Why?"

"Shhh!"

My chin immediately began to quiver. My hands struggled on the cuffs and the rusty metal pinched my skin. Soon, my cheeks were wet with tears.

A terrible smell wafted into the space, like the floor drain of a slaughterhouse, and it made my eyes burn more than the tears did. He lumbered around, quite at ease in the dark, and I could hear the rumble of his breathing. With a grunt, he dropped something and it crashed to the floor like a bundle of timber. I tried to hear the other woman, to take some cue from her, but she had faded to nonexistence in the darkness. I thought about giving her some kind of signal. Maybe we could develop a kind of communication with the sounds our chains made.

I had lost track of his movements around the room, but I could tell he was focused on a chore. Preparations for our deboning, or whatever horrific events he had planned for us.

Just when I thought he might have forgotten about me, I heard the fleshy sound of his bare feet, the scuffle of dirt on a stone floor, circling me. My eyes darted unseeingly around the black void in front of me, but I could sense him shuffling up on my left side. I scooted away, the chains rattling gently above me, and I had to resist the urge to dry heave, the smell of rotting meat stemming completely from him. His breathing became a series of quick sniffs and I could feel the breeze of his sharp exhales chilling the tears on my face. I turned my face, revolted, swallowing my sobs. His snuffles were so close to my ear; I sat extremely still and waited for him to finish his olfactory evaluation.

When he was done, I sensed him standing and something brushed my arm. It was thick and heavy and covered in wiry hair, but the next thing I knew, something dropped next to me and whatever it was, splashed a few warm droplets on my legs. It smelled coppery of blood.

I think he left again. I couldn't be certain how far away he had gone and I was too paralyzed to ask the other woman. Actually, I think she might have fallen asleep again. I was sure he was back when I heard his toe nails ticking on the floor again. For a long time, there was just the woody snap of thick branches as he busied himself with something in the room.

My eyes had not made any attempt to adjust to the darkness and I knew we must have been quite deep in the cave. This close to the Soudan, I was no stranger to cave tours and the obligatory demonstration of turning off all the flashlights to experience flawless darkness. But there was no tour guide looming in the shadows with her hand on the power switch.

At worst, the room's temperature was brisk, mostly from the chill of the rocky wall at my back. My nipples were tight and my toes automatically clenched to keep warm. I rubbed my nose against the underside of my arm to scratch it and continued to quietly weep. I wondered if the other woman was crying, or if she had already cried herself out. How long before I was dried up?

Soon, I began to smell smoke. A minute later, a flash of fire sparked around the profile of a crouching silhouette, long arms feeding sticks and leaves and other bits of debris to the budding blaze. From what I could see, his shoulders were heavily draped, as if with furs.

With the available light, I squinted in the direction of the other woman, but there were still too many shadows.

I thought about where my car was. How long was it running on the side of the road before it ran out of gas? If only I had just kept driving. Probably I would have lain awake last night thinking of the poor dog dying in the woods, but at least I'd be in my bed.

As the fire grew, so did my awareness of being naked. I adjusted the way I sat, knees together, legs pulled close, tilted so I was leaning on the side of my hip. I glanced down at my exposed breasts, orange in the firelight, but there was no way to hide them with my arms strapped up. The light might have been unbidden, but the heat felt nice. It would have been nicer if I'd actually turned towards it, exposed more of my skin to it, but modesty won over.

Eventually, I could see what had been dropped next to me and it was possibly less jarring for me to see it gradually, letting the fur matted with blood and the neck twisted unnaturally come into slow focus. It had been a jack rabbit at one time. I suspected now it was our captor's dinner. Why he had dropped it a half foot away from me, I had no idea.

The other woman was chained up to the adjacent wall in similar fashion to me. Arms up. Naked. Only she was sitting boldly. Her back was leaned square on the uneven wall behind her, her heels on the floor, knees up a little, her legs spread comfortably. The firelight danced across her golden skin, her beautiful burgundy nipples peeking through the gaps of her long blonde hair. I vied for a look between her legs, but there were too many moving shadows. Her head lied back casually on the wall as she watched our captor, who was arranging small logs around the fire like a tee-pee. I could have sworn there was a glint in her large, light eyes.

Satisfied with the fire's sustainability, our abductor stood and started to come towards me.

His shadowy shape was daunting, intimidating, and his shoulders seemed formidably wide and oddly triangular under layers of animal furs. Strips of brown mink dangled around his thighs, which were solid as tree-trunks and gnarled in hard muscle.

At the last second, I remembered not to look him in the eye, and I jerked my head down. My attention was immediately harnessed by his hairy feet: bare, boney, and thrice the size of mine, the muscles, tendons and ligaments moving in unison as he crept guardedly on the balls of his feet. And the claws—it was the only word I could think of to describe them—were black, flaky, and clicked against the stone floor. Partway up his calf was an extra joint at the back of his leg, like the hock of a horse. It made his gait strange. It was toe-heel, not heel-toe, and for some reason the way he walked made me sick to my stomach.

As he stopped next to the dead rabbit, a long, whining sob squeaked through the back of my throat. It was the sound of my life flashing before me.

*

Skinned, gutted and spinning slowly on a spit, the rabbit looked more like a large rat with no tail.

My captor sat on a smooth gray log by the fire, his back to me, a rug of brown fur and black feathers draping down his shoulders. It looked like deer hide. His wet hair was long, stringy and some of it seemed to naturally twist into long dreads. He was still mostly just a silhouette against the fire, but he'd lit several candles and jammed them into little niches in the walls for extra light.

Even through a blur of tears, I could see I had been brought into a cave. Icicles of stalactites dropped from the tall ceiling and most of the walls were smooth with layers of embedded minerals and sediments, but some walls had a bumpy, warty complexion. The floor was rock and compact dirt and generally uneven. The fire pit was a sunken area, roughly centered in the cavern, but the other woman and I were placed on raised spaces by the wall. Old straw still remained in my area, but it was spread out thin and gave no comfort, not like the other woman's. She was seated on a thick mattress of fresh, yellow straw with layers of shiny furs for added padding and warmth.

When he was pleased with it, he slid the rabbit down off the spit carefully, burning his fingers twice and licking them. I saw just a flash of his tongue when his face was turned just right and it amazed me how long and pale pink it was and how flat the end of it could get. He ate noisily, scarfing, his shoulders hunched forward as he bent territorially over his meal, and when it looked like he was done, he brought the carcass to the back of the cavern, a darkened alcove straight ahead of me, passed the fire. I couldn't see what he was doing back there.

Gazing over at the other woman, I noticed her look away and I wondered how long she'd been staring at me. She was getting up now on her knees, the chains ringing with her movement, and she stretched her long, toned arms indulgently towards the ceiling. Standing, she had a little more freedom to move around. Not much, but she could at least put her arms down to give her shoulders some relief. Her back was arched, her ribs showing a little, pushing her breasts forward. She was boyishly slender, hard with muscle and narrowed hips. Now that the extra candles made it brighter, I could see her small, conical breasts were almost all nipple and the black forest of pubic hair at the apex of her slim thighs mesmerized me and I couldn't look away.

He was approaching her now. He had come out of the shadows, elbows bent as he held something in both his hands. Straight above her there was a wide ledge of rock and he set one of the objects upon it. It was a plate of food. Then he paused to caress the back of her hair with a large hand. I realize now her hair was more dishwater than blonde and the strands had a greasy, separated quality, the way hair looked when it hadn't been washed in a while.

She didn't flinch from him. I think I even saw her lean into his touch. But her eyes were askance, always averted.

He came to me next. I stared down at my lap, my naked thighs pressed together snugly to hide my own bush of black pubic hair. As he stopped next to me, my gaze lifted slightly, just above his knees, to see the muscles flexing in his powerful legs. They looked mostly human, except for the hock settled in the back of his shin and the fleshy pilose covering his skin. It was soft-looking, like the belly of a beagle.

I think he might have bathed. Either that or I had gotten used to the stink. The smell of old festering beef had nearly faded, leaving just the spicy, woodsy scent of pine needles.

I lifted my eyes further, daringly, to the gaps of his loin cloth. He had already placed something on the ledge above me and was turning away from me and I thought I got a flash of something hefty and swinging underneath. I blushed from my own curiosity.

He didn't touch me like he did the other woman, or even regard me at all. Instead, he strode down into the recessed fire pit and sidestepped back into that tiny dark area in the rear of the cave. I squinted to see, but he was a shadow moving in shadow, black on black. I heard objects banging together, casual sounds of rearrangement; no doubt he was organizing all his little torture devices. He selected a few small things, brought them down to the fire and fiddled with them.

I looked from her to him, hesitantly, wondering if I was also allowed to stand. The other woman saw my dilemma. She gave me a covert look and a quick gesture for me to rise.

Quickly, I grabbed onto the chains and struggled to my feet. My cramped, stiff legs shook like I hadn't stood up in a week. I wondered how long it had been since my spicy Chinese take-out. Judging from my moderate to severe hunger, maybe a day. Maybe even two.

Reaching up to the ledge, I brought down a chipped metal plate and scrutinized the little bits of meat. They were slightly greasy, a little tougher than chicken, but tasty. There were a few sinews of fat, but already I understood my place in the order. All of the lesser cuts were mine.

In my hunger, I had forgotten my modesty. Chewing, I noticed the other woman licking the juices off her fingers, staring openly at me. Shyly, I turned to the wall and brought my elbows down to hide the flanks of my breasts. This was all very embarrassing. I didn't have the kind of muscle definition the other woman had.

I stood a while longer after finishing my plate to stretch out my legs, making sure I kept faced to the wall. Our captor was sitting by the fire and it looked like he was making something. Something to scoop out our eyeballs, I was sure. I tried not to watch.

Instead, I inspected the engineering of the chains, pulling, swinging and twisting them. They were rusty but strong and deep red flakes of sediments were coming off on my hands the more I fidgeted with them. They were attached to the wall very high, but about halfway up I noticed something else. Poles—rebar, actually—jutting several inches out of the stone. Two of them, approximately eight feet apart. They looked secure, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what they might be for. I imagined some sort of agonizing torment.

I could sense the night was winding down. Our kidnapper retreated back into the dark little closet to put away his project and the other woman's eyes were getting heavy and lethargic. One by one, he smothered out the candles, doubling the shadows and dimming the cavern except for the bonfire in the center.

Then something truly frightening came to my mind. What if I was the other woman's replacement? What if he planned to dispose of her now that I was here? Surely it had to have crossed her mind, too. But if it had, she wasn't showing it.

She appeared rather nonchalant, resting on the padding of straw and furs, legs casually spread; her arms up and out, hanging on a "Y." He brought her something to drink from a metal cup and held the back of her head gently with one great hand as he raised it to her lips. I smacked my dry lips together, realizing how thirsty I was and wondered if it would be my turn for a drink, but she finished the cup and then he set it empty on the floor.

Slipping something out of the waistband of his loincloth, he approached her shackles. It was a key. He unlocked her cuffs and the chains dangled unoccupied against the wall with a loud clatter. It made my heart stop. Where was he taking her? Oh my god. The eye scooper, the rebar on the wall, the deboning...it was happening now. This was it.

New tears percolated as I watched our captor take the other woman by the hand and disappear into the cave tunnel. The poor thing didn't even know what was coming; she didn't even look scared, coolly rubbing her red wrists.

As soon as they were gone, I jumped to my feet. I wrapped my fists around the chains and yanked and thrashed, testing the full strength of their hold. I turned around, crossing the streams and leaned back with all my strength. I even managed to prop my feet on the wall, gripping the bumpy texture with my toes, and bucked around, the chains jangling noisily together. It felt like one chain was giving a little, but I could hear him coming back for me. I wrenched harder, twisting the restraints.

Out of breath, I glanced back to see how fast he was coming for me. I wasn't foolish enough to think he hadn't heard the commotion of the chains. But what I saw instead made me stop my tantrum immediately and step down from the wall.

They were back. Both of them. Walking back to the bed. I couldn't see his profile through his wild mane of hair, but his wide hand was on the small of her back, guiding her. The woman on the other hand was looking right at me. And she was smugly laughing.

Flushed all over, panting, tears in my eyes—I was incredulous. What just happened? Where did they go? And what did they do when they got there?

I sniffed and tried to calm down. If we were going to die, it wasn't going to be tonight. Humiliated, I spun around and leaned my shoulder against the rutted wall with my back towards them, the only opportunity I had for privacy. I couldn't stop the tears and I was constantly wiping my eyes, picking the left over sleep crust out of my wet eyelashes.

Peering over my shoulder, I noticed he had gone into the back room again. I heard a ceramic

clink

and my first thought was the key. Was that were he kept the key, when it wasn't in the waistband of his loincloth?