Meet Me In The Dark: (A Dark Suspense) (27 page)

“See yourself as someone who survives.”

– Sydney

I
feel like we’re talking in code. “It’s not even remotely similar.”

Case takes a seat on his white cotton couch and kicks his feet up on the coffee table. He watches the big screen that hangs over a large stone fireplace. I tip my gaze up as well. The guy on the Survival Channel is digging a pit trap. “What kind of skills do I need?”

Case looks up at me. “You could try…” He stops to think. Because he knows I’m right. It’s not the same. Leaving civilization and coming to the west is easy. But leaving the wild and becoming civilized is not as clear-cut.

“And I already
was
living in the city. I had a boyfriend, a bar, an apartment. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Going to school.” He shrugs. “Taking some college classes in… whatever.”

I huff out a small breath at that notion. “History of Western Civilization and English Lit is gonna erase my life and make a new one?”

“Do you think I became Merc by watching one guy catch rabbits on TV? I joined the army.”

“You did terrible things.”

“That was my plan. Become Merc. The army was a way to do that. But before I left for the army, those little steps made it real. I lost the accent. I lost the tough-guy attitude. I mean, almost everyone out here can survive. They might not be geniuses, but they know how to survive. So I became the guy out here. It’s just a first step.”

My gaze wanders back to the man on the TV. He’s tying a snare made out of thin copper wire.

“Look at me, Sydney.” Garrett’s eyes are blazing with anger as he fists my hair and makes me look up at him. But as soon as he lets go, my head rolls back to its original position. An electric current in my collar shocks me awake again. But only just. “You need to pay attention.”

“You have to understand who you are and then decide what you want.”

I look over at Case, oblivious to what I am.

The man on the screen says, “There, all ready to go,” and then walks away from the trap he set.

“We’re on a tight timeline here. You need to do your job and I need to do mine. I won’t always be here to help you.”

“Help me,” I whisper as my whole body begins to tremble.

“What?” Case sits up, his feet hitting the floor. I look back up at the screen and now there’s a rabbit hopping down a bunny trail. “Sydney?”

Garrett has the rabbit in the live trap. Not a snare. He likes them alive. He told me before we came out here in the woods. He likes them alive for training purposes. I’m gonna learn how to skin a rabbit today. He walks out towards the wire cage and picks it up by the handle. Like he’s carrying luggage at the airport and not bringing some small animal to its death.

Case shakes me by the shoulders. “Syd,” he says, his face right down into mine. “What’s happening?”

“Have you ever heard a rabbit scream, Sydney?”

I look up at the rabbit on the screen again. It’s getting closer and closer to the snare. A little hop this way or that way, and it might go around it. But its nose is pointed in the direction of the bait.

“Have you ever heard a rabbit scream, Sydney?” Garrett laughs as he sets the cage down on the wooden table he has set up for butchering in the back of the cabin. “You’re about to.” He hands me a knife.

The bunny has no chance once it moves into the snare. The loop of wire slides along its thick, white fur. One more hop and he’s caught. The wire tightens…

“What am I supposed to do with that?” The knife is long. And sharp. “That’s not how you kill a rabbit.”

“You’re a fucking genius, I guess, huh?” The electrical shock stuns me silent as it jolts the skin on my neck. It’s so tender from all the training, I double over and push my head into the ground.

Garrett hands me the knife and I take it. I have no choice but to take it. And then he pulls me up by my hair until I’m standing.

“You have thirty seconds, Sydney. And then we’re gonna call this test a failure.”

The snare tightens around the rabbit’s neck on the screen.

I reach into the rabbit’s cage.

I scream, just like the rabbit on the TV.

I grab the rabbit by the fur, roughly, so it can’t slip away. I look up at Garrett, and he’s smiling, pleased that I’m finally doing as I’m told. And then I pull the rabbit out of the cage and fling it across the yard. It hits the snow with a thump, and then it’s off, those large feet acting like snowshoes as it makes its escape.

Be the rabbit, Sydney.

But I am not the rabbit. I am not getting away. My neck is burning with electrical shocks as Garrett pulls me back into the cabin by my feet.

“Answers come to those who seek them.”

– Sydney

I
think this is it for me.

“What?” Case is next to me. I’m in bed with him. I can feel his bare chest up against my feverish back. His arms tighten around me as he repositions. I want to open my eyes and see if we’re in the crow’s nest room or some other room, but I can’t quite do that yet.

“Sydney?”

I hope we’re in the crow’s nest. And it’s daylight still, so maybe I only lost a few hours? I really like it up here. It feels good to be tall, looking down on things, instead of small, always looking up. It feels like a watchtower. A place where you can see the bad shit coming from a distance and prepare.

“Syd,” he says, a little softer now. “I didn’t want to drug you again, but you were hysterical. It was the only way I could calm you down. I won’t do it again, but I need you to help me out here. OK? Can you do that?”

Help him out. I bet. I tuck my head into the soft pillow and will myself not to cry. “Just be someone else, you say?” I croak out the words. My mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton. How many times have I been drugged since he’s had me? “But all I’ve ever done is be someone else. I don’t even live in the real world anymore. I can’t imagine any more versions of myself, Case. I have tried so many times. I have lived in my head for days on end. I have refused to see the truth in hopes those memories would just fade away. I have been the good girl, the bad girl, the defiant girl, the sexy girl, the compliant girl. And it gets me nowhere.”

I turn my body so I can see his face when I open my eyes. We are in the crow’s nest, and that just makes me sad. Because no matter how nice this place is, he’s still the guy who left me to die. And I don’t know what he’s doing right now. Or why he’s being nice. Or why I’m even still alive.

But I know none of that is because he
sees
me. He doesn’t see me. He says I need to change into someone else. And that’s all they’ve ever told me. Change into someone else. Split me in half, that’s what they’ve done. But maybe it’s not just half. Maybe I’ve been quartered, like an elk when we hunt it down and kill it and then have to carry it back to camp in pieces.

“I am not the rabbit.”

He swipes a finger down my cheek and I realize he’s wiping away tears. I look up into his eyes. How many times have I wished I could be this close to those eyes? They are bright, like the room. Not brown, not green, not blue. Hazel. With specks of yellow in them that make them that amber color when he’s standing in just the right haze between dark and light.

I take a deep breath and let it out.

“I don’t know what that means, Sydney. The rabbit thing. It was a trigger for you? You saw the rabbit on the TV and it triggered something?”

“Yeah,” I say softly, wishing I could just curl up and die. But what’s the point of fighting him anymore? What is the point? Who do I want to protect here? I run the list of names in my head and only come up with one.

But it’s not fair. It’s so not fair that I will be fucked when this is all over. So I opt for answers before I give in. Maybe I can die peacefully if I at least get some answers. “Did you turn that show on to trigger me?”

“No,” he says. No hesitation. “I do not know Garrett’s triggers, Sydney. If I did, this would be a whole lot easier. I could help you. If I did. I could try to set this shit right. Do you know the triggers?”

“Bobcat.”

“I don’t think that’s it.” Case lets me go, pulling his arms away, and stands up. “I don’t think that’s it. If bobcat or wildcat were triggers and releases, we’d be making progress. Climbing out of that dark hole. But we’re not climbing out. You’re still falling in, cowgirl.”

“Jesus Christ,” I mumble into the pillow. “How much farther can I possibly fall?”

He sits down on the edge of the half-moon bed, leaning his elbows on his knees and then his face in his hands. I guess he has no clue. And neither do I. “More drugs,” I say. “Just give me more. Give me so much I never wake up.”

He doesn’t even answer me. Just walks away. I listen to each step as it creaks on his way downstairs. And then I listen to noises that have no meaning to me. Finally, after about twenty minutes of this, the door slams.

He walked out.

Isn’t that what he does? He says he’ll save me, but then he walks out.

I close my eyes and go back to sleep. This room is too bright. I need the dark.

When I wake, it’s twilight, which isn’t quite as good as dark, but I can’t make myself go back to sleep. So I sit up and look outside. It’s snowing again. But there’s a trail from a snow machine still a little bit visible.

I kick the covers off and then make my way to the edge of the bed and swing my feet over. I’m not dizzy. Whatever he gave me, it was a small dose. Just enough to calm me down, like he said.

I am hungry and thirsty. So I make my way down to the second floor and stop off at the first bathroom I see, relieve myself, and then gulp water from the faucet.

I pull back, wiping my mouth, and look at myself in the mirror. My hair is long and dark and it hangs down my front in tousled waves. It’s messy, but cute. That makes me smile for a second. That I can be here, looking at my hair at a time like this. My face is marred with scratches, a bruise that is one of the remnants of the many head punches Case delivered. And my eyes are tired, but bright.

I wouldn’t say I
feel
bright. But I do feel better than I have in days. Weeks, I guess. Since he took me weeks ago now.