Taken (Breaking the Darkness) (2 page)

WITHOUT REALIZATION, AGAIN, I had curled up on the floor and drifted off to sleep. When I opened my eyes, they were still unable to fully adjust to the darkness. Lying there, my legs were tucked so tightly into my arms my chin rested upon my knees. My left shoulder ached from the extended period of time it was sandwiched against the unyielding floor. I considered getting up and going over to the bed, but there was something comforting in the pain of lying there alone and scared, yet knowing I was alive.

Why am I alive? Why am I not hurt? What do they want from me?
All questions without answers. Maybe they realized I wasn’t the person they meant to take and they were trying to figure out what to do with me.
This must be some sort of crazy mix-up.
I suppose, for that matter, I could be aboard an alien ship on my way to becoming something’s research experiment. God, I hoped they didn’t believe in cavity probing!

I trusted my silence had them at least confused or convinced I wasn’t a threat. I was sure by now the average female would have been screaming her head off, beating her fists against the walls, begging for answers and release.

Although, I always considered myself fairly average—well, maybe a bit above average, but who’s counting? When I was school age, I tried to go as unnoticed as possible. Not so much because I thought there was anything wrong with the way I looked, but it helped prevent anyone from getting close enough to know me, or my family. I wasn’t fond of coming up with an explanation for why I lived with my grandmother. Not that we ever really lived anywhere long enough for it to matter anyway.

As a young adult, I began to come into my own and enhance my natural essence. I still kept my red hair long and, when time allowed, I would set it in rollers or take a curling iron to it for soft curls. There were times as a teen when I considered coloring my hair to blend in more, but what fun would that be? My fiery red hair made me feel unique and special, the way Gram always insisted I was. Besides, it was a perfect, unexpected compliment to my bluish-grey eyes.

I was actually quite surprised at my own composure. Fear undoubtedly has a way of bringing out a part of ourselves that we might not expect to ever find. I was very glad to find out that I was, so far, able to keep a clear head. Perhaps I was just so bored with the utter nothingness of the situation that I hadn’t allowed myself to get worked up about the “what ifs” of what could be going on.

I wondered if I would get back to my apartment. I only just started to move in and still hadn’t decided on paint colors. I was leaning toward a rustic mustard color and painting all the trim either a shade darker or brown. It would work well with all the antiques I hunted down at The Flea. I loved walking through the market early in the morning with a cup of organic black lightning in hand to help fight off the early morning chill.

I relished the opportunity to browse through belongings once adored so much by others. Each item had a story behind it and some vendors couldn’t stop themselves from sharing their tales. More often than not, the best items and stories had the most years behind them. I preferred to purchase those articles worth talking about. If, by chance, I ever had guests, I would always have something to chat about.

Although there seemed to be many new vendors each time I went, a few were there every Sunday morning. I’d gotten to know some of them by name. I couldn’t really say I’d made friends with many, but it was always nice to see a familiar face. I always looked forward to one couple in particular. They must have been close to seventy. I wondered how they managed to lug all their things to the market to sell each week. I had a suspicion they kept the back of their Volkswagen bus loaded with the same artifacts and added a few odds and ends each week to replace any sold items.

They were small people. Axel was a bit shorter than me, about five feet seven inches, and his bride Patience was maybe five feet tall. Although she was quite compact, she didn’t give off any sign of frailty. She certainly wore the pants in that relationship.

Axel kept what was left of his hair buzzed down to almost nothing. He always had on brown dungarees and a guayabera short-sleeved button-up shirt, like they wear in South America. Patience wore her hair as she must have in the forties. The front was scooped up away from her face in some sort of a poof or roll and the back was always in a bun or twist. She always looked perfect—never a hair out of place, makeup just right, and if market day fell on a holiday, she wore red lipstick and a flower in her hair to match her attire.

They often bantered playfully, pausing with two giant smiles when a potential customer approached their stand. Something about them reminded me of the old couple that lived in the tree in the movie
The Princess Bride
. Of course my new buddies were way better looking.

One of my last flea market purchases was an item from Axel and Patience—a beautiful bookshelf made of reclaimed wood with stone shelves. Axel told me the gentleman from whom they obtained the bookshelf claimed the stone shelves originally came from ruins in Palenque, Mexico. The wood was reclaimed floor planks from an old schoolhouse. How incredible was that? Even if it wasn’t totally cool-looking, the history of the materials sold me.

Before I was even able to let them know I’d pay their price, Axel proceeded to tell me about one of the Mayan civilizations that lived in Palenque. He rattled off a small history lesson about their civilization, existing from two hundred-something AD to one thousand-something BC. Somehow he even knew they occasionally had women rulers, again, a pretty cool element to this piece. After twenty minutes of wars, kings, and hieroglyphs, finally he wrapped it up with how the jungle consumed the abandoned community. His stories always involved some kind of history lesson. Patience just smiled and winked at me.

I don’t know if he knew all these things or if he just researched everything they tried to sell. Lucky for me, he didn’t know from what schoolhouse the wood actually derived. I’m sure if he’d known, I would’ve been there long enough to have lunch with them too.

Patience always handled all the financial aspects of their endeavors. After I paid her, she gently put her hands on mine and asked me if I liked to read. Although I had a few shows I tried to catch, I mostly enjoyed spending my evenings with a book and glass of wine or coffee, depending on my mood. She told me she had some very special books she would like to sell and she would bring them to The Flea next month.

Knowing them, her book collection would be eclectic and old. I might have to bring a thermos of coffee instead of my travel cup to make it through what would probably be multiple history lessons. I’m sure they’d have my ear a good part of the day. That is, if I ever got out of here.

The intention behind purchasing the bookshelf was for Gram’s book collection, still in storage with what was left of her belongings. Gram had a number of first editions, the spines of many worn and tattered. They would look awe-inspiring in my new bookshelf. I didn’t want to bring her stuff to my house until I got settled and had a proper home for everything.

As nice as it would be to make it back to The Flea to find myself more rustic collectables for my new home, all I really wanted was some fresh air and sunlight. I couldn’t begin to imagine how much the sun would hurt my eyes after all the constant darkness.

I missed the smell of the air just before it was about to rain. I loved to sit outside and listen to the rhythm of the raindrops as they bounced off the clay-tiled roofs near my little house. I’d just planted a row of purple passion penstemons along the honeysuckle bush. My plantings combined with the neighbor’s abundant desert sage bushes created scents that filled the evening air. The aroma often made me feel like I’d slipped away into a secret aromatherapy garden.

Gram would have enjoyed what I planted in the tiny bit of earth that came with my little rental. Gram always had plants inside and out, mostly flowering herbs. We never went without fresh herbs. If we weren’t cooking with them, she would dry them to make teas, most of which I found gross. She had a small following that came to her for her unique blend of dried herbs and teas. It amazed me that, for the amount of times we moved, they always knew where to find her.

Blanketed by this darkness, I wasn’t sure if I was awake or asleep most of the time. Sleeping seemed like the only way to escape the emptiness. The problem was that my dreams almost bled into my reality, or lack thereof. Many of my dreams were pleasant and as mixed up as any other dream would be. In the nightmares haunting me now I was trapped in the darkness, just as I was when awake.

I kept having a recurring dream that I was watching myself sitting on the bed in the dark—distinguished as a dream only because the darkness was slightly lifted. The walls and ceiling seem to be painted a deep purplish-brown. The toilet was black. Even the concrete floor was painted a dark muddy green. Although the walls and the room were void of any décor, the space was crafted with precision and didn’t look slopped together.

If I stared at the walls long enough, they appeared to be thinning out and moving away from me. Just as I reached out to push against the wall, my body felt like it was thrown across the room. I woke out of breath and my chest had a hot tingly sensation, as if I ran into someone’s fist.

I kept hoping that if I spent enough time thinking about Gram, I would be able to have a dream about her. I missed her so much. When I was young and would wake from a nightmare, she would make me a cup of her special sleepy tea. Sometimes she would grant me a little snack, one of her homemade ginger snaps, and if I was really lucky, a game of dominos. She always had me tell her my dream and she would write them down in a dream journal. She told me they’d be locked in there so I could get back to sleep.

If only I could have one of her cookies at that moment. It had been some time since I’d eaten anything. I was starting to think my stomach’s growls were actually trying to say something. I guess it had been too long since I had a real conversation with someone that my digestive sounds were starting to sound like spoken words. If I actually started having a conversation with my own stomach, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

I decided I should try to do some sort of exercise. That decision hadn’t come quite to the point of action, maybe because running in place in the dark would have messed with my vertigo. I managed to do a few push-ups and part of my old abdominal routine I learned from a workout video. I didn’t want to waste too much of my energy, but I also didn’t want my body to atrophy lying around doing nothing. I performed a few of the yoga poses I remembered from class and tried to meditate when I wasn’t sleeping.

Trying to quiet the incessant rambling going on in my mind was very hard. My thoughts jumped from one topic to another and back to the first. Sometimes I thought about the same thing over and over again. In the darkness I seemed to be my own worst enemy. If I could have found some mental quiet and stopped thinking about those darn ginger snaps over and over again, maybe my stomach might stop growling.

So I decided I would sit there in a meditation pose with the backs of my hands resting upon my knees and my palms to the sky. My thumb and pointer finger were touching to create gentle little ovals. For a minute before I began to chant, I put them together and pictured they would make the infinity symbol. I tried not to think about the fact that I felt like I’d been there for an eternity. To avoid where that train of thought was about to go, I started to om.

I began with three long and deep oms out loud. The vibrations echoed off the walls. I felt it bounce back at me and embraced the vibration coursing through me. In the surrounding blackness, everything seemed to be intensified. I decided it might be best to om in my head. I was afraid someone might hear me and decide to threaten my brief moment of peace.

I sat there and omed for what could have been minutes or hours. That little bit of tranquility was fairly short lived. Between the forced sounds of my inner voice repeating the harmonizing sound truly meant to be vocalized aloud, my mind was bombarded by all the thoughts and images I tried to escape. With each om, I tried to push them to the back of my mind with little success.

Images of my mother, with her long golden-blond hair, filled my mind. My heart seemed to empty out at the sheer thought of her.
Om, breathe in and out
, I silently repeated to myself. Of course, though, my thoughts wandered off to what might be rotting in my refrigerator. Back to a few more oms. It was difficult not to notice my lack of personal hygiene. I tried to focus on my breath.
What about the empty walls in the room?
Were they always that way or was everything removed when it became my prison?

I couldn’t seem to draw my focus away from my surroundings. Amazingly, my breathing remained steady and had a nice even rhythm. My tongue was pressed firmly to the roof of my mouth as my breath slowly forced its way out through my nose, creating a sound reminiscent of the ocean. I found myself very aware of the position of my body and where it was located within the four walls of gloom. I kept thinking about my dream, in which I saw my prison more clearly, as if it were slightly lit. Trying to stay focused on my breath, I again repeated a few more oms. I wondered if what I saw in my dream was the reality of my surroundings.

When all I could do was feel my way around the small confines, how could I possibly know the colors of the walls or the esthetic details of the room?

I don’t know how long I’d been attempting to meditate, but my body was starting to lose sensation, surprisingly, not in a way that was painful. My legs and feet weren’t asleep with pins and needles; there was just calmness. My muscles sank into themselves. I may not have ultimately been able to clear my mind, but I did interfere with my connection to my body. If I were lying down, I might have thought I was asleep but aware of my surroundings.
What’s going on
? That was kind of a funny thought, since the only thing going on was my sitting in the dark, unmoving.