She waited for hours. And hours. She tried to force herself to stay awake but her eyes kept shutting and her head was nodding. Each time she awoke, her eyes darted to see the table on the other side of the room to see if he was still there. She knew that he occasionally left for 10 minutes at a time, perhaps to use the restroom. He never ate in here but the air was heavy with the smell of cigarettes. She was taken to the restroom twice a day. She had no dignity left, relieving herself under his leering stare.
By her reckoning, she probably only had another hour before he came to take her, which meant he would need the keys. The keys that were stuffed into the waistband of her underwear. She was both exhilarated and petrified. Sure that she would escape. Sure that he would discover that she’d stolen the keys.
She was alerted to his movement by the scraping back of his chair. As he stood up from his seat in front of the computer, he looked over at her and she quickly feigned sleep, her head back against the wall, her legs tucked under her right side.
She listened as his footsteps came closer, coming to rest as he stood over her. She heard his knees creak as he squatted beside her and could smell his putrid breath as he leaned down and ran his fingers down the side of her neck, travelling down further and roughly cupping her breast. She couldn’t help but groan and try to scoot away from him. Now he knew she was awake. He squeezed her breast hard and twisted it in his fingers before pushing her away and standing up abruptly. She looked up at him as he kicked her hard, high up on her thigh. She cried out in pain and he laughed cruelly and kicked her again before walking away. He went out the far door, as usual, and she took a few deep breaths, getting control of herself.
It had to be now. He would usually come to fetch her shortly after his break. She figured she had about ten minutes to be gone from here. Her heart raced as she reached down and removed the keys, trying to be as quiet as possible.
She was chained only at her left ankle so removing her binding was relatively easy. With her efforts to be as quiet as possible, it felt as if it took hours to get free but in truth it was less than a minute.
Carefully, she stood, her own knees creaking this time and she surveyed the all too familiar room. He had gone out the furtherest door and she was almost certain that it did not lead to freedom. It was the door closest to her that she was sure that her other captor used. He always smelled clean and fresh, it was if she could smell the fresh air from outside clinging to him.
She inched her way towards that door, creeping along with her back to the wall, her thigh throbbing where he’d kicked her. She reached the door, a narrow rusting thing which she thought must have well-oiled hinges since she never heard the other man entering the room.
She tried the handle, twisting it to the right. Nothing. Then to the left. Nothing.
For Andy’s Dark Side Thursday.
Yes, of course I’m on a plane. I started writing this before we even took off. I might keep going on the next story now, before the seat belt sign goes out 😉
Of course, that paragraph above is now obsolete because I wrote this a week or two ago, but anyway….
x desleyjane
Musings of a Frequent Flying Scientist 
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