Текст книги "Mud Vein"
Автор книги: Tarryn Fisher
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The zookeeper calls me into the snowstorm. I knew he’d come eventually. You don’t put on a show like this and not expect applause. I see him outside the kitchen window; a dark shadow against the white snow. He’s facing me, but there is snow and wind and it’s swirling around in cold chaos. It’s like I’m looking at a grainy television picture. He stands there for at least a minute, until he knows I’ve seen him. Then he turns and walks toward the cliff. My hands grip the edge of the sink until my wrists ache from the pressure. I have no choice but to go out there and follow him.
Isaac is unconscious, his body overheating. I leave my pitcher on the counter, pocket an inhaler and then I take the knife. The little one he left me on the first day I woke up in this Hell. It was a gift. I want to thank him for it. I slip it into my pocket and step outside, veering right. Five steps into the swells of snow and my leg is aching. I am shivering and my nose is running. I glance back at the kitchen window, afraid Isaac will wake up and call for me. What if his heart stops while I’m gone? I push away these thoughts and focus on my pain. Pain will carry me through; pain will help me focus.
All I can see is his back; the silhouette of him against the white, white snow. A black coat hugging narrow shoulders and hanging down to the backs of his knees. He’s facing the cliff as I walk toward him. If he’s close enough maybe I can push him off and watch him crack on the bottom. I search for the direction he came from: a car, another person, a break in the fence where he could have slipped through. Nothing. My legs want to stop when I’m a few feet away. This is a heavy thing—meeting your captor. I am afraid. I am afraid the fuse in my bone will snap apart as I struggle to push through the last few yards of snow. I take my last step and I am beside him. I don’t look. My own hood is pulled up around my face so that I can’t see left or right unless I turn my head. It’s snowing into the hole in front of us. The flakes are heavy and dense. They fall quickly. The knife is out of my pocket, the blade pointed toward the body to my left.
“Why?” I ask.
Snow fills my eyes and mouth and nose until I feel like I’m going to choke on it.
There is no answer so I turn to face my captor, ready to stick the blade in his throat.
Her throat.
I drop the blade and stumble backwards. I almost fall except she reaches out and catches me.
I scream and thrash out of her hands.
“Don’t touch me!”
My leg. Oh God—my leg. It hurts.
“Don’t touch me,” I say again. Calmer this time.
I start to cry. I feel like a little kid, so uncertain, so lost. I want to sit down and process this.
“Doctor,” I say. “What is this?”
Saphira Elgin turns back to the cliff. It looks like a big bowl filling up with flour.
“You don’t remember?” She sounds disappointed. I sound like I can’t breathe. I pull the inhaler from my pocket, eyeing her red lips. I don’t remember her being so tall, but maybe I’ve become more bent from the weight of this.
“Why would you do this, Saphira?” I’m shaking violently and I’m light headed.
Dr. Elgin shakes her head. “I can’t tell you what you already know.”
I don’t understand. She’s obviously crazy.
“You can save him. Send him back to his wife and baby,” she says.
I’m quiet. I can’t feel my toes.
“How?”
“Say the word. It’s your choice. But you have to stay.”
I feel an ache in my chest. Saphira sees the look on my face. Grins. I recall the dragon in her, the way her looks seem to regard my soul.
“Can you do it? It brings you pain to part with him.”
“Shut up! Shut up!” I cover my ears with my hands.
I feel everything on my skin. I’m boiling over. I want to attack her, and sob and scream, and die all at once.
“You’re sick,” I hiss. I raise the hand with the knife, and she makes no move to stop me or step away. I drop my arm to my side. Save Isaac and die here.
“Yes. If that’s my only choice, yes. Take him. He’s sick and we don’t have any more medicine.” I grab her arm. I need her to take him with her. “Now! Get him to a hospital.”
Where did she come from? Maybe if I can overpower her I can get to her car. Get help. But even as I think this, I know I am too weak, and I know she did not come alone.
She watches my struggle with interest. I’m so cold. I have so many things to ask: the box, my mother … the Why? Why? Why? But I am too cold to speak.
“Why?” I ask again.
She laughs. Her breath blows snow away from her mouth. I watch the flakes shoot horizontally and then continue their dance to the ground.
“Senna,” she says. “You are in love with Isaac.”
I don’t know it until the words are out of her mouth. Then I know it, and it feels like someone has sucker punched me.
I’m in love with Isaac.
I’m in love with Isaac.
I’m in love with Isaac.
What happened to Nick? I try to pull up my feelings for Nick. The feelings that imprisoned me for a decade, chaining me to a rotting corpse of a relationship. All I did for years was punish myself for not being what he needed. For failing the person I loved the most. But out in the freezing cold, with the blizzard swirling around me, and my kidnapper’s liquid eyes probing my face, I can’t remember the last time I thought of Nick. Isaac happened to Nick. But when? How? Why didn’t I know it was happening? How could my heart switch allegiances without me knowing?
Doctor—no, I won’t call her a doctor after what she’s done—Saphira looks smug.
I’m so cold I can’t be anything but cold. I can’t even muster anger.
I rest my hand on the outside of my pocket where my inhaler is. I don’t want to have to use it again.
“Take him,” I say again. “Please. He’s very sick. Take him now.” My voice is frantic. The wind is picking up. When I turn my head I can’t see the house anymore. I’ll do anything she says, so long as she saves Isaac.
She takes a syringe out of her pocket and hands it to me.
“Go say goodbye to him. Then use this.”
I take the syringe and nod, though I don’t think she can see me through the snow.
“What if I put this in your neck right now?”
I can feel her grinning.
“Then we’d all die. Are you ready for that?”
I’m not. I want Isaac to live because he deserves it. I wish he could tell me what to do. I was wrong about the zookeeper. I didn’t expect this. I profiled my kidnapper, but I never hung the face of Saphira Elgin on him. She changes everything; because of her knowledge of me, she has the ability to outplay me.
I clutch the syringe. I can’t see the house, but I know the direction it’s in. So I walk. I walk until I see the logs. Then I walk running my frozen hands along the logs until I reach the door. I swing it open and collapse on the bottom stair, shivering. It’s warmer in here, but not warm enough. I climb the stairs. Isaac is in his room where I left him. I add a log to his dwindling fire and crawl into the bed with him. He’s burning up; his skin is the heat I crave so badly. I press my lips against his temple. There is a lot of grey there now. We match.
“Hey,” I say. “Do you remember that time you showed up every day to take care of a perfect stranger? I never really thanked you for that. I’m not really going to thank you now either, because that’s not my style.” I press closer to him, cup his cheek in my hand. The hair prickles my palm. “I am going to do something to take care of you for once. Go see your baby. I love you.” I lean over and kiss him on the mouth, then I roll out of bed and climb up to the attic room.
I feel nothing…
I feel nothing….
I feel everything.
I look at the needle for a long time, balancing it in the palm of my hand. I don’t know what will happen when I do this. Saphira could be lying to me. She could have a more sinister plan now that Isaac is out of the picture. What’s in the syringe could kill me. Maybe it’ll make me sleep and she’ll leave me here to die. I’d be grateful for that. I could fight back. I could wait and push this needle into her neck and take my chances with getting Isaac out of here myself. But I don’t want to risk his life. He has no idea Saphira is responsible for bringing us here. Her taking him out of here and getting him help will put her at the risk of being discovered. I push the needle into the vein in my hand. It hurts. Then I stand with the back of my knees pressed against the mattress, spreading my arms wide. This is what it feels like to love, I think. It’s heavy. Or maybe it’s the responsibility that comes with it that’s heavy.
I fall backwards. For the first time I feel my mother in the fall. She chose to save herself. She couldn’t bear the weight of love—not even for her own flesh and blood. And in that fall, I feel her decision to leave me. It rocks my heart and breaks it all over again. The first person you are connected to is your mother. By a cord composed of two arteries and a vein. She keeps you alive by sharing her blood and her warmth and her very life. When you are born, and the doctor severs that cord, a new one is formed. An emotional cord.
My mother held me and fed me. She brushed my hair gently, and told me stories about fairies that lived in apple trees. She sang me songs, and baked me lemon cakes with rose frosting. She kissed my face when I cried and made little circles on my skin with her fingertips. And then she abandoned me. She walked out like none of that meant anything. Like we were never connected by a cord with two arteries and a vein. Like we were never connected by our hearts. I was disposable. I could be left. I was a broken– hearted little girl. Isaac broke the spell she put me under. He taught me what it was to not be left. A stranger who fought to keep me alive.
I scream aloud. I roll to my side and grab my shirt, bringing the material up to my face, pressing it against my eyes and nose and mouth. I cry ungracefully, my heart hurting so exquisitely I cannot hold in the ugly noises that rise from my throat.
I once read that there is an invisible thread that connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break. As the drugs dull me, I can feel that cord. I close my eyes, choking on my own spit and tears, and I can almost feel it tug and pull as she takes Isaac.
Please don’t let it break, I silently plead to him. I need to know that some cords can’t be cut. Then the drugs take me.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Acceptance
Isaac is not in his bed when I wake. He’s not in the house. I check every corner, dragging my half useless leg behind me. My guess is that I’ve been unconscious for at least twenty-four hours, perhaps more. I step outside in Isaac’s oversized clunky boots, sinking into the fresh snow. The blizzard has all but covered the lower half of the house. Snow piles in graceful sweeps of white. White, white, white. All I see is white. It looks like the house is wearing a wedding dress. If there were tire marks, they are gone now. I walk as far as I can before reaching the fence. I am tempted to touch it. To let the volts shake my body and send my heart to a screeching stop. I reach my gloves toward the chain link. My light wool gloves that do nothing to stave off the frigid air. I might as well be wearing lace on my hands, I think for the thousandth time.
Isaac is out. My hands pause midair. I have no idea if Elgin will take him to a hospital. My hands move an inch toward the fence. But if she does, he will live. And I might see him again. I drop my hands to my sides. She’s crazy. For all I know she’s locked him up somewhere else where she can play more of her sick games.
No. Dr. Elgin always did what she said she was going to do. Even if it meant locking me up like an animal to fix me.
The last time I had seen Saphira Elgin was a year past the date I filed a restraining order against Isaac. I’d been seeing her once a week for over a year. Our visits, that had started with her extracting one sliver at a time from the lockdown that is my mind, eventually became more relaxed. More pleasant. I got to speak to someone who didn’t really care about me. She wasn’t trying to save me, or love me to better health; she was paid (a hundred dollars an hour) to take an unbiased look into my soul and help me find the crickets. That’s what she called them: crickets. The little chirping noises that were either alarms, or echoes, or the unspoken words that needed to be spoken. Or that’s what I thought anyway. Turns out Saphira cared above and beyond her pay grade. She entered God’s pay grade. Toying with fate and lives and sanity. But that last time, the last time I saw her, she’d said something that in hindsight should have been my clue in to her insanity.
I’d told her I was writing a new book. One about Nick. She’d become flustered at that. Not in the extreme outward way a normal person becomes flustered. I don’t even know if I can pinpoint how I knew it upset her. Maybe her bracelets tinkled a little extra that day as she jotted notes down on her yellow pad. Or maybe her ruby lips pulled a little tighter. But I knew. I’d confessed to her that I’d messed everything up, but I wasn’t sure how. When we ended our session she’d grabbed my hand.
“Senna,” she’d said, “do you want another chance at the truth?”
“The truth?” I’d repeated, not sure of what she was getting at.
“The truth that can set you free...”
Her eyes had been two hot coals. I’d been close enough to smell her perfume; it smelled exotic like myrrh and burning wood.
“Nothing can set me free, Saphira,” I’d said in turn. “That’s why I write.”
I’d turned to leave. I was halfway out the door when she’d called my name.
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
I’d half smiled, and gone home and forgotten what she’d said. I’d written my book in the month after that meeting. I only needed thirty days to write a book. Thirty days in which I didn’t eat or sleep or do anything at all but clack away at my keyboard. And after the book was finished and catharsis was complete, I’d never made another appointment to see her. Her office called and left messages on my phone. She eventually called and left a message. But I was finished.
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” I say it out loud, the memory aching in my brain. Is that where she had the idea? To put me in this place where for a time both the sun and the moon were hidden? Where like slow, seeping molasses I would discover the crickets of truth in my heart?
My zookeeper thought it kind to be my savior. And now what? I would starve and freeze here alone? What was the point of that? I hate her so. I want to tell her that her sick game didn’t work, that I’m just the same as I’ve always been: broken, bitter and self-destructive. Something comes to me then, a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
“Fuck you, Saphira!” I call out.
Then I reach out in defiance and grab the fence.
I cry out because of what I think is coming. But nothing comes. It’s then that I acknowledge that there is no humming. The fence used to hum. My vocal chords are frozen, my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. I unstick my tongue and try to lick my lips. But my mouth is so dry there is nothing to wet them with. I let go of the chain link and look over my shoulder at the house. I left the front door open, it’s swung wide, the one dark spot beneath the veils of snow. I don’t want to go back. The smart thing would be to go get more layers. More socks. I threw on one of Isaac’s sweatshirts before I left, over the one I was already wearing. But the air cuts through both like they’re made of tissue. I head back for the house, my leg aching. I throw on more clothes, stuff food in my pockets. Before I leave I climb the stairs to the carousel room. Kneeling in front of the chest, I search for the single puzzle piece that escaped the fire. It’s there, in the corner, overlaid with dust. I place it in my pocket, and then I walk through my prison for the last time.
The fence. I lace my fingers through the wire and pull up. In Saphira’s exit with Isaac, she might have overlooked turning the fence back on. If she comes back I don’t want to be here. I’d sooner die free, cold and in the woods than locked up behind an electrical fence, turning into a human ice cube in that house.
Isaac’s boots are big. I can’t fit the toes into the octagons that make up the pattern of the fence. I slip twice and my chin bumps down the metal like something out of a Looney-Tunes cartoon. I feel blood running down my neck. I don’t even bother to wipe it up. I am desperate … manic. I want out. I claw at the fence. My gloves snag on twisted pieces of steel. When I rip them away the metal catches the skin on my palm, ripping into the tender flesh. I keep going. There is barbed wire along the top of the fence, running in loops as far as I can see. I don’t even feel the spikes when I grab onto one and swing my leg over the side. I manage to get both feet balanced precariously on the far side of the fence. The barbed wire wavers against my weight. I sway … then I fall.
I feel my mother in that fall. Maybe it’s because I’m so near to the Reaper. I wonder if my mother is dead, and if I will see her when I die. I think all of this as I make the three-second spill to the ground.
One.
Two.
Three.
I gasp. I feel as if all the air in the world was pumped into my lungs, and then rapidly sucked out, lickety-split.
Right away I search myself. I can hardly breathe, but my hands are running over my limbs looking for broken things. When I am sufficiently comforted that this fall didn’t break anything, I sit up, groaning, holding onto the back of my head like my brains are falling out. The snow broke my fall, but my head hit something. It takes me a while to get all the way to my feet. I’m going to have a huge knot … maybe a concussion. The good new is if I have a concussion I’ll just pass out. No feeling wild animals rip my limbs apart. No feeling myself freeze to death. No eating tree bark and suffering the claws of hunger. Just a nice, bleeding brain and then … nothing. The bags of peanuts I put into my pockets are scattered around in the snow. I pick them up one by one as I bend my head back to look at the top of the fence. I want to see how far I fell. What is that—twelve feet? I turn toward the woods, my bad leg sinking low into the soft mounds of snow. It’s hard to get it back up. I have worked a nice little path to the tree line when I suddenly turn back. It’s only ten feet back to the chain link, but it’s an arduous journey. I look one last time. I hate it. I hate that house. But it’s where Isaac showed me a love that expects nothing in return. So, I can’t hate it too much.
Please, please let him live.
And then I walk.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I hear the beating of helicopter blades.
Whump-Whump
Whump-Whump
Whump-Whump
I force my eyes open. I have to use my fingers to pry them apart, and even then I can’t get them to stay cracked.
Whump-Whump
It sounds like it’s getting closer. I have to get up, get outside. I am already outside. I feel the snow beneath my fingertips. I raise my head. There is a lot of pain. From my head? Yes, I fell. Climbing over the fence.
Whump-Whump
Whump-Whump
You have to get to a clearing. Somewhere they can see you. But all around me there are trees. I’ve walked so far. I am in the thickest of thickets. I can reach out and touch the nearest tree trunk with my pinkie. Did I stop here because I thought it would be warmer? Did I just collapse? I can’t remember. But I hear a helicopter whipping the air, and I have to make them see me. I utilize the nearest tree trunk and pull myself to my feet. I stumble forward, heading in the direction I came from. I can see my prints in the snow. I think I remember a thicket just ahead. One where I could see the sky. It’s farther than I thought, and by the time I reach it and tilt my head back, I can’t hear the Whump-Whump quite as clearly as before. Not enough time to build a fire. I picture myself crouched in the snow whittling away at a pile of wood, and laugh. Too late to go back to the house, how long have I been out her? I’ve lost all concept of time. Two days? Three? Then I think it. Isaac is alive! He sent them. There is nothing to do but to stand in the clearing, head tilted up, and wait.
I am airlifted to the nearest hospital in Anchorage. There are already news trucks outside. I see flashes and hear slamming doors and voices before I am wheeled on the gurney through the back door and into a private room. Nurses and doctors in salmon-colored scrubs come rushing toward me. I am compelled to roll off the gurney and hide. There are too many people. I want to tell them that I’m fine. I’m a death escapist. There is no need for this many medical professionals or this many tests. Their faces are serious; they are concentrating on saving me. There’s nothing really left for them to save.
Nevertheless, needles slide into my arms over and over until I can’t even feel them anymore. They make me comfortable in a private room, with only an IV to keep me company. The nurses ask how I feel, but I don’t know what to tell them. I know that my heart is beating and that I am not cold anymore. They tell me that I’m dehydrated, undernourished. I want to say, “No shit” but I can’t form words yet. After a few hours they feed me. Or they try to. Simple food that my hollow stomach can handle: bread and something that is white and mushy. I push the food aside and ask for coffee. They say, “No.” When I try to stand up and tell them that I’m getting my own, they bring me coffee.
The police come next. All official looking. I tell them I want to speak to Saphira before I speak to them. They want my statement; they’re clicking the little buttons on the ends of their pens and pushing tape recorders at me, but I stare at them tight lipped until I can speak to Saphira.
“You can speak to her when you’re well enough to come in to the station,” they tell me. A chill runs through my body. They have her. Here.
“That’s when I’ll speak to you, then,” I tell them.
A day before I am discharged I am visited by two doctors; one is an oncologist and the other an orthopedic surgeon. The ortho guy holds up the x-rays they took of my leg.
“The bone didn’t heal straight, which is why you have pain when you put too much pressure on it. I’ve scheduled you for—”
“No,” I tell him.
He brings his eyes to my face. “No?”
“I’m not interested in fixing it. I’ll leave it how it is.” I open the magazine on my lap to signal that the conversation is over.
“Ms. Richards, with all due respect, the irregular fusion of your bone that was caused by the accident will be something that pains you for the rest of your life. You will want to have the surgeries needed to repair it.”
I close my magazine. “I like pain. I like when it lingers. It reminds a person of what they’ve lived through.”
“That’s a very unique perspective,” he says. “But not practical.”
I fling the magazine across the room. It flies with surprising force and hits the door with a healthy thud. Then I pull down my hospital gown—all the way—until the scars on my chest are exposed. He looks like he might pass out.
“I like my scars,” I say. “I earned them. Now, get out.”
As soon as the door shuts behind him, I scream. The nurses come rushing in, but I throw my water jug at them. At the rate I’m going they’re going to put me in the psych ward.
“Get out!” I scream at them. “Stop telling me how to live my life!”
I am much nicer to the oncologist. She got my file from the hospital in Seattle and ran the yearly tests that I’d missed during my imprisonment. When she gives me the results she sits on the edge of my bed. It reminds me so much of Isaac that I feel overwhelmed. When she is finished she tells me that I am built to fight; emotionally and physically. I actually smile.
A few days later I am driven to the police station in the back of a police car. It stinks of mold and sweat. I am wearing clothes that the hospital gave me: jeans, an ugly brown sweater and green chucks. The nurses tried to comb through my hair, but eventually they gave up. I asked for scissors and hacked through the rope of it. Now it barely touches my neck. I look stupid, but who cares? I’ve been locked in a house for over a year eating coffee grounds and trying not to die of hypothermia.
When we reach the police station, they put me in a room with a cup of coffee and a bagel. Two detectives come in and try to take my statement.
“Not until I can speak to Saphira,” I say. I don’t know why it’s so important for me to speak to her first. Maybe I think that they won’t hold true to the bargain, and they’ll keep me away from her. Finally, one of the detectives, a tall man who smells like cigarette smoke and says his s’s too softly leads me by the arm to the room where they are holding her. He tells me his name is Detective Garrison. He’s in charge of this case. I wonder if he’s ever seen action like this before.
“Ten minutes,” he says. I nod. I wait until he closes the door before I look at her. She’s ruffled. Her lips are bare of their usual deep red, and her hair is pulling out of a low ponytail. She’s leaning her elbows on the table, her hands clasped in front of her. It’s her typical shrink pose.
“What’s wrong, Saphira? You look like an experiment gone wrong.”
She doesn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, she looks downright peaceful. She knew she’d get caught. She wanted to. Planned it, probably. The realization throws me off. I momentarily forget what I came here to do. I make my way over to the chair opposite her. It screeches against the floor as I pull it out.
My heart is racing. This isn’t how I imagined this going. Her face blurs in and out of my vision. I hear screaming. No. It’s my imagination. We are in a quiet room, painted white, sitting at a metal table. The only sound is silence as we sit contemplating one another, so why do I want to reach up and cover my ears?
“Saphira,” I breathe. She smiles at me. A dragon’s smile. “Why did you do this?”
“Senna Richards. The great fiction writerrr,” she purrs, leaning forward on her elbows. “You don’t rememberrr Westwick.”
Westwick.
“What are you talking about?”
“You were institutionalized, my dear. Three years ago. At Westwick Psychiatric Facility.”
My skin prickles. “That’s a lie.”
“Is it?”
My mouth is dry. My tongue is sticking to the inside of my mouth. I try to shift it around—to the roof of my mouth, the inside of my cheeks, but it sticks, sticks, sticks.
“You had a psychotic break. You tried to kill yourself.”
“I would never,” I say. I love death. I think about it all the time, but to actually act out a suicide is unlike me.
“You called me from yourrr home at three o’clock in the morrrning. You were delusional. You werrre starving yourself. Keeping yourrrself awake with pills. When they took you in you hadn’t slept in nine days. You were experiencing hallucinations, paranoia and memory lapses.”
That’s not suicide, I think. But then I’m not so sure. I lift my hands off the top of the table where they are resting and hide them between my thighs.
“You were saying one thing overrr and overrr when they brought you in. Do you rememberrr?”
I make a noise in the back of my throat.
If I ask her what I was saying I’m acknowledging that I believe her. And I don’t believe her. Except that I can hear screaming in my head.
“Pink hippo,” she says.
My throat constricts. The screaming gets louder. I want to reach up and put my hands over my ears to quell the sound.
“No,” I say.
“Yes, Senna. You were.”
“No!” I slam my fist on the table. Saphira’s eyes grow large.
“I was saying Zippo.”
There is silence. All consuming, chilling, silence. I realize I was baited.
The corners of her mouth curl up. “Ah, yes,” she says. “Z, for Zippo. My mistake.”
It’s like I’ve just woken up from a dream—not a good one—just a dream that concealed a reality I’d somehow forgotten. I’m not freaking out, I’m not panicking. It feels as if I’m waking up from a long sleep. I’m compelled to stand and stretch my muscles. I hear the screaming again, but now it’s connected to a memory. I’m in a locked room. I’m not trying to get out. I don’t care about getting out. I’m just curled up on a metal cot, screaming. They can’t get me to stop. I’ve been like that for hours. I only stop when they sedate me, but as soon as the drugs wear off, I’m screaming again.
“What made me stop screaming?” I ask her. My voice is so calm. I can’t remember everything. It’s all in pieces; smells and sounds and overwhelming emotions that were there at once, making me feel like I was about to implode.
“Isaac.”
I jar at the sound of his name. “What are you talking about?”
“I called Isaac,” she says. “He came.”
“Ohgodohgodohgod.” I bend over at the waist, hugging myself. I remember. I’ve been falling, and now I’ve finally hit the ground.
Flashes of him coming into the room and climbing into the cot behind me. His arms wrapping around my body, until I stopped screaming.
I moan. It’s an ugly, guttural sound.
“Why did I forget all that?” I’m still treating her like she’s my shrink; asking her questions like she’s sane enough to know the answers. She’s your zookeeper. She tried to kill you.
“It happens. We block out things that thrrreaten to break us. It’s the brain’s best defense mechanism.”
I’m struggling for air.
“This was all an experiment to you. You took advantage of your position. Of what I told you.” All my gusto is gone. I just need answers so I can get out of here. Get out of here and go where? Home, I tell myself. Whatever that is.
“Do you remember what you asked me in our last session?” I stare at her blank faced.
“You asked, ‘If there were a God, why would he let these terrible things happen to people?’”
I remember.
“With free will comes bad decisions; decisions to drink and drive and kill someone’s child. Decisions to murder. Decisions to choose whom we love, whom we spend our life with. If God decided to never let anything bad happen to people, he would have to take away their free will. He would become the dictator and they would be his puppets.”
