Mud Vein

  I fall asleep for a bit. When I wake up my body is pressed against Isaac’s. I went looking for his heat while I slept. I’m too afraid to move. If he’s hot, he’s still alive. He makes a noise in the back of his throat. Relief floods. I get up and light a fire. I try to gather its heat in my palms as I wiggle my fingers toward the flames. Every few minutes I look over my shoulder to check on the rising and falling of his chest. It’s barely a rise and fall. It’s more of a little flutter.

  Then I get an idea. I get up and grab the cup of water from the bedside table. The cup is cool against my hand. I climb onto the bed and throw a leg over his waist until I am straddling him. I keep my weight off his body by suspending myself on my knees. I just need enough leverage to get to his lips. Staring down at his gaunt, skeletal face, I take a deep sip of the water. This is probably a stupid idea, but there is no one to witness it. I bend my head down until my lips are touching Isaac’s. It feels as if I have my mouth pressed against an overheated car engine. His lips part automatically. I push the water into to his mouth and keep my lips firmly pressed to his to keep it from rolling out. I feel his throat move, feel it push the water down, down, down his esophagus. I imagine that I can hear the tinkle as it drops into his empty stomach.

  I do it again. The second time doesn’t go as well as the first; water spills down the side of his face and he sputters a little, but I keep trying. When Isaac has swallowed a shot glass worth of the melted ice, I roll off of him and lie staring up at the ceiling. After the hours I’ve spent being helpless this feels like an accomplishment. One of epic proportions. It used to be that if I finished a book I’d feel accomplished. If I landed on the New York Times bestsellers list I’d feel more accomplished. If they made a movie out of the bestseller I’d feel like I was the essence of accomplishment. Now if the man I’m imprisoned with swallows a mouthful of water, I want to sprint around the room in victory.

  My limbs and brain are flaccid. I repeat the process every twenty minutes. If I try too often he starts to choke. I’m so terrified that his heart will stop I keep my palm pressed to his chest to feel the lazy thud.

  “You keep him alive,” I tell it. “Keep beating.”

  Ugh. My tear ducts are burning. I fist my hands and rub my eyes like a child. I need to refill the water in the cup. I could slip around the corner to the bathroom, but the water from the faucet is brown and tastes like copper. Isaac and I usually drink the snow. My mouth is dry and my throat feels coarse. I haven’t wanted to drink the water in the cup. I don’t want to leave him, but the need to drink, to pee, to get more snow moves me off the bed.

  I make my way down the stairs, grabbing my sweatshirt from the banister. Isaac’s rubber boots are at the front door. I slip my feet into them and plod to the kitchen to grab a pitcher for the snow. The pitcher is below the sink. I duck down to retrieve it. When I come back up, I glance out the window to assess the snowstorm. That’s when I see him.

  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.

  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.