promise I won’t make fun of your shirt again?” I ask.
He stares at me.
“Or if you like me making fun of your shirt, I could do that too.”
He still stares at me, clearly unimpressed. “You’ve hurt my feelings. This is my favorite shirt.”
“It’s a nice shirt. So please let me go.”
“Are you sure you like my shirt? I feel like you don’t like my shirt,” he says, and I realize that it was horribly stupid fucking with this man. “I suppose I’ll go cry in the corner, then. I probably would have saved you if you just told me you liked my shirt.”
He closes the door, locking me in the dark room alone with just my thoughts and a bucket. The concrete room has no window and when I fiddle with the door, it’s heavy and made of steel.
Well, isn’t this going to be a blast?
Two
This one time in middle school, I went camping with my friends, and the blow-up mattress got a hole in it because someone thought it’d be funny to body slam down onto it. Then we complained because it was uncomfortable sleeping on the deflated mattress.
That’s nothing compared to the concrete floor I’m currently trying to sleep on. It’s cold as fuck and I’m positive I’m going to freeze to death if someone doesn’t do something soon.
The door opens and I leap up to face Shepherd.
“Oh my god, I thought you guys were never coming back. I thought I was going to die in here or starve to death at the very least.”
“You’ve been in here one hour,” he says.
I stare at him in disbelief. “An… hour? Like… sixty minutes?”
He glances down at his watch. “I’m sorry. Sixty-two minutes, actually.” He thrusts a bottle of water at me. “Savor it. You might not get another.”
“Wait… what? Shepherd, I feel like we got off on the wrong foot when I elbowed you in the face. What do you think about talking? I heard that you should make your captor understand you on a personal level. What do you think about getting a shirt one size bigger?”
He tries to close the door in my face but since my foot is in the way, he just slams the door on my foot.
“Fuck,” I cry as he opens the door enough to look down. “Shepherd, please. I know you think I’m annoying as fuck because when I’m nervous or scared or upset I spout shit, but really, please, I just want to go home. I didn’t do anything wrong! I’m not a bad person!”
“What about when you stood by your father’s side as he told the whole damn city that it just wasn’t his fault this or that happened when we both know he could have done something?”
“You don’t understand.” I had to.
“And clearly, neither do you.”
He gives me a shove and pushes me back inside before slamming the door. I carry my bottle of water over to the corner and sit down as I hug it against myself.
I am fucked.
I am so fucked.
I know I should be listening and be good, but I’m not sure I even give a shit. They’re not letting me go and even if they did, what’s out there? I’m better off rotting in here. Hell, maybe it’s safer in here.
The door opens and while I have no window to tell time, I know more than an hour has passed. I think it has to be morning, telling me I’ve already been here at least half a day or more.
It’s Rod this time and he’s holding out a sandwich. It’s not wrapped in anything, and I can only imagine what his disgusting fingers touched before handling the sandwich, but I know better than to bitch, so I walk over and take it.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“There’s a bucket,” he says as he points.
“No, like I need to take a shit.”
“There’s a bucket.”
I need to get out of this room. There’s nothing I can do inside here besides beg for the door to open. “You really would rather clean shit out of a bucket than walk me to the bathroom? Are you that scared of me?” I ask.
Unlike Shepherd, I feel like this asshole can be manipulated. So the moment I mention the possibility of him being incapable of controlling me, he bites.
His jaw sets and his eyes narrow. “Of course not. Come on.”
I pull the bread slices apart and see that there are a few globs of peanut butter on it. They’re not