Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

‘You’re the best daddy ev-’

‘Wake up.’

A familiar voice gurgling up from swampy depths. The stench of onion on a wave of breath. The sound of swallowing.

Something small shatters in a sharp pop. A moment later the stink of ammonia fills her nostrils. Her eyes flutter open. Warm water runs down her cheeks.

Everything is dark and without form. A shadow, like a vaguely human-shaped hole scissored out of reality, before her. Behind it, bright white light making it impossible for her to see anything more than shadow. She closes her eyes and opens them again. Her pupils shrink, adjusting to the room. The shadow grows features, taking on detail and color and a third dimension. It is a man. The man has a name and she knows what it is. Henry. She blinks again and sees him clearly for the first time since waking. He simply stands before her with his arms at his sides, fists opening and closing.

Then he reaches into his shirt pocket, pulls out a roll of something, small white disks, and thumbs one into his mouth. He chews it, swallows.

There’s an intense pain in her wrists. She can feel blood warm and thick rolling down her arms. She looks up and sees her wrists tied together with coarse yellow rope. The rope is slung over a large metal hook which has been screwed into a wooden ceiling beam. Her hands above the rope are purple and numb, bloated fingers curled slightly, fingertips touching. She has been here before: the punishment hook. You’ve been very bad, Sarah. Very bad indeed. Looking at her fingers she thinks of a rhyme she learned in Sunday school. Here is the church and here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.

Her feet dangle far above the cracked gray surface of the concrete floor.

Henry stands and stares. Fists opening and closing, opening and closing. He tongues at a molar. His breathing sounds funny. It gets heavier and thicker and faster.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’

His breathing stops. There is silence.

Then: ‘But you’re really not, are you?’

‘I am.’

‘What are you sorry for?’

One two three four five six seven eight.

She looks around for Borden, just to know that she isn’t alone down here. Just to know that she isn’t alone with Henry. Maybe he’s standing in the shadows somewhere. She knows he cannot save her from whatever punishment Henry will be delivering, but seeing him would be a comfort still. She does not see him.

A hand across her face so hard it makes her eyes water and a bruise above her ear begins to throb. She had forgotten about it, that place where Henry punched her earlier, but now it is throbbing with the beat of her heart.

‘I said what are you sorry for?’

She looks down at her feet once more. They are filthy, black with dirt, and if she ignores the pain she can pretend she is simply floating above the floor. A crack in the concrete moves left and right beneath her as she swings by her wrists. Just pretend you’re floating: above the ground without a care in the world.

He reaches toward her. She instinctively recoils. He slaps at her cheek, a quick whip-crack of his fingertips, then grabs her chin and tilts her head up so that she is looking him in the eyes. An uncaring cruelty floats in them and nothing more: pools of bad water. She hates them.

‘You don’t know?’

‘What?’

‘You don’t know what you’re sorry for?’

‘I’m. .’ she says, and licks her lips. They are dry and cracked. ‘I’m sorry for running.’

‘You’re sorry for getting caught.’

‘No.’

‘Oh, you wanted to get caught?’

She turns her head and looks away. She can feel fresh tears welling in her eyes. She tries to blink them away. She doesn’t want to cry in front of him. She doesn’t want to be weak in front of him. He is a cruel man and weakness makes him angrier, more likely to attack.

‘You didn’t want to get caught.’

‘No.’

‘That is why you’re sorry.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well I do .’

With the last word he puts a fist into her stomach, punching all the air out of her. It leaves her in a single rush. If she weren’t strung up by the wrists she would curl into a fetal ball. Instead she swings and gasps for air like a fish on the end of a line.

Henry stands and watches her swing. Fists opening and closing.

‘You’ve made me very angry, Sarah.’

He has always called her Sarah. Both he and Beatrice. Another way of torturing her. Another way of confusing her. Of making her confused about who and what she is.

She is just getting her breath back when Henry grabs her by the hips and stills her swinging. He looks at her in silence.

Then: ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

She breathes in and out, chest heaving. Her stomach is a tight, cramped knot.

‘My daddy’s coming,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘I called my daddy and told him everything. You better just let me go. If you don’t he’s going to, he’s going to get you and he’s going to-’

‘Lies!’ Violence like a large wave crashing upon a beach. She flinches away but does not break eye contact. ‘You’re lying,’ he says. ‘Tell me you’re lying.’

She shakes her head. ‘He’s going to get you,’ she says.

‘Henry?’ Beatrice’s voice stumbling down the stairs.

‘What?’

‘You’re gonna be late for work.’

He looks at his watch and curses under his breath. ‘I’ll be right up,’ he says.

He grabs Maggie by the waist and lifts her off the hook and sets her down on the cold concrete floor. Then he unties her wrists and makes four loose loops of the bloody rope.

She looks down at her wrists and sees the shape of the rope imbedded in her skin. She pushes herself backwards until she is up against the wall. She looks up at him, awaiting some final act of violence. It does not come.

He nods to the rusty sink in the corner and says, ‘Wash up before Bee brings you supper.’ Then trudges halfway up the stairs before turning around again. ‘You’ve broken Bee’s heart with your behavior. All she wants is a daughter. She loves you, you know. Even though you’re a failure as a daughter, she loves you.’ Then he heads the rest of the way up the stairs, turns off the overhead light, and closes the door. A moment later, the sound of a deadbolt sliding into place.

The only light left in the basement is the laundry-water gray of late afternoon coming in through the basement’s sole window.

Her hands begin to throb with sharp pain as the circulation returns to them. She cries silently, trying to bend her fingers. It hurts too much, and she knows from experience that it will take several minutes for the pain to recede. And she knows, too, that the tide of pain hasn’t yet even fully come in.

But she knows something else as well: she almost got away.

After years in captivity she managed to get out. Hope which she’d long thought dead throbs hot in her chest. Even now, back here in the Nightmare World, there is a new sense of possibility. The world on the other side of the window is not unreachable. She has walked upon its ground. She has run through its woods. She has heard her daddy speak into her ear.

Getting out today was a fluke, she knows that, but if she plans it she can get out again. And this time she will not be brought back.

Henry walks to the fridge and pulls it open. On the top shelf, a brown-bag meal Bee has packed for him. He grabs it and looks inside. A Tupperware bowl with a chunk of corned beef in it and a soup of cabbage and water. Every day he gets the leftovers from the day before. He’s already looking forward to tomorrow’s meatloaf sandwich. In addition to the corned beef there are two pre-packaged chocolate cupcakes. He folds the bag, grabs the five beers left in a six pack he broke into at lunch, and lets it dangle from a finger by its one empty plastic ring.