Chevy Stevens - Still Missing

“Difficult?”

“I mean, it will take a while for me to get used to everything and all, but I’m beginning to see that maybe I could like it up here. With you.”

“You think so, do you?” He dragged out each syllable.

Forcing myself to make eye contact again, I tried to convey as much sincerity as possible.

“Yes, I do. You understand a lot of things most men don’t.”

“Oh, I definitely understand a lot of things most men don’t.” His face broke out in his award-winning smile. Bingo.

When he rubbed lotion on me, I said, “I really like that scent.” His smile grew even bigger.

After I put on the dress, I twirled for him and said, “It’s exactly what I would have picked out.”

Back on the bed I moaned for him and kissed him back, but cautiously, as though I were awakening to his touch. His pants sped up and I counted the seconds between them like contractions. Inside, I died.

With his breathing heavy and his face flushed, he lay on top of me. Worried he would lose his erection—and then lose control—I reached down and fondled him before things could turn ugly. It had to be done.

Deep inside myself I curled into a ball and hid from my own words as I whispered, “I’ve waited for this moment.”

His arms tensed and his face turned dark with rage. He clamped his hand down on my throat. His hand tightened as I clawed uselessly at it.

“I could kill you at any second, and you talk like a whore? You should be terrified. You should be begging. You should be fighting for your life. Don’t you get it? ”

He finally released my throat, but my relief was interrupted by a blow to my stomach. He pounded my body with his fists, against my breasts, face, crotch. I struggled, but his fists were everywhere at once. The blows rained down until I couldn’t feel them anymore. I had passed out.

It’s strange, Doc, when The Freak called me a whore and beat me, I felt pain but no sense of outrage, because I wanted him to hurt me. Even while my body struggled against him, my mind cheered him on. I deserved the pain. How could I say those things? How could I touch him like that?

I did a lot of things on the mountain, a lot of things I didn’t want to do and a lot of things I didn’t want to believe I was capable of doing. But that time? When I wonder how I became the zombie I am now, how I could have gotten so lost, it always traces back to that moment—the moment I put my soul on the shelf to make room for the devil.

Yesterday, I sat in a church for a while. Not to pray—I’m not religious—but just to sit in the quiet. Before the abduction I’d probably passed that church a thousand times without noticing it. We’re not exactly a churchgoing family, my mom and stepdad were usually too busy sleeping their “religion” off on a Sunday morning. But I’ve gone a couple of times over the last few months. It’s an old church and smells like a museum—in a good way, a survived-lots-of-shit-and-still-standing kind of way. Something about the stained-glass windows works for me too. If I were to get all deep on you, I could say the idea of all those broken pieces being made into something so damn pretty appeals to me. Good thing I’m not that profound.

The church is usually empty, thank you, God, but even if there is someone else inside, nobody ever talks to me or even looks at me. Not that I would make eye contact.

When I first came to after The Freak beat me unconscious, my whole body hurt, and it took a long time for me to lift my head enough to look around. Waves of nausea passed through me. The right side of my chest burned every time I took a breath. One eye was closed up pretty good and the other one made things fuzzy, but I could see outlines. He was nowhere in sight. Either he was sleeping on the floor or he was outside. I lay still.

The bathroom was calling, but I didn’t know if I could move that far, plus I dreaded his catching me going for an unscheduled pee. I must have passed out again, because I don’t remember anything until I woke from a dream in which I was running on the beach with Luke and our dogs. When I remembered where I really was, I cried.

My bladder burned—if I waited much longer I was going to pee in the bed. God only knew which offense would piss him off the most. There was no way I was putting that dress back on, so I crawled naked to the bathroom. Every few seconds I paused, waited for the black dots in my vision to go away, then crawled another few inches, whimpering the whole time. He would have loved it.

Petrified to use the toilet in case he came in, I squatted over the drain in the bathtub. Leaning my head on the side wall, I tried to breathe in the perfect amount of air that wouldn’t hurt and prayed I didn’t die in there. Eventually I crawled back into bed and passed out again.

My head ached, but it was a distant throbbing, like background noise. I still didn’t know where The Freak was, and terrifying images of his abducting Christina raged through my mind. I prayed that my attempts to manipulate him hadn’t just sent him straight to her.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been slipping in and out of consciousness, but I thought it had been at least a day. When I got back some strength, I made my way to the door. It was still locked. Shit. I hung my head under the tap, washed the stickiness I assumed was blood off my face, and drank my fill. As soon as the cold water hit my stomach, I clung to the sink and puked.

When I was finally able to move without getting dizzy, I searched the place again. My fingers explored every crack and bolt. Standing on the kitchen counter, I kicked the shutter so hard I thought I’d torn the muscles in my leg. My feet didn’t even leave a mark. I was hurt bad and couldn’t remember the last time I’d had any food, but I still would’ve taken my chances on the mountain, except there was no way out of the damn cabin.

To keep track of how many days I’d been missing, I pulled the bed away from the wall and pressed my fingernail into the wood until it left faint marks. If there was light through the little hole in the bathroom wall, I figured it was morning, and if it was still dark I waited until it brightened up, then made another mark. Two marks since he’d left me alone. To keep myself on some sort of schedule resembling The Freak’s, I peed when I couldn’t hold it any longer, and then only in the bathtub with my ears peeled for any sound. Too scared to have a shower or bath in case he came home and caught me, I avoided both, and whenever the hunger pangs got too bad, I filled myself up with water. I pictured everyone back home at candlelight vigils and imagined all my friends holding meetings, or handing out flyers with my smiling face on them. My mom must have been going crazy. I could see her at home, crying, probably looking beautiful—tragedy agreed with her. Neighbors would be bringing over casseroles, Aunt Val would be fielding calls, and my stepdad would be holding her hand, telling her it was going to be all right. I wished I had someone telling me that. Why hadn’t anybody found me? Had they given up? I’d never heard of anyone going missing and being found weeks later. Unless the missing person was a corpse.

Maybe Luke was on TV pleading for my return. Or would the cops question him? Wasn’t it always the boyfriend they suspected first? They were probably wasting time on him when they should be looking for The Freak.

I worried about Emma and who was taking care of her. Were they feeding her the right food for her sensitive tummy? Were they walking her? Mostly I just wondered if she thought I’d abandoned her, and that always made me cry.

To comfort myself I played memories of Luke, Emma, and Christina like home movies in my head: pause, rewind, and repeat. One of my favorites of Christina was the two of us on our candy bender. She came over to play Scrabble last Halloween and we decided to break open one of the bags I’d bought for trick-or-treaters. One bag turned to two, then three and four. We were both so stoned on sugar our Scrabble game just dissolved into a mess of dirty words and hysterical laughter. Then we ran out of candy for the kids, so we had to turn off all the lights. We hid in the dark and listened to fireworks, giggling our asses off.