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It’s that thing everyone has nightmares about, y’know, waking up bound and gagged in someone’s basement, no memory of how you got there, your head hurts, you feel immediately panicked and sick to your stomach and you want context, you’d do fucking anything for some explanation.
Maybe it’s a misunderstanding. Maybe, in some drunken stupor, you agreed to this.
Is it possible you simply forgot about your scheduled 2 A.M. kidnapping?
Are there clues on the walls, is there a code to crack, did someone conveniently leave a newspaper nearby that could offer you a glimpse of where you are and what day it is, some kind of tropey survival horror bullshit. These shackles feel easy to break maybe, so you try snapping them or pulling the chain from the wall, but no, these cuffs are made of half-inch iron and you’ve never even won an arm wrestle so what makes you think you’d have luck here?
The room you’re encased in is cold, blank, just wooden floors and white walls, a low ceiling. Everything makes noise. Sometimes it’s shifting and groaning, normal house stuff. Every so often something guttural seeps up from the floorboards, Lovecraftian (that’s like the big squid guy, yeah?) Absolutely horrendous, sleep-ruining shit. Not that you’re planning on sleeping while you’re here or maybe ever again if you even make it out of here.
You’re in here alone, at least for now, and you’ve suddenly got all the time in the world to kill, so maybe you try again to break free of your restraints, or simply wiggle your way out of them in a much more pathetic and resigned gesture, there’s more than a couple moments where you consider just bashing your head against the wall to get it over with, you’re not gonna let this sick bastard have the satisfaction of offing you. But also? Maybe your captor has no intention of killing you. You have literally no proof you’re in any danger, you know, this could be an amicable kidnapping, and so splitting your own skull wouldn’t be too productive, and if he’s not a serial killer, it sure would put a damper on this guy’s day to come down and find such a mess.
Sit tight. There must be a reasonable explanation for all of this.
There’s that sound again. The spooky squiddy one. Fuck, it sure would be nice to not be here anymore.
A couple minutes or maybe hours or days more, you get comfortable in your restraints, sort of leaning up against the wall, the shackles can hold your weight so you dangle and you rock yourself and you bob along the current that overtakes your brain, pulls you down into a surprisingly placid sleep when all that adrenaline finally runs its course. The eldritch horrors adopt a gentler tone. The Squid Guy sings you a lullaby.
When you wake up the basement is bright. There’s a window in here. Just the one, but one is enough. Stuck in the high middle of the wall beside you, so open and airy despite its meager twelve or so inches across. It lets in brilliant godrays, they spill across the floor and warm the dust in the air, paint the room in gold leaf, it’s beautiful and it is a sweet reassurance. The world is out there and it’s waiting for you, and whatever this is that’s happening to you right now is only temporary, it’s just a small little blip in your great cosmic starmap or whatever the fuck, who cares, you’re just so fucking grateful to see the sun. And nestled within the frame of the window, beneath the sun? Big beautiful plants, thriving grass and ivy, little pink flowers you’ve never seen before so they must’ve been planted there. This person, whoever’s keeping you, they must admire life, they must covet it, otherwise why would they put so much care into keeping this garden?
You could spend all day basking in this warmth, and you do without even realizing it. You’re hungry and you’re almost certain you pissed your pants in your sleep but you miraculously don’t give a shit, not until the sun inevitably sinks away and the garden disappears into the inky black for the night, and then your optimism does start to wane a bit. It’s a little discouraging, to watch what’s currently your only source of joy fade away so flippantly. You’re left to sit with everything else in its absence, and you start to notice the noises again, the pounding of footsteps in what sounds like huge steel toed boots, you smell bleach and then rot and then more bleach, alkaline breaking down fats, scrubbing and scrubbing and yelling and squids and yelling and yelling and crying. Begging. You also want to beg. You want to beg for your window, for the sun and the garden. Your eyes well up involuntarily, you have a belly full of embarrassment and not much else, you cry and cry and cry and the house cries with you, all its seams burst with anguished outbursts, ghosts mourning.
What if you never see outside again? What if the morning never comes?
And then your eyes snap open and it has, it’s here.
The sun gives you sweet good morning kisses, the little pink flowers wave through the window. They giggle as tender gloved hands prune them.
You’ve never seen signs of your captor until now; you were beginning to think maybe you were alone, but there are their hands, and they are so kind to the plants in their gardening gloves. It gives you hope. Soon those will be your hands, you’ll be the one running your fingers through the grass, your captor knows you deserve it otherwise they wouldn’t be doing all this work, they’re just keeping things nice in your absence, and when you get out they’ll hand you the gardening shears and the gloves and you’ll spend all day knelt over in the green of it all, the world embracing you because it’s good, it’s all good out there, you always took it for granted but not now. You will love the earth when you reunite. You love it now.
The garden is satisfied. The hands pull away and so, too, does the sun again. When you close your eyes you see the green expanse. It’s necessary to cope with the noises, glass breaking, death gurgles. You’re pretty sure this guy kills people. You try not to let that thought invade but without the sun and the flowers and the grass to guide you it’s hard to deny.
The smell of cleaning supplies is starting to get to you.
Up again. Sun again. Your basement’s been cleaned, your collection of excrement gone, you’ve been left a plate of frozen waffles with syrup and the window’s been Windexed. Now everything is bright, he’s out watering the plants and the little droplets on the glass reflect against the walls, playful little polkadots in a relay race. Your eyes fill with tears again and soon your face looks just like the window, you’re so grateful, life is so precious and the world is so good and you know it and he knows it. Any day now he’ll throw open the door and you’ll bound out into the yard like a dumb little puppy, you’ll rub your face in the flowers and the grass and even the dirt, who cares! And you’ll drink the sun out of a cup, you’ll move up north and sink into the redwoods, you’ll grow rings in your belly and he’ll come one day with an axe when you’re old and withered and he’ll chop you down and count the circles inside, he’ll say “I remember when you only had this many” and the two of you will reminisce about the garden, it was all for you, a lesson about the world. Appreciate life. Like he does.
The sun is a big yellow balloon and you’re holding onto the string with all your might. But the ceiling fan is hungry.
Pop.
Night.
Scream.
Bleach.
Boots.
Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang
You wake up and it’s still night. There’s blood on your clothes, dried in brown streaks down your face, the plaster behind you is cracked and it dusts your shoulders and your head is throbbing. Your face heats with uneasy realization. You lost sight of it all. You let the worst in you come out and now you’re being punished, he’s keeping the sun away until you’ve learned your lesson. You apologize into the night, you make promises, you admit your mistakes, not only this one but every single wrongdoing, you confess that you used to hate life, you used to despise people and abuse nature but you see now that it’s good, you’re the same, he taught you gratitude and while you would love to be set free you’re happy just to see it all through the window.
Blood loss knocks you out.
There is warmth on your cheeks when you come to. You awaken on the floor in laundered clothes, your head wound dressed, another plate of waffles. No shackles. Your wrists are red, the skin dry and scabbed, everything feels sore and you’re not sure you remember how to walk. Until you look up, and you catch a glimpse of the window, your body sat perfectly in its spotlight. Then you’re up the stairs, the door is unlocked, all the doors are unlocked–jeez there’s a lot of doors in here–the house is empty and it stinks like inside, you can’t wait to smell the world as intended, thriving nature, freshly cut grass, those little pink flowers probably smell beautiful. You run. Door after door. Some more stairs. How was it possible you were so far down. Who cares. Front door. Hello world. Hello grass. Hello sun. Family reunion time.
You’re blinded by the sheer amount of sunlight. Your vision is multicolored spots, your injured head swims to try and adapt but it’s been ages since you went outside and it takes a while. You breathe in the air. It doesn’t smell like you thought it would.
Smells like rot. Even stronger than inside the house.
The static in your eyes finally settles and you’re appalled by what you see.
Barren, sickly dirt. Rocks. Everything dead. Smog hanging low, stifling your lungs, weighing on your chest.
Where’s the green.
You stand stupidly in the gravel.
Where’s the pink.
Those boots, you hear them make their way beside you. You have to ask why. You feel embarrassed but you have to know what went wrong, where did it all go. What did you do to deserve this.
He shrugs. “This is how it is.”
You nod.
And maybe it’s not like how you once imagined, you don’t disappear into the wilderness, no rings to count, but as promised he does bring the axe, and he makes it quick though it’s violent, laced with his own vitriol and disdain for the world and how it is, and it lasts far past when you’ve let go for good because he’s got some issues and no other outlet.
He doesn’t give you the satisfaction of decomposition. He burns you in a shoddy crematorium out back and flushes your ashes down the toilet.
Tomorrow he’ll take a lawnmower to the garden and then maybe blow up a school bus, who knows.