I’ve Been In Captivity For As Long As I Can Remember And I’m Afraid There’s No Way Out

I don’t know how many days it’s been, but I do know one thing – it’s been awhile. It feels like I’ve been stuck in this day-to-day routine for months, years, maybe even longer if you knew the truth. But as more days go by, as my time in this world increases and I become more aware of what is happening around me, the more panicked I grow. You see, things didn’t start out this way.

I woke up one day, what feels like a long, long, time ago, with the lack of memory of who I was. I know it sounds completely insane, but amnesia had taken over and I quickly realized that I had been involved in an accident. My vision was blurred and I felt the urge to scream at the top of my lungs, but was suddenly hit with the realization that nobody was listening. It felt like I had been sleeping forever, and drowsiness continued to ensue as I made my way through the rest of my day stricken in terror for whatever was happening to me.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was trapped inside a cell with broken legs, and when the realization became prevalent, I screamed for what felt like ages, begging for someone to come to my aid.

Suddenly, a face and body came into view. My blurred vision failed me slightly but it didn’t take me long to realize that it was a smiling woman. Her smile was a big, goofy grin that made me scream even more as she pressed it against my own and whispered, “It’s going to be okay.”

All I wanted to do at this point was ask her who the hell she was and what she thought she was doing, but she didn’t seem to be listening to my cries of pain and agony. I kicked and I kicked but try as I might, I just couldn’t bring myself to my feet and she held me down with a force I didn’t know she would have. My captor, my nightmare.

The sexual abuse started from the very beginning and increased in ferocity. At first, it would start every two hours. The woman would reappear and force-feed me, humming all the while and telling me that everything would be okay. That I would “learn.”

When she was finished, she would take off my pants and rub oils all over me and as I screamed for her to stop, she would just keep going. She would put her fingers in places that didn’t belong, those cold, cold fingers…she would lift up my privates and check underneath them before saying, “Good job” like I was some plaything that would just obey. I had no other choice. To this day, the abuse continues and I just deal with it, as if it’s grown old, like some game that children grow out of.

Then one day, with my broken legs unable to carry me to the bathroom, I sat in my cell and pissed and shit myself like I typically did anymore. I screamed and screamed but nobody came for hours. When they finally did, my ass felt the searing burn of Hell that I had never felt before in my entire life. I had been sitting in my own feces for well over five hours at this point and screaming for maybe two.

Outside of the cell, I heard two voices. One was the voice of the woman I had grown to “know”, saying over and over, “I can’t believe it, I fell asleep and…” She trailed off, and an unfamiliar voice replied, “It isn’t your fault. You needed the sleep. I haven’t been giving you the attention and time that you’ve needed…I promise I’m going to help you more. We did get into this mess together, after all.”

One day, the woman dragged me out of my cell and placed me on the floor so that I was staring upwards. My neck was in so much pain from trying to lift it and fighting through the drugs that they probably snuck into my food, that it was unbearable. Classical music was playing in the background in a shrieking tone that made me want to hold my ears, but I couldn’t.

I kicked and kicked and heard my captor laughing from across the room but there was nothing I could do. A large machine shaped like a sun lit up with bright colors and turned above my head, a big gaping beam of light that shone into my eyes and proved to me there was brightness again. But as soon as it appeared to me, it was gone. I was being dragged back into my personal Hell.

As time continued, I heard more and more frantic phone conversations spoken by my captors. Occasionally, when the man was around, I would stare through the bars as he phoned home to his mother and told her that he wasn’t feeling up to visitors, he was “working” too much, he didn’t have time for anything, Sorry Mom. Then he would hang up and tell the other captor that she was disappointed again and that eventually they would have to have people around. Suspicious.

The woman would call up what I presume were family and friends and have very frantic conversations with them in hushed, barely distinguishable tones. She would tell them that she got in too deep, implying that others knew about me. That I was becoming too much to take care of and that this had all been a terrible mistake.

One day, I heard the woman stomp up the stairs after I had made a considerable amount of noise to get attention. I had been sleeping in my shit with what little sleep I was able to get and I lost track of time on how long it had been since I had last eaten. The food had been meager, far and few in between. The woman appeared dressed in the clothes she had the day before, shirt stained, bags under her eyes. She leaned over me and gave me a look of pure anger and hatred before she spat in my face and called me a fucking loser.

“I never wanted any of this. When I got into this, I fell in love with the idea… I never knew it would be such a goddamn damper on my life. That you would be such a fucking damper, you piece of filth.”

And then she dragged me by my legs, head bumping off of the floor, and slung me around onto her shoulder like I was a rag doll. My weight had decreased so much that I was like skin and bones, barely hanging onto my life for another day. I screamed in agony but it seemed to just piss her off further and soon she was screaming back at me, terrifying me, making me count down the seconds until my life faded from view.

Just as she lifted me up and brought me to her face and started to shake me, the man entered the room. I saw him appear over her shoulder, and he dropped his briefcase on the ground and gave her a shocked expression as she stopped what she was doing. It was the first time I got a real good look at the guy. He looked just like me, scared and fighting for his life. He strode over to her and laid me on the bed in the room.

“I thought it was best for both of us,” she said. “I can’t do this alone anymore. We got into this together… you leave us alone all day and I’m losing my fucking mind. I can’t keep doing this. The screaming, the helplessness, the time it takes away from the life I’m so used to.”

“You’re the one that wanted this, Mary,” he said before he started to squeeze his hands around her throat. “When we chose to have this baby, we chose to do it together.”