Chapter 5 - Clover

CHAPTER 5 - CLOVER

I can hear the threat in his voice. I actually do believe him. About all of it. The killing, the decaying body, and the stair-pushing. But again, the only thing I have is me. Myself. My cuteness. This is my weapon so I have to use it. Because I refuse to let this man turn the worst day of my life into the last day of my life.

There is a bit of desperation in his voice when he talks about this job he's doing. Even now, when he's much more relaxed than he was this morning, I can hear it. He's serious about completing it.

But there's still something there I can work with. Yes, he was mad when he opened the basement door, but he gave in to the idea of water and a bathroom break fairly easily.

Yes, he did watch me in the bathroom, but he turned around at the last moment.

That's why I didn't drink the tap water in the bathroom. Sure, the water from the tap did smell a little off, and I grew up in that house so I know that it turns a bit rusty if it hasn't been run in a while.

But it would've run clear, and been just fine, if I had given it another minute. I just replaced the well pump and pressure tank last year—to the tune of fifteen thousand dollars, thank you very much. I even got a reverse osmosis system, so the water had better be good, for fuck's sake. But if I had taken my drink right then in the bathroom, he would've put me back downstairs and I wouldn't be sitting here in the kitchen, charming his pants off with an expressive retelling of how my bad day started.

I mean, fine. I'm probably not charming him. Yet. But at least he's not yelling threats at me.

His chair scrapes across the floor and I know he's gonna stand up and this little reprieve will be over, so I hurriedly say, "Hey."

"What?"

"What about my feet?"

His pause here indicates that he's looking down at them. "What about your feet?"

"Aren't they bloody?"

"They are."

"So… don't you think I should clean them up? And do you have any lip balm? I could really use some lip balm."

He stands. Scoffs. Laughs. "You did all that to yourself and those feet of yours are already starting to scab. You'll be fine. Come on, it's time to go back down."

Then he's gripping my arm—tight—and pulling me up from my chair.

" Wait !" I'm desperate now and it's coming out in my tone. "What about… can I change my clothes?"

"The next thing you'll ask for is a shower."

I brighten at the idea. "Can I have a shower?"

"Only if I can take it with you."

My heart skips here. Because while I am sorta flirting with him, it's absolutely, one-hundred-percent fake and only for the sake of my own self-preservation. "Um…"

"Then no, Clover. You can't change your clothes or have a shower." He starts pushing me down the hallway.

"What about food? I didn't eat. I haven't eaten all day."

"I forgot. I only have one MRE with me right now, and it's mine. You've just been lying around all day. I've been working. You'll survive. You can go way longer than three days without food."

"Wait, what? You're not gonna feed me at all ?"

"I told you, I only have one meal and I'm not going back to my camp until this job is over."

By this time, we're well down the hallway and I know the library is a mere few feet away. Once I'm in there, there's no more chances to change his mind. So I stop, planting my feet and making him bump into me.

"Keep walking, Clover." He growls this into my ear.

"I'm hungry. I don't eat much, I promise." I need to make him give me something from his food ration. Anything. Even if it's a single cracker. I need him to take responsibility for my wellbeing. To see me as a person he's taking care of instead of something he can throw away. Because while he has been mostly accommodating for the last ten minutes, I'm still ninety-percent sure I'm not getting out of this kidnapping alive. "Something small. A cracker."

"No. There's just not enough for you."

"There's a diner in Revenant. You could go out and get us both food. Or—I know! I could go with you!"

"Fuck off. How stupid do you think I am?" He shoves me forward, making me stumble. "I'm not going into Revenant and I'm certainly not letting you leave this house."

"But you have to drive past there, anyway. I mean, when you leave. It's the only way out without passing through Disciple."

"I don't travel on highways , Clover. I'm leaving the way I came. And I came through the hills."

I think about this as I take those final few steps into the library. "You're one of them? The hill people that Lowyn told me about?"

"One of them ?" He says the word ‘them' with derision. Like the thought offends him. "No. I'm not one of those hill people. I'm from out west. I'm just using their…" He pauses here. Like he's choosing his words carefully. "Their… infrastructure. That's all. I'm not from around here. Obviously, since I don't have one of those hick accents like all you people."

My mouth falls open with this insult. Like all you people ? "I don't have an accent."

He laughs. "You so do."

"I mean, maybe it's a bit… Eastern seaboard, but?—"

"Eastern seaboard?" He laughs again. "Woman, you talk like a country western singer."

"What?"

"And I'm not talking about, like, cowboy kinda accent, either. I'm talking hillbilly country western."

I blink my eyes underneath my blindfold. "I beg your pardon?"

"Never mind. Just turn around." Then I hear the snapping of the leather belt and my heart jumps.

When I don't turn, he forcibly does it for me. "No. Do not tie me back up! Please!" He grabs both my wrists and tugs them behind my back. "At least tie them in front!"

"So you can escape like you did this morning? Nice try."

"I won't, I promise."

"Well, I might believe you. If you hadn't already proved yourself untrustworthy. I don't forget or forgive shit like that. When I make a mistake, I only make it once."

Then he cinches the belt around my wrists, winding it around and around until it's painfully pinching into my skin and he can buckle it. He keeps a hold of my wrists as he nudges me forward with his body and for a moment, I really think he might push me down those stairs.

"Wait," I say, the desperation in my voice very clear. "When will you be back?"

"I dunno. But you're not going to die. At least not down there and from thirst or starvation. You can go three days without water and weeks without food."

"But—" I try and turn, but he stops me. "You'll be back tonight though, right? I mean, I just gulped down a whole bunch of water. I'll need to use the bathroom."

He doesn't answer me. Just pushes me forward again.

"Please! Don't leave me here. It's unnecessary!"

"Go down. And be quick. I'm behind schedule. And if you want me gone soon, we don't wanna screw that up now, do we?"

"But—" I lean back, pushing myself into him.

"Unless, of course, you've changed your mind about the shower? If that's the case I can carve out another fifteen minutes and allow myself a little fun time with you." He says these words with amusement. And when I ease up on my resistance, he actually laughs. "Thought so. Get down there."

Then he gives me a push, sending me falling forward. I am fully expecting to dive face first into the trapdoor, but at the last moment, he grabs my shoulders. I feel like I'm inches from the opening, but then he says, "Bend down and put your legs into the hole, Clover. If you do that, and you're a very good girl, maybe I'll feed you later. We can split that MRE."

My stomach rumbles at the mere thought of eating. "OK." And that's it. That's all the fight I have at the moment. And the moment I say that word, the disgusting rag is shoved back into my mouth.

And this is it for me. I give in and stick my feet down into the trapdoor, then scoot down the steps on my butt.

He waits until I'm all the way down before whispering, "Nighty night," closing the door above me.

There's no way to keep track of time, but there's also no way that this is still the same day when I wake up. It's raining outside, water is pelting against the boarded-up windows, and I'm thirsty again. It could be three in the morning, it could be the next day, I just can't tell.

He doesn't come back.

And as the hours tick off and the day goes on, and on, and on I realize—he's never coming back. That's why he said those things about dying of thirst and hunger. I can go three days without water and weeks without food.

He only needs two days now. By the time I'm dying of thirst, he'll be gone.

Just as I think that, the door above my head creaks open and the lights flip on.

Immediately I start struggling and trying to scream. Not because I think it's someone here to help me, because I am pissed.

"Hold on, hold on." He says these words like I'm some child in the middle of asking for something unreasonable.

His boots thud down the wooden stairs, and then he grabs my arms and stands me up as I struggle under his grip. The rag comes out and with it my anger. "You asshole! I thought you left for good! You're trying to kill me of thirst, aren't you? You're evil. You have no heart, or feelings, or?—"

"Calm down, for fuck's sake."

"Calm down? You leave me down here for days, scared and helpless, and I'm supposed to calm down!"

He laughs.

"Oh, I'm so glad you think me dying a slow death is funny."

"It's only been three hours, Clover. Pull yourself together."

"Three hours!" I scoff. "Three hours ? You're lying. It's been like two days! I fell asleep six times."

"You're crazy. Look." Then he eases the t-shirt blindfold up just enough for me so see and thrusts his wrist underneath it. "It's nine-thirty. You haven't even been in here a whole day." Then he laughs again.

I study the watch on his wrist, first noticing that it's very military-looking, and then reading the numbers. Twenty-one hundred hours. I do a quick military-time calculation and sure enough, it's nine-thirty at night. "But… that's not possible. I have been down here for days."

"Yeah, well, the darkness does that to you."

"Does what?"

He withdraws his wrist from my view and readjusts my blindfold so my eyes are covered again. "Fucks with your head like that. You don't realize how much humans depend on light to keep track of things like time until you have no light. You lose all sense of reality."

"What are you, some kind of time expert? How would you know?"

He leans in to me now, his face right up against my neck. So close his words tickle the little hairs there and send a shiver through my whole body. "Because I spent six long years in the dark, Clover. That's how I know. And that's why I cannot fuck up this job. Because if I do anything wrong up here, they'll send me back down there ."

"Send you back down… where?" I'm so confused.

"Never mind. It's not important. Are ya hungry, or aren't ya? Because I'm starved and I'll be more than happy to eat that MRE myself."

"I am," I say quickly. "But I don't believe you about the time. It's probably nine-thirty the next day."

He huffs out a laugh. "Whatever. Come on, let's go." Then he releases the belt from my wrists, roughly turns me around, and gives me a push. "Go up."

I carefully climb the stairs, then wait at the top as he follows.

He leads me into the hallway and stops at the bathroom I used last night. "Need to go?"

"Yes." Then I shrug off his grip and feel my way in. "Can I close the door this time?"

"No. But I'll turn around. Just be quick."

His feet shuffle like he's turning, but whether he really does it or not, I can't tell. I can't do anything about it, either. So I put it out of my mind and relieve myself, then wash my hands and dry them using the rag from last night. It leaves a turpentine smell behind, but at this point, I don't care anymore.

And he's lying about the time. Maybe it is nine-thirty PM, as his watch said, but it's certainly not the same day. I've been down in that dungeon for more than twenty-four hours, that's for sure.

He pushes me in the direction of the kitchen and I picture it all in my mind's eye as I go down the hallway, feeling for the little dinette table that's been in the corner for my whole life, then take a seat. It stayed behind when I had the furniture moved out because it was a throwaway piece and the workers were using it for paint cans and stuff. The chairs stayed too. Almost everything else was packed up and put in the barn until the reno is done.

Everything except my childhood bedroom in the attic. It's exactly as it was the day I left for college. Not one thing has been removed or replaced. Keeping one's childhood bedroom intact after leaving for college is a long-standing tradition in my family.

When my mother left for college, the door to her attic bedroom on the fourth floor was closed and everything remained the same until I was born and old enough to move upstairs. I was eight. It was my birthday present that year, along with a pony. And opening that door was like falling into a time capsule. It was filled with things from the Seventies and Eighties. A record player—or hi-fi, I think they called them. She had stacks of albums. All classic rock like the Doors, and Led Zeppelin, and Ozzy.

My mother, listening to Ozzy! I didn't understand how crazy that was back then, but now… I just have to laugh.

"What's so funny?"

I blow out a breath and wave my hand in the air, dismissing the memory. "Nothing. I was just thinking about the past. That's all. Nothing you need to worry about."

"It must've been a pretty good memory."

"It was." There's a silence after I say this and even though I can't see him, I know he's staring at me. I feel his gaze like it's heat. "What? Why are you looking at me?"

I hear him sighing, then the sound of rummaging through a bag or something. Another second later, and then he's unwrapping something.

"What flavor is it?" I ask.

"Does it matter?"

"Well, of course it matters. I won't turn it down no matter what it is, but yes, it matters."

He pauses here, like he's reading the label. "It's chicken and noodles in sauce."

"Oh, that one's good. What about the sides?"

He laughs. And it throws me a little because I think it's a real one. Like he's smiling too. "What do you know about MRE sides?"

"My best Disciple friend, Lowyn, she runs an antique store. It's kinda famous now, but back when she first started, she used to buy storage units sight unseen and she got one that was filled with boxes of MRE's. We tried them all."

"How long ago was that?"

"Mmmm. Eight years, maybe?"

"Which flavor was your favorite?"

"Turkey, gravy, and potatoes. Hands down the best. Like no competition."

He sighs here. "Yeah, that's a good one. They're hard to come by though."

"Tell me about it. Lowyn had seven cases of that one. Like someone was hoarding Thanksgiving dinner and was planning on making a fortune one day. There was a bidding war over them."

"That's funny." But he doesn't laugh, and I don't think he's smiling, either. "Anyway. It comes with…" He's taking things out of the package now. "Applesauce, crackers, peanut butter, and candy. Plus a drink. Wanna call dibs?"

I smile. "You don't mind?"

"It's just a stupid MRE."

"Fine. Don't be excited. I'll take the applesauce and the candy. If you're not picky, you can have the crackers and peanut butter."

"Did she make a lot of money?"

"What?"

"Your friend who found the MRE's. How much did the cache go for?"

"Oh. I have no idea. I never thought about that stuff again until just now."

He goes quiet after that, getting things out of the package and setting up the heating pouch. I don't have anything else to say, and when he doesn't say anything either, it gets awkward quick.

But once he tears open the main meal package, my mouth starts watering from the smell. "Oh, I'm so hungry. It's been days."

He scoffs, but says, "Open up."

"What?"

"You want food, right? Open your mouth."

"I can feed myself, thanks. I don't need your help."

"There's only one fork, Clover. And while I don't care if you eat the shitty applesauce or the crap candy, you're not getting my half of the chicken and noodles. So if you want me to share, open your mouth."

He gets to tie me up, blindfold me, watch me pee, and now I am to be spoon-fed?

It's so humiliating. I'm glad I can't see his smug face right now. That way, when he leaves and I'm still alive, I will never have to picture it in my nightmares.

"Do you want it or not?"

"I do." Then I sigh and open my mouth.