More panic surges inside me.
“Earl Rae!?!?” My lungs strain. I haven’t screamed this loud since the beginning. I haven’t screamed half this loud since then.
What I hear next, I want to pretend I don’t. I want to pretend I don’t know what it is. But I do. Once upon a lifetime ago, someone close to me was a police officer, and the sight and sound of guns have been embedded in my head. I’ll never forget the way a gun sounds when firing. The chilling sound a shotgun makes when being pumped. The explosion it makes when it goes off.
Up until today, I’d only experienced those sounds in a gun range, with sound-cancelling headphones and targets downrange. It isn’t until today I hear the sound it makes to the unmuffled ear when it goes off a floor above you. The sound a body makes when it crashes to the floor a moment after the blast.
The feeling that pools in the stomach of the person left behind.
“Earl Rae!” I scream, but I know it. I know he’ll never reply again.
That’s when the front door bursts open behind me in an explosion of wood shards and dust. I crawl across the kitchen floor and huddle beneath the kitchen table as far as I can go before the chain gets tangled up in the chair legs and I become stuck.
Stuck.
I’ve been trapped in the same small square for years, but I’ve never felt so stuck.
What seems like dozens of men in black outfits, helmets, and bulletproof vests storm through the front door, all of them holding guns. Most of them fan through the house, some ducking into downstairs rooms and some sprinting upstairs. Their guns are all aimed forward, ready. Four large white letters are stamped across their vests, and even though I have a distant memory of what they mean, I can’t quite remember. It doesn’t stop me from being scared of them with all of their guns and all of their shouts.
I wrap my arms around my legs and curl into as small of a ball as I can. I’ve never been tall, and I’ve gotten so thin Earl Rae’s brought me back children’s sized clothes from thrift stores whenever I’ve needed something new. I imagine becoming so small they won’t see me. I imagine becoming invisible so that once they’re done doing whatever they’re doing, they’ll leave and never find me.
I’ve been taken once by a man I didn’t know. I don’t want to be taken again by a bunch of men I don’t know.
I’ve almost convinced myself they won’t find me when I notice two dark shadows kneel beside the table. I shiver and try crawling farther under the table. The collar cuts into me, and I cry out in pain.
The two men don’t crawl under the table after me. Instead, they stay where they are, one of them taking off his helmet slowly. I don’t recognize his face, not that I would. I’m not sure I’d recognize my parents’ faces anymore.
The man beside him also removes his helmet. One is older, the other younger. They both have clean-cut faces and look friendly enough, but I know from Earl Rae that these kinds of faces aren’t to be trusted.
“Jade Childs?” the older man says, lifting his hands when I try crawling away again.
The collar tears at my scab as I move. I feel more warm trickles wind down my neck, soaking into the collar of my sweater.
Both men look at me like they’re having to try very hard to keep a brave face. The younger one has a harder time with this. Each time his eyes drop to my collar, the length of chain trailing off of it, he diverts his eyes like the sight is too much for him.
I don’t blame him though. The first time I saw my reflection in the mirror— that metal collar fitted around my neck—I threw up. I didn’t stop until my stomach was empty and my throat felt raw from the acid.
When I don’t say anything, the older man lowers his hands and digs something out of the front pocket of his vest. It’s a photocopy of a picture of a girl. Not the same girl whose photo is hanging on the wall beside me.
“Are you Jade Childs?” he asks me, turning the photo toward me.
I stare at the picture for a minute, trying to remember her. I stare at it for another minute, trying to remember what she liked and who she was and what her dreams were. I can’t though because that girl’s gone. The life and soul was choked out of that girl years ago, compliments of the collar still around her neck and the man who locked it there.
The men are waiting for my answer, so I shake my head and look away. “No, I’m not her. I’m Sara Jackson.”
I EXPERIENCED A living nightmare once. I’d hoped life would spare me a repeat.
My head is foggy from the drugs they’ve pumped into me. My body’s numb from the same. When I tried ripping out the IV so I could attempt to invoke one clear thought of my own, my hands were confined. They keep telling me I’ve been saved and am safe, but so far, none of this feels any different from what Earl Rae did to me.
He burst into my life and took me without my consent as they did. He confined me to a small space, pumping me full of drugs as they are doing. He punished me when I didn’t do what he wanted as they have. He restrained me when I resisted, taking away my freedom, just as they have.
If this is what being saved means, I want a pass. I want my old life in that small house in the middle of nowhere back because at least there, I’d gotten used to it. I had a schedule. I had fifteen feet of freedom inside a house instead of being strapped to a small hospital bed.
I’ve been told I’m at Seattle Mercy Hospital in Seattle, but I’m not sure how long I’ve been here or really much of anything else. The nurses and doctors whisk out as quickly as they whisk in. With the drugs pulling me under every few minutes, I’ve probably only been here for hours instead of the days it feels like.