Dinner is spectacular, considering the circumstances.
Emmalee's father has prepared a feast of steak with a side of fresh green beans and mashed potatoes. Colin can't remember the last time he had a meal so wonderful. Or perhaps that's just the head-trauma-induced hunger talking.
The dining room is as extravagant as the bedroom Colin woke up in a few hours earlier. Based on the architechture he's seen so far, he would guess they're somewhere in Europe now, Italy or France perhaps. But that can't be right. How would they have gotten here so quickly? How long had Colin been out? When did he wake up in the dark room?
He doesn't know anything. He hasn't been in touch with Harlem in ages. At least it feels like that to him. He's used to talking to Harlem at least once a day during a recruit mission. But this is beyond a recruit mission now.
And where is Lydia? Has she figured out they're gone? Would she even look for them? Colin doubts it. Lydia has only ever looked out for herself. Why would that change now? It's not like their relationship - or lack thereof - had improved at all.
"You two are awfully quiet," Emmalee's father says as he slices his steak with a knife.
"You still haven't answered my question, father. What. Do. You. Want," Emmalee says.
She snaps a green bean with her fingers, and takes a bite without looking away from her father. He stares back, and Colin looks back and forth at both of them. They appear to be having some sort of weird telepathic conversation.
Until Emmalee's father bursts out laughing.
"Oh, darling," Emmalee's father says. "Oh, you're just too much, dear. I've waited over a decade to dine with you. Do you really think I want to spoil it with such conversation? Tell me about your life, dear. I want to hear what you've been up to all this time."
Emmalee snorts and shakes her head.
"I don't believe you," she says. "You kidnap me and expect everything to be normal."
"Is it not? Should I have called you on the tele and invited you over instead?"
Emmalee doesn't answer. She pushes her food around with her fork. Colin doesn't know what to say or whether he should say anything at all. He feels completely out of place here. How did he get caught up in all this? Harlem should have warned him.
"What do you want, father, really?" Emmalee asks. "I don't have time to play your stupid guessing games."
"Well, actually, dear, you have all the time in the world."
And that's when the windows shattered and Harlem came to the rescue.
A fictional interpretation of a song by Lea Michele.
Everyday I get a little bit closer to the resolution.
The streets are slick from fresh rain when I take a seat on the steps outside a church. I should probably go in, but I’m tired of praying. I’ve been praying for him to come back into my life for far too long. It’s time to move on already.
I just can’t stop thinking about the look in his eyes the day we first met. It was like magic. All the cliches of fairytales and romantic comedies came to life. I ran into him on the street, right in front of the steps of this church, and though we were strangers in that moment, I felt like I’d known him my entire life. His brown eyes lit up, and he gave me that half-smile I’ve always found charming on a man, stuck out his hand and said “Hi, I’m Grisham.”
And just like that, the stranger became someone known.
***
The church bells were ringing when we had our first kiss.
It was midnight, and just like Cinderella I was running late and in a place I shouldn’t have been. I should have been on the dinner date I’d been looking forward to all week, but when Grisham called minutes before I was supposed to leave, my plans immediately changed.
A few years had gone by since the day we first met, but the church steps retained their significance for us. Our friendship forever cemented over the coffee he brought me the very next morning where I found him waiting for me on the steps. The church steps would become the one place we let all our walls come down. Everything important took place on these steps.
So when he told me to meet him, I did. Without hesitation.
“What happened?” I asked him, the sequins on my dress casting a constellation of lights on the church walls.
He gave me that half-smile I loved so much, and said, “This.”
And then he kissed me.
***
Everyday I get a little bit closer to the resolution.
Perhaps the commitment scared him. Perhaps the church steps were the only place the walls we’d built for ourselves could ever come down.
We made dinner plans the night after we decided to move in together as a celebration. Attending the open-house had been a joke, a simple, spontaneous decision during date night that led to the biggest decision of our lives. We applied for the space slightly tipsy, and left that night laughing at our boldness.
When the call came, we were both surprised.
“I’m in if you’re in,” he told me.
“I’m in,” I said.
He grinned, "Then we should celebrate tonight."
I arrived at the restaurant early, giddy and restless.
But he never showed.
***
My calls went straight to voicemail. I didn’t hear from him for weeks. I couldn’t reach him anywhere, and all his friends seemed to know something I had yet to learn.
Everyday I get a little closer to the resolution.
I didn’t mean what I thought I meant to him. When the clock struck midnight, and his lips touched mine, it wasn’t a promise. The friendship formed over coffee on the church steps was never built to last.
Now, the church bells ring in my ears as I get up from the steps.
I wipe the mud off the backs of my legs, and move on.
Emmalee is ready when the bedroom door finally opens.
She doesn’t want to play her father’s sick game, doesn’t want to spend her time waiting for his punishment. She’s played that game enough in her lifetime, and she’s too strong for it now. She’s not helpless. She’s spent too many years successfully escaping from him to give up now.
So, she grabbed a lamp from the bedside table, and has been waiting by the door for this moment. As soon as the door opens, she swings the hard edge of the lamp into whoever is behind the door. She hears a grunt of pain, and then Colin, half-asleep with a bloodied face, is thrown into her. She jumps back and he collapses into the ground at her feet, his hands tied tightly behind his back.
She hit Colin with the lamp.
“Oh no!” she says. “I thought you were—”
“Me?” her father says as he steps into the room.
Emmalee takes a step back, crossing her arms over her chest.
“What do you want, father?” she asks.
“Oh, I’m father again, am I?” he says, the gray hairs of his beard twitching a bit as he smiles.
He steps over Colin who is lying motionless on the floor, and Emmalee takes another step backwards. She hopes Colin is still alive, that her father is underestimating them both. He left the door open. If Colin just wakes up, if she keeps him distracted, perhaps…
“Already plotting your escape?” her father asks. His smile fades and he shakes his head. “And I thought we were just warming up for a reunion.”
Emmalee doesn’t say anything. She keeps her arms crossed tight over her chest, and her focus on the situation before her. She can’t let him get inside her head, or near enough to touch.
“What do you want?” she asks again.
Her father sighs.
“Is that how we’re going to be with each other?” he says. “Very well then. I’ll come for you when it’s time for dinner. Or perhaps I’ll just toss you in some leftovers like a house dog.”
He chuckles at himself, and nudges Colin with his toe as he steps back over him.
“Take care of your boyfriend, dear. You might have really outdone yourself this time,” he says.
And then he’s out the door, slamming it behind him.
Emmalee rushes to Colin, flipping him over. He groans, but doesn’t open his eyes. There’s a gash on his head where she accidentally hit him with the lamp that left streaks of blood down his face, but other than that he looks okay.
“Colin,” Emmalee says. “Colin, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you. Colin please. I need your help.”
His eyelids flutter, but don’t open. He groans again. She sighs.
How are they ever going to get out of here alive?
A poetic interpretation of a song by Jason Mraz
You are free.
You can love who you want to love.
You can be who you want to be.
You can go where you want to go.
In the end, I only want one thing:
I want you to be honest with me.
I don’t feel like I’m asking for much.
Love, unconditional, always speaks the truth.
I don’t need to know everything.
We all have secrets
we wish to keep to ourselves.
But if the truth should ever come out
I want you to please be honest with me.
We’re having fun now.
I don’t mean to dampen the mood,
but I just need to make this request.
It’s important to me that you’re honest with me.
I only ask this one thing.
Be honest.
Please.
A poetic interpretation of a song by Jason Mraz
You are free.
You can love who you want to love.
You can be who you want to be.
You can go where you want to go.
In the end, I only want one thing:
I want you to be honest with me.
I don’t feel like I’m asking for much.
Love, unconditional, always speaks the truth.
I don’t need to know everything.
We all have secrets
we wish to keep to ourselves.
But if the truth should ever come out
I want you to please be honest with me.
We’re having fun now.
I don’t mean to dampen the mood,
but I just need to make this request.
It’s important to me that you’re honest with me.
I only ask this one thing.
Be honest.
Please.
Colin’s phone is ringing.
He can hear the high pitched screech ringing in his ear, but when he tries to move his hand to reach for it, he realizes he can’t. His hands are handcuffed to a wall or something. Colin is still much too drowsy to open his eyes and look. What happened? Why is Harlem calling him? Harlem only calls for emergencies.
That’s when Colin remembers.
His eyes snap open, and he realizes he’s in total darkness. There’s nothing to see. Colin has to blink several times just to make sure his eyes are even open.
“What the hell,” he says, and his voice echoes.
Is he in a cave? Where the hell is he right now?
He remembers how he got here: the hotel room, Emmalee’s father, a group of men with a needle. But why? What the hell is going on? If Emmalee’s father was a threat, why wasn’t he in her file? Was he in her file? Colin can’t remember. It’s incredibly likely he glossed over her family history. It’s never the most interesting part. All recruits have some sort of family issues. Otherwise they wouldn’t be recruits.
“Oh, you’re not in hell yet,” Emmalee’s father says from across the room. “But don’t worry. You’ll get there.”
Colin blinks some more, trying in vain to see through the darkness. Where is Emmalee’s father? What does he want?
“Boo,” Emmalee’s father whispers in Colin’s ear.
Colin didn’t even hear his footsteps. This isn’t good. Colin’s never been in this situation before. Luckily, his phone has stopped ringing. He’s never not answered his phone either. Harlem will know what to do. Harlem will find him.
“Not much of a talker, huh?” Emmalee’s father asks, now a few feet away. “Not going to ask all the typical questions? Why am I here? What do I want? Really?” Colin doesn’t answer. “Hmm. I always thought my daughter’s taste in men was more predictable. She’s never gone for stability. I think she likes to have the upper-hand, you know? She likes to think she’s in control, the strong one. She didn’t get that feeling growing up, I’m afraid.”
Colin fights the urge to smile. Emmalee’s father thinks Colin is her boyfriend. He doesn’t know who Colin really is. Colin can use that to his advantage. This could work.
“Please,” Colin says, “let us go.”
“Ah,” Emmalee’s father says, “there it is. You must be one of the nice ones. Think just a little bit of begging with some pleasantries will do the trick? I’m afraid that won’t do, son. No, I have something much more fun planned for the two of you. I’ve been waiting a long time for this reunion. I expected someone like you would be here to join us, so don’t worry. You won’t miss out.”
Emmalee’s father puts a hand on Colin’s shoulder. Colin squeezes his eyes shut. He knows what’s coming even before he feels the needle press into the skin on his neck.
“Goodnight, now. I’ll see you for dinner,” Emmalee’s father says.
And then Colin is left in the dark again.
When you grow up with a psychopathic father, you learn a few things.
First, you learn not to cower or scream at the sight of brutality and/or murder. Besides, after watching your father kill your mother right in front of you at the age of three, you won’t be phased by violence as easily. Nothing can compare.
Secondly, you learn how to hide, keep secrets, and run from trouble. You know how not to get caught. You know how to free yourself from impending doom.
But mostly, you learn how to escape. You learn how to disappear into thin air, and never look back on the life you were raised in. You learn how to protect yourself from your biggest nightmare.
Until your biggest nightmare catches up with you.
Emmalee has been running from her father for fifteen years, knowing if he found her he would kill her. And now he finally found her.
She wakes up in a spacious bedroom on top of expensive bedding. The room is nice, has an adjacent bathroom, but is (most importantly) empty. Of course, as soon as she tries to open the door she realizes it’s locked.
It isn’t a bedroom. It’s her prison.
She knows better than to bang on the door. Nobody is there to help her, and if someone is there, it’s probably better they assume she’s still asleep. Surely, whatever punishment her father has planned for her will take into consideration how expertly she’s been able to escape from him.
But what about Colin? Did they take him too? Why isn’t he here with her? What have they done with him?
Not that Emmalee is particularly fond of Colin, but she can at least nearly guarantee that he’s more her ally than the man who raised her. If they were together right now, they’d probably be able to find a way out.
Unfortunately, if Colin was taken with her, Emmalee is sure he must already be dead. Her father has no reason to keep him alive. No reason Emmalee would know of, at least.
She begins looking around the room for alternative methods of escape. There are no windows and no accessible air vents. The only door is locked. Not even the bathroom has a door on it.
What is she supposed to do?
She sits down on the plush, white carpet and sighs.
There’s nothing to do, but wait.
A poetic interpretation of a song by Twenty One Pilots.
Hope
the loss of it wraps around my throat, and I’m ready to give up.
It would be so easy,
so many ways to leave this world,
many more than 1,000.
And just one reason to stay:
You.
You buckled your heart to the backseat of my car,
so every time I drive away, I look in the rearview,
and I see you.
The night I felt like giving up, you knew,
you could feel it.
You saw the demons waiting on your porch,
waiting to deliver the news,
and you picked up the phone.
And just like that,
all my hope was restored.
You said stay with me
and wrapped your heart in a jar,
A jar to carry with me, so I will always know
you are the one who gives me hope.
You wave the torch of life above my head,
so I look up and understand
It will be okay.
I can live another day.
18
Growing up, I used to dream about my eighteenth birthday.
I imagined an exhilarating burst of freedom, and the ability to walk out of the door to my parents’ house and never look back. I thought turning 18 would make me an official adult, which would finally mean making my own decisions.
So, when the day finally came, I wanted to do something big.
There were many different factors involving my decision to drive to Dallas for my birthday. For one, it was where my best friend had moved the year before, and my birthday wouldn’t be complete without my best friend.
Then there was Neverland, my boyfriend at the time. Neverland and I were introduced by my best friend a few weeks before when we ran into her boyfriend, Jack-in-the-Box, at the mall. Jack-in-the-Box and Neverland were best friends as well, and naturally wherever Jack-in-the-Box went, Neverland went too. Mostly because Neverland was Jack-in-the-Box’s ride for the night, but that’s not the important part.
The important part was that while Jack-in-the-box and my best friend snuggled in a secluded space in a park we all ventured to, Neverland and I found a space of our own, and got to know each other. Three days later, we were an official couple, deluded into thinking it was love-at-first-sight and would last forever.
But the cynicism wouldn’t come until much later.
At the time, our happy bubble of new love was excited for my eighteenth birthday, and wanted to make the eight hour drive to Dallas to spend the weekend with my best friend. I would drive, Neverland would navigate from the passenger side, and Jack-in-the-Box would supply occasionally entertaining conversation from the backseat.
I’d never driven farther than Austin before, and never on my own. I had my phone GPS, an address, and a map which my grandmother gave us when we stopped in Austin (the halfway point) for a bowl of birthday stew. But I wasn’t nervous. Neverland sang to me the whole way up, replaying Bruno Mars’ Just the Way You Are several times. I was smiling so much, I’m surprised my cheeks didn’t fall off.
We made it to Dallas just before midnight. My best friend was still at work, so we went to pick her up. Jack-in-the-Box wrote his number on a scrap of paper and stuck it to the window of her work, pretending to be a creepy stranger. We saw her laugh and shake her head, and before long she had joined us.
It had been a cold winter, and snow still capped the roofs of many of the houses. I remember being mesmerized by the sight. I’d lived in Texas all my life, and very rarely ever experienced real snow.
My best friend was a master chef, so after a quick run to the local grocery store (Neverland bought a random gallon of milk because “It’s only a dollar here!”), she made us dinner. I don’t remember what it was. Pancakes? Or Grilled Cheese? Or perhaps TED Sandwiches (grilled cheese as buns with a bacon cheeseburger patty, and two bbq chicken strips)? Whatever we ate, I’m sure it was delicious.
After dinner, Neverland gave me my surprise birthday gift: he had written me a song. He used my best friend’s guitar to play it for me, and I cried tears of joy at the beauty of it. It still remains one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.
I’m sure we watched a movie or drove around recklessly or something. We were much too young and wild to go to bed at a decent hour. But I don’t remember the rest. I remember the song, and I remember falling asleep that night on the air mattress on the floor at the top of the staircase with Neverland, our bodies intertwined.
My eighteenth birthday was everything I could have hoped it would be. There was laughter, love, great food, amazing fun, the perfect gift, and even snow.
But most importantly, the day I turned 18, I was free.
They’re surrounded.
Colin is used to finding himself in complicated and dangerous situations, but he usually has the upper-hand. For one, he typically puts himself in those situations, knowing how to get out of them. For another, he’s never had a complicated and difficult recruit to look after while in the dangerous situation.
The odds aren’t in Colin’s favor this time.
He immediately presses the panic button he always keeps with him during missions. Harlem will send someone as soon as he receives the alert, and he’ll just have to hope it isn’t Lydia. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so insane that Lydia could be a part of this mess in the first place.
Colin and Emmalee are both pinned by the strong, dark figures who burst into the room when another one walks calmly in. It’s too dark for Colin to make out any distinguishable features other than the figure is obviously male, and walks with an assured posture straight toward Emmalee.
“Emma, darling,” the man says with a thick British accent, grazing Emmalee’s face with his fingertips.
Colin notices that she flinches like she’s been burned at his touch, and does her best not to look at him. Who is he? How does he know her? How could Harlem not warn him about this? He tries to detach himself from the people keeping him pinned, and fails. He won’t be getting out of here on his own.
“And you, Colin Timothy Brice, or Agent Brice if you prefer. Yes, I know exactly who you are. I don’t suppose you have any grand ideas of rescue, and I wouldn’t suggest you start,” the man says, turning to Colin.
“Who the hell are you?” Colin asks. “And what do you want?”
The man laughs slightly, but nothing about this situation is particularly funny. Where’s Lydia? Colin couldn’t get rid of her earlier, and now when he actually needs her help, she’s nowhere to be found? What is going on?
The man walks back over to Emmalee.
“Well, I’m Emmalee’s father. Or didn’t she tell you?” he says. “Take them to the car. We must leave quickly now.”
And then, Colin feels a needle prick the skin on his neck, and everything goes black.