The Rules of the Basement
The silence is worse than the furnace was. At least the furnace had a rhythm I could follow, a low vibration I could feel through the concrete and into my spine. Now there is nothing but the dark, the cold and the taste of whatever back-alley substance still coats the inside of my mouth. I try to swallow but my dry and thick throat resists. My lips are stuck together. Not taped, I do not think. Something else. Something that pulls at the skin when I try to part them, a tightness that runs from the corners of my mouth to the center, where the seal holds firmest.
I am on my side. That much I can tell from the way my hip presses into the concrete and my shoulder grounds the rest of my weight. My hands are somewhere behind me, and when I try to move them, I feel the bite of plastic against my wrists. A zip tie. Not the kind Mitzy used once to bundle cables behind her station at the studio, but a stronger kind, almost like industrial strength.
My eyes will not open. I strain against whatever holds them shut and feel only the slight give of skin against skin, the faint pressure of something adhesive tugging at my lashes. Not tape over the lids. Something applied directly. The thought makes my stomach turn, and I force myself to breathe through my nose, slow and steady, the way I used to do before public speaking in college when my hands would tremble.
Somewhere above me, a floorboard creaks or something like it.
I go still. Every muscle in my body locks into place, and I listen with a kind of sharpness I have never given anything in my life. The creak comes again, closer now, and then the sound of a door opening, heavy and slow, the hinges dry and complaining. Footsteps descend. Not the quick, light steps of someone in a hurry. These are measured, deliberate, each one landing with a weight that travels through the wood and into the concrete beneath me. Heavy steps. A man’s booted steps.
The footsteps stop. I cannot tell how far away he is. The dark makes distance impossible, and the sealed eyes make the dark absolute. I hear him breathe, a slow exhale through the nose, and then a click like a switch being used.
“You're awake.”
The voice is not human. It comes from somewhere to my left, flat and metallic, with the slight warble of a cheap speaker pushed past its limit. But the accent is new. Not the neutral, unplaceable tone from his first words. This one has a drawl to it, a broad, sunburned quality that reminds me of a nature documentary my mother used to watch about the Australian Outback, the one with the man who handled venomous snakes with his bare hands. The voice is soothing. Almost friendly. That is the worst part.
I try to answer and my lips pull against the seal, a sharp sting that makes my eyes water beneath whatever is holding them closed. A small sound escapes me, something between a whimper and a grunt. I hate it immediately.
“Don’t try to speak,” the voice says. “Your lips are sealed with a medical adhesive. It will hold until I decide it doesn't. Nod if you understand.”
I nod. The movement sends a spike of pain through my neck, and I realize how long I have been lying in this position, how stiff my joints have become, maybe days or longer.
“Good,” the voice says. “Now listen carefully, because I will not repeat myself. You are in a basement. You are in the middle of nowhere. If you scream, no one will hear you. If you escape this room, which you will not, there is nowhere to go. No neighbors. No road. No phone signal. The nearest town is far away, and you would not survive the walk even if you knew which direction to take. Do you understand?”
I nod again, and this time the movement is smaller, more careful.
“I am going to tell you what happens next,” the voice continues. “I am going to tell you the truth, because I believe you deserve at least that. Eventually, I will take your life. That is not a threat. It is a promise. The only question is how long you remain here before that happens, and how much of that time you spend in relative comfort or in pain. That is entirely up to you.”
The words settle into the dark like stones dropped into still water. I wait for the fear to spike, for my heart to do something dramatic and cinematic, but it does not. My heart keeps beating at the same steady pace, and I realize that some part of me already knew this. Some part of me understood the moment the cloth pressed over my face in the parking garage that I was not going to be released, that this was not a robbery or child's play. His fake voice told me I should have stayed home, and I did not, and now I am here, and this is the consequence.
“You will eat what I give you,” the voice says. “You will drink what I give you. The food and water will be drugged to keep you sedated. You will not fight the sedation. You will not try to stay awake. If you do, I will know, and the punishment will shortly follow.”
He pauses. I hear him shift his weight and breath soften.
“Your eyes are sealed, but the adhesive is designed to allow some light through. You will be able to see shadows, perhaps a little movement, if you pay attention. That is a privilege. If you break the rules, I will make you truly blind. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“If you disobey, I will restrict your breathing. One nostril. That is all you will have. You will lie here in the dark, you will breathe through a single nostril, and you will think about what you did. If you disobey again, I will bring in the rats. They are in a cage in the next room. You will hear them scratching at night. If you disobey a third time, the roaches. And there are other surprises. I have had a long time to think of them.”
The voice says this the way someone might describe a hobby, a collection they have been curating for years. The Australian drawl stretches the vowels, makes the words sound almost lazy, and I think that is the point. The calm is the point. The calm is worse than shouting would be.
He moves again, and I hear a click, a soft electronic chirp. When he speaks next, the voice is different. The Australian accent is gone. In its place is something softer, higher, with a gentle rasp at the edges. A woman’s voice. Southern. Familiar in a way that makes my chest tighten before I understand why.
“I do not ask for much,” the voice says, and it sounds like my mother. Not exactly. The pitch is slightly wrong, the cadence a little too even. But close enough. Close enough that I feel the tears welling before I can stop them, hot and sudden beneath the sealed lids. “I will not violate you. You are simply asked to be a part of my basement collection. That is all. A quiet part. An obedient part.”
The voice pauses, and I hear him take a breath, and I realize that he is reading from something. A script. A prepared statement. He has done this before.
“Here are the rules,” the voice says in my mother’s not-quite-voice. “You will be silent. You will not struggle. You will not fight. You will not use vile language. You will speak only when spoken to. You will make no attempt to escape. If you obey these rules, I may offer you treats. Perks. A blanket, perhaps. A pillow. Something to make the dark a little more bearable. But only if you earn it.”
The tears are running down my cheeks now, pooling in the hollow of my ear, and I cannot wipe them away because my hands are bound behind me. I think about my mother’s house. I think about the seven hundred square feet I was hesitant to leave, the walk-in closet she finished one week before her death, the slippers with the chopsticks on the toes that Mitzy gave me as a bribe. I think about all of it, and I want to go home. I want to go home more than I have ever wanted anything.
“Do you accept the rules?” the voice asks.
I nod. I nod because there is nothing else to do, because I am lying on a concrete floor in a basement in the middle of nowhere with my hands bound, my eyes sealed and my lips glued shut, and the only person who knows where I am is the man who put me here.
“Good girl,” the voice says, and the words in my mother’s borrowed tone are the sickest thing I have ever heard.
He moves away. I hear his footsteps retreat, the heavy door swing shut, the latch clicks into place. The silence returns, but it is not empty anymore. It is full of rules. Full of the promise of rats, roaches and a single nostril to breathe through. Full of the knowledge that I am part of a collection now, and that collections are not meant to be released, just like my slippers and pillows.
Time passes. I do not know how long. The dark makes time strange, stretches it and compresses it until I cannot tell the difference between five minutes and an hour. I drift in and out of something that is not quite sleep, my body heavy with the lingering tranquilizers, my mind circling the same few thoughts like water going down a drain. My mother is dead. Mitzy does not know where I am. Ethan was kissing Carly. I left the party early. I parked on the ninth level. The lights went out. The cloth smelled sweet.
The door opens again.
I do not hear him approach this time. The door simply opens, and the footsteps are already on the stairs, already crossing the concrete toward me. I stiffen, and the motion sends a fresh ache through my shoulders.
“You will eat now,” the voice says. The Australian accent is back. He has switched it again, and I wonder how many voices he has, how many he has collected along with everything else.
I feel him kneel beside me. The floor registers the shift in weight, and I catch the faint scent of something lightly scented, mint along with Aftershave. The smell is unique, almost euphoric, which makes my skin crawl.
“I am going to remove the seal on your lips,” he says. “You will not speak. You will open your mouth only for the food. If you speak, the meal ends, and the punishment begins. Nod if you understand.”
I nod.
His fingers find my face. They are bare, warm, and I feel the slight tremor in them as he works the edge of the adhesive free. The tremor surprises me. It does not match the calm of the voice. It suggests something underneath, something the synthesized accents are meant to hide. He peels the seal away slowly, and the skin beneath it stings as the air hits it. My lips part, dry and cracked, and I take my first unsealed breath through my mouth. The air tastes musty but it is air.
“Open,” he says.
I open my mouth. Something touches my lips, cool and slightly greasy. Poultry. Chicken, maybe. Cooked and cut into small pieces. I bite down, chew, swallow. The meat is bland, unseasoned, but my body wants it. My body has been hungry for hours, maybe longer, and it does not care about the drugs. I open my mouth again, and another piece arrives. Then another. I eat in the dark, blind and bound, while the man with the borrowed voice feeds me like a child. I do not speak. I do not fight. I do not do anything except what I am told.