Breaking Point (Short Story) Page 3

CHAPTER THREE

  Kathleen opened her eyes and found herself lying on her back looking up at a green metal ceiling. Her head was a little foggy and she was finding it hard to fully focus, mentally and with her eyes. She felt weak. Drained of strength. With her hands, she could feel that the floor she was lying on was also made of metal. With great effort, she forced herself to sit up and her head immediately began to spin. She had to place both her hands on the floor as supports to keep from falling over and she closed her eyes tight until the spinning stopped. When she opened her eyes again, and was able to focus better, Kathleen found she was surrounded by iron bars. She was inside a small metal cage, about eight feet by eight feet square, like the ones she had seen many times in zoos, the ones that held the smaller primates, like the cute, adorable spider monkeys. Panic rushed over Kathleen as the cobwebs dissipated from her head and she remembered how she had been abducted. She remembered the terror. She remembered the fear. Both were still lingering over her like a nightmare. Questions began flooding her head. What was going on? Why had she been kidnapped? What were her abductor’s intentions with her? There was a sense of relief she felt that she was still alive, but not knowing her captor’s intentions horrified her. Was her abductor a rapist who would have his way with her before strangling her? Was he a sadist who would use her warm blood for some bizarre ritual? Or was he a deranged psycho who got his kicks from torturing people? These possible scenarios made Kathleen’s blood turn cold and she shivered with fright.

  Kathleen tried to imagine a less sinister possibility, if only to ease her fearful mind. Perhaps this was just a horrible practical joke. It was her twenty-first birthday a few days ago. Maybe, just maybe, her friends were playing a joke on her, a really sick joke, and at any moment now they would suddenly appear, laughing about how scared she was. Any other time, Kathleen would have been appalled if she found out her friends had such a morbid sense of humor, but right now, she prayed that they did. But as Kathleen waited for her friends to reveal their awful joke, no one showed up. Deep down, she knew they wouldn’t. It was just a feeble hope of desperation. Her friends were not that cruel as to put her through all this. She knew they were not coming. She doubted any of them even knew she was missing. She doubted anyone knew she was missing. Her parents were on vacation with her brother and would be gone for a week. Her next scheduled class at the university was two days away. And in the past, Kathleen would sometimes go days without seeing one of her friends, but they did always text her at least once a day. Maybe, when she didn’t respond to their texts, they would start worrying about their friend and come looking for her. Kathleen needed some shred of hope to cling to and her friends were her only assurance. Her only question was, would they come looking for her? How good of friends were they actually? Would they be concerned that she didn’t respond to their text or would they simply go about their day not really caring? Kathleen didn’t truly know how close she and her friends were. She wasn’t sure if they cared about her or if they hung around her because of her celebrity status and wealth she had due to who her father was. This was the first time Kathleen had ever questioned the loyalty of her friends and not knowing the answer filled her with despair. Would she be worried about one of them if they came up missing? Yes, she said with confidence. She did care about them and hoped they shared her same sentiment. She prayed they were looking for her at this very moment. But, if they weren’t. If no one was looking for her, then it was up to Kathleen to try and get out of this frightening situation she found herself in. She refused to be a victim. Although, being locked in a cage was disparaging to her confidence.

  Kathleen stood up in her prison cell, the top of her head only a few inches below the cage’s ceiling, and walked over to the cage’s only door. She took a hold of the bars of the door with both hands and pulled and pushed as hard as she could, but, not surprisingly, the door was locked. She then looked through the bars, all around her, to try to get a sense of where she was. The cage she was in was sitting inside an abandoned factory of some type. The back of her cage was up against an exterior block wall. The front of her cage, where the door was located, was facing inside the large, wide-open, dilapidated, concrete block building. Running around at the top of the factory’s high twenty foot exterior walls ran a single row of windows. Nearly all of the glass in the windows had been busted out. More than likely by bored teenagers who found entertainment in throwing rocks through the glass. The walls of the deserted building were covered in dark soot from the exhaust of heavy machinery that once operated inside the factory. There were several places along the bottom of the exterior walls where the cement between the concrete blocks had disintegrated over time and light from outside was shining through. The majority of the factory floor was covered by old packing crates and wooden pallets stacked high on top of each other. The dusty concrete floor, the places Kathleen could see that weren’t hidden by the columns of pallets and crates, was littered with stress cracks with a varieties of weeds growing through the small fissures. The columns of wood were spaced close to one another, creating a maze throughout that side of the old factory. The old rusty tin roof of the building was riddled with corrosion holes, some as big around as a basketball. On the far right wall of the factory was a severely dented door, once red, but had faded to a mauve over the years, with the word “EXIT” painted in white above it. This door was hanging open about a foot; its doorknob was missing. To the left of Kathleen’s iron box, only twenty feet away, was the left exterior wall of the abandoned building. This wall had a twelve foot wide manual roll-up freight door, currently closed, and to the left of this freight door was a light green single door. Like the mauve door at the opposite end of the building, the green door had the word “EXIT” painted above it. Running from underneath the freight door to the bottom edge of Kathleen’s cage were scratches etched into the concrete floor left there when her cage was dragged inside to its current position.

  Kathleen walked around her cage examining every inch of it, searching for any weakness in the metal structure. She pushed up on the ceiling, but it was solid. She pulled on every iron bar of her cage, but all were solidly attached. Out of frustration, she tried the cage door again, rattling the door hard against its hinges, but it remained locked. She kicked the iron bars of the door, but only managed to hurt her big toe. Tears of discombobulation began to fill her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She wanted to scream out for help, but that would make her appear weak. She must remain strong. She must keep her wits about her. She must remain calm. She must control the rage that was boiling inside her. A rage she had both for her abductor, for making her a victim, and for herself, for allowing herself to become a victim in the first place.

  Kathleen began pacing inside her cage, racking her brain, trying to figure out a way to escape from her predicament, but nothing came to mind. She knew, in order to escape, the first thing she had to do was to get out of her prison cell, but it was impenetrable without a key. A key only her captor had. But just as she couldn’t get out without unlocking the cage door, her captor couldn’t get in without unlocking the door. Thus was her dilemma. She didn’t want her abductor coming inside her cage for fear of what he would do to her, but unless he unlocked the cage door, she would never have the opportunity to escape. At the precise moment her kidnapper unlocked and opened the door, that would be Kathleen’s only window of opportunity to escape. When that time came, she hoped she would have the strength and the courage to act upon that opportunity.

  The temperature inside the abandoned factory was sweltering and it felt like it was rising with each passing minute. It was early morning when Kathleen was kidnaped. By the angle the sunlight was pouring through the high windows, Kathleen estimated it had to be around ten o’clock, so the temperature inside the factory, inside her cage, was only going to get hotter. She usually didn’t sweat much, a little when she ran, but she felt like she was in a sauna and beads of perspiration were starting to roll down her face. Her mouth and throat were very pa
rched and she was so thirsty. Normally when arriving home after her five mile run, Kathleen would head straight to the refrigerator and down a whole bottle of water, but she didn’t have such an opportunity to do so this morning and the effects of missing her hydration was taking its toll on her body. She had no saliva in her mouth, her tongue was swollen, and her throat felt like she had swallowed several cotton balls. Her lips were dry and they felt like they would split if she opened her mouth too wide. Her head was beginning to hurt which she knew was a sign of dehydration. Kathleen recalled watching one of those doctor shows on television and remembered the doctor saying that the majority of people’s headaches were nothing more than their body being in a state of dehydration which could be easily cured with a simple glass of water. She began to wonder how long a person could live without water. Kathleen imagined it would depend on what kind of conditions the person was enduring. Inside a scorching abandoned factory wasn’t ideal conditions to be without water especially when combined with hypoglycemia. A bead of sweat ran down Kathleen’s nose and she welcomed it as it rolled between her lips.

  Then, Kathleen heard the most frightening sound she had ever heard in her life. The sound of the green factory door opening. She immediately spun around to face the door, praying by some miracle her friends had found her and was there to take her home, but what walked through that door was neither friendly or an answer to her prayers. It was her captor still wearing the hockey goalie mask. The kidnapper walked toward the cage and stopped about five feet away with crossed arms and a silent tongue, just staring at his prisoner. Kathleen wished she could see the expression on her captor’s face. To see whether it was as evil and sinister as she was imagining it to be. She wanted to be able to look into his eyes and see if they were eyes of a killer. She had seen such eyes a few times in the courtroom belonging to men her father was defending. But she could not see her kidnapper’s eyes. All she could see was the cold, expressionless face of the hockey mask.

  Kathleen tried to swallow a lump of fear that was lodged in her throat, but it would not go down. She prayed her kidnapper couldn’t see the fear in her eyes or the trembling in her hands. Her hands weren’t only trembling with fright, but also with intense anger toward her abductor. How dare he kidnap her! She formed tight fists with her hands at her side to try to stop them from shaking. She then found enough courage in her rage to speak. The trembling in her own voice angered her even more.

  “Who are you?” Kathleen demanded to know. “What do you want? Do you have any idea who my father is? There’s going to be hundreds of people looking for me and, when they find me, you’re going to pay for this! Dearly!”

  The kidnapper remained silent.

  “Did you hear me? Let me go right now or you’ll be sorry! Open this door immediately! If you don’t, I’ll see to it that you get the death penalty!”

  “You have a lot of fight in you, Princess,” the kidnapper said with a chuckle in his voice.

  By the sound of his voice, Kathleen could tell her kidnapper was a man, although, she had already assumed he was, but there was nothing distinctive about his voice. Just an average voice. Sitting in the courtroom over the years and observing many different trials during that time, Kathleen learned how important details were to both the defendant and the prosecutor. She realized just how important details were for convicting or defending a person of a crime. The more details, the better chance a lawyer had in winning his case. Kathleen quickly surveyed her kidnapper, looking for anything that might help in identifying him after she escaped.

  Kathleen’s kidnapper was definitely a white male by the sound of his voice. She estimated he stood about six feet tall and weighed probably around two twenty five. She couldn’t see his eyes through the holes in the hockey mask, but she could see his dark brown, wavy hair. He was still wearing his dark blue overalls that had no distinguishable labels or any identifiable marks. They were just simple plain blue overalls. Probably from Walmart, Kathleen surmised. Her abductor’s hands were large with a lot of hair on them. One of his hands had easily been large enough to cover both Kathleen’s mouth and her nose when she was being held inside the van. And her kidnapper was wearing white tennis shoes. Kathleen couldn’t tell the brand name of the shoes. That was all the details she could collect from her observation of her captor. Not much for a trial lawyer to go on.

  “What do you want with me?” Kathleen asked much more calmly than before. It was obvious her kidnapper wasn’t going to be intimidated by her threats.

  “What do you think I want with you?”

  “Money? Are you holding me for ransom? Because my family has lots of money. They will pay you good for my return.” Kathleen hoped this was all about money.

  “No. I don’t want money.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “No, Princess.”

  “Stop calling me Princess!”

  Kathleen’s kidnapper chuckled again.

  “Why did you kidnap me?” Kathleen’s voice trembled as both her anger and fear fought to dominate her emotional state. “Are you going to rape me?”

  “No. I’m not going to rape you, Princess. I’m not going to touch you until you ask me to. And you will. Before this is all over, you will offer yourself to me.”

  “Offer myself to you?” Kathleen was irate. “There’s no way I’ll ever offer myself to you! There’s no way I’ll ever willingly have sex with you, you sick pervert! What kind of delusional fantasy are you living in? What? Have you been secretly stalking me, waiting for the perfect moment to kidnap me? How long have you been watching me? How long have you been stalking me?”

  “I haven’t, Princess. I didn’t have to stalk you. I didn’t have to do much of anything but throw you in a van. Finding out where you live and what your everyday routine is was the easy part. I just had to look at your Facebook. Your address is on your Facebook page. The fact you jog every morning and where and when you jog is on your Facebook page. The fact your parents and brother would be gone for a week is on your Facebook page. Everything I needed to know about you was right there on the internet for all to see.”

  Kathleen suddenly felt foolish. She had made it so easy for her kidnapper. She had done everything but give him an invitation. “If your only intention is to have sex with me, you might as well let me go right now, because I would rather die than to have sex with you!”

  “I doubt that. You would be surprised what you’re capable of when death is staring you in the eyes. It’s only then a person truly finds out what they’re made of. It’s only then you find out your true strength. You seem like a strong young lady, Princess, but everyone has their breaking point. We’re going to find out where yours is.”

  The kidnapper turned and walked out of the green door leaving Kathleen wondering what he was talking about. What did he mean, he’s going to find her breaking point? What was he going to do to her that would break her? He said he wouldn’t touch her until she asked him to, so what did he have in mind? What would he do to her that would be so bad that she would voluntarily give herself to her kidnapper? Kathleen’s mind filled with horrifying images that could be committed upon someone without having to touch them, each image worse than the last. The unknown future consumed her with a nervous-filled anxiety. And she had to accept the fact she was helpless to do anything about it. All she could do was wait. Wait to find out what her kidnapper had in mind.

  Kathleen’s thirst grew. She estimated by the movement of the shadows on the factory floor that an hour had passed since her last encounter with her kidnapper. Her desire…her need…for water increased with each passing minute. Her tongue felt like it was swelling even bigger inside her mouth. She wondered if it could eventually swell big enough to block her esophagus and cause her to die of asphyxiation. Kathleen’s mind drifted back to a time in high school when a man visited her gym class to lecture the students on how to survive if they were ever caught in the middle of the desert with no food, water, or shelter. The man was a survivalist tr
ainer and an avid rock climber. The only reason Kathleen remembered him was because he was easy on her eyes. Very cute and well built. She recalled this handsome rock climber giving the students a list of what lack of water could do to a person. So Kathleen knew the symptoms she was feeling now were just the tip of the arid sand dune. Without water, her symptoms were going to get a lot worse. Her headache and her dizziness were going to get atrocious. Followed by the rest of the syndromes of severe dehydration.

  Kathleen jumped when she heard the green door open. Her kidnapper walked through the door carrying a small cooler, the size that could hold a six pack of soda and some ice. The kidnapper stood in front of Kathleen’s cage and opened the cooler. Inside, the cooler was full of ice and six bottles of water. Kathleen’s kidnapper reached into the cooler, pulled out a bottle of water, opened it, and poured some water over his head.

  “Wow, that’s cold!” he said. “But refreshing. It sure is hot today. I bet you could use a drink right about now. Couldn’t you?”

  Kathleen nodded her head while staring desiringly at the bottles of water.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you. Did you say you could use a drink of water?”

  “Yes,” Kathleen said in a soft humiliated voice. She wasn’t accustomed to having to ask for things she wanted.

  “I’m sorry. There must be something wrong with my hearing, because I still couldn’t quite hear you. Could you speak up?”

  “Yes,” Kathleen said louder.

  “Yes, what?”

  “I would like a bottle of water.”

  “I would like a bottle of water…?”

  “Please. I would like a bottle of water, please.” Kathleen was growing annoyed with her kidnapper’s little game, but she controlled her anger. Right now, her thirst was more important than her pride.

  “That’s better. Now, here’s the deal. You can have a bottle of water when you take your clothes off.”

  “What?” Kathleen could no longer control her anger. “Are you stupid? I’m not taking my clothes off for a bottle of water, you pervert!”

  “Suit yourself.” The kidnapper slowly poured the contents of his water bottle on the concrete floor and left with his cooler.

  Kathleen dropped to her knees, holding onto the bars of her cage, and watched as the water slowly ran across the dusty concrete floor and poured into a crack where it was rapidly soaked up by the parched soil below. She continued to stare at the wetness on the concrete floor, longing for just a few drops on her tongue. She watched until all traces of the water eventually evaporated.

  Kathleen sat down on her butt and began rubbing her throbbing temples. She had stopped sweating as much as she had been early despite the temperature in her cage getting hotter. She knew that wasn’t a good sign. Her body was going from dehydration to severe dehydration. Her heartbeat and breathing were becoming erratic, the tips of her fingers and toes were tingling, and she was feeling nauseated. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw her brother standing in the cage with her. She quickly turned her head toward him, but he was not there. Delirium. Another sign of severe dehydration. Johnathan was miles away standing in a long line of people waiting for his turn on the next ride at Disney World. Kathleen was thankful her brother was at the theme park. Thankful he was safe.

  Another thirty minutes passed and Kathleen’s symptoms were getting worse. She feared she wouldn’t last much longer without water. And all she had to do to get some life-sustaining liquid inside her was to take her clothes off. The thought of taking her clothes off in front of a stranger scared her, but the thought of dying of thirst scared her more. Kathleen began to rationalize with herself. Taking her clothes off in front of her abductor would be humiliating and mortifying, but not taking the deal could mean her death. It seemed like a small price to pay as long as her kidnapper didn’t try anything with her. As long as he stayed outside her cage. He said he would not touch her until she asked him to, but was he a man of his word? Can a man who commits the crime of kidnapping have integrity? Couldn’t such a man also be a liar? It was a chance Kathleen was going to have to take. The bottom line was, she needed water.

  Kathleen began staring at the green door and, with much disbelief in herself, she began wishing her abductor would walk through the door. She hoped he would enter the factory with his cooler full of water and offer her a bottle of water again. This time, she would disrobe without hesitation. To hell with modesty. Her life was more important than her virtue. She continued to watch the door in earnest, praying it would open, and began fearing it wouldn’t. What if he wasn’t coming back anytime soon? What if he wasn’t coming back at all today? Just how much longer could she last without water? Surely, he wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of kidnapping her just to let her die of thirst. Would he? Kathleen had no idea what kind of tormented monster she was dealing with. She hated the fact that she needed this monster. She despised the fact she longed for his return and she loathed the fact she was scared he might not walk back through the green door.

  Just when Kathleen was considering calling out to her kidnapper, the green door opened. Her abductor walked through the door and up to Kathleen’s cage with his cooler at his side and stood there silently. Waiting.

  “Okay,” Kathleen said in a low defeated voice. A voice she didn’t recognized.

  “Okay, what?”

  “I’ll do it. I’ll take my clothes off if you give me something to drink.”

  “Take your clothes off first and I’ll give you a drink.”

  “You promise?”

  The man in the hockey mask nodded his head.

  Still in a sitting position, Kathleen brought her legs into her body and began untying her sneakers. She removed her shoes and then her socks. Just exposing her bare feet to this man made her feel cheap and worthless and she dreaded showing him more. But she had no choice. She stood up to take the rest of her clothes off.

  “Toss your shoes and socks through the bars,” the kidnapper ordered.

  “Why?” Kathleen knew if she gave her abductor her clothes, he would keep them. She would be naked inside her prison with nothing to cover herself with. She had assumed she would take her clothes off, be given some water, and then be able to put her clothes back on. But that wasn’t going to be the case.

  “Do as I say,” her kidnapper said sternly.

  With a sigh of reluctance and a hard swallow, Kathleen tossed her shoes and socks outside her cage at the feet of her abductor. With trembling hands, she pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it on the floor outside her cage. She hesitated before pulling her pants off, mustering up the courage to do so. Soon, she would be standing in only her bra and panties, so she tried to pretend it was her bathing suit she would be exposing to her kidnapper. A bathing suit basically showed the same amount of skin as wearing only a bra and panties. It was no big deal to Kathleen if some stranger saw her in her bathing suit. It happened all the time when she went to the beach. Convincing herself, if only slightly, that she was wearing her bikini bottoms under her pants, she took her pants off and tossed them out of her cage. Unfortunately, she immediately became aware she was standing in nothing but her bra and panties and she felt extremely vulnerable. She wanted so desperately to cover up, but she knew she wasn’t finished yet. The deal was for her to be naked in order to receive the bottle of water. Fighting back her tears of shame, Kathleen reached behind her back to unhook her bra.

  “Stop. That’s enough,” the kidnapper said. “You can keep those on.”

  A flood of relief poured over Kathleen and she felt gratitude toward her kidnapper. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad person, she thought. Maybe he wasn’t the sick pervert she thought he was. Kathleen was immediately sicken with herself for allowing such a thought to enter her head. This man was the one who kidnaped her and made her his prisoner. He was a bad person. Nothing that could be perceived as an act of kindness by the hands of her kidnapper could make up for what he had done. Stay vigilant, Kathleen.
Stay strong.

  Kathleen’s captor opened up his cooler, took out a bottle of water, and placed it inside the cage. Kathleen snatched the bottle, nearly tore the plastic lid off, and chugged the entire contents down without taking a breath. It was the best bottle of water she could ever remember drinking. The kidnapper placed four more bottles of water inside Kathleen’s cage and Kathleen drank all four.

  “Toss the empty bottles out here,” the kidnapper ordered. “You know, they’re recyclable. We all have to do our part.”

  Kathleen chucked her bottles outside the cage and watched her kidnapper pick each one up and placed them inside his cooler. For a brief instant, Kathleen imagined her kidnapper was her servant who was being forced to pick up after her and this thought brought her a brief feeling of satisfaction and a short flash of superiority. It wasn’t much, but she took it and enjoyed it. Kathleen was about to ask if she could have her clothes back, but, before she did, her kidnapper picked up the discarded items of clothing, tucked them under his arm, and walked out the green door.

  Kathleen sat on the floor of her cage with her back against the cage bars while the effects of dehydration slowly vanished from her body. The sun was sinking low in the sky evident by the long shadows inside the old factory. The temperature was dropping and it would be night soon. Kathleen suddenly realized she had never been outside at night alone. Her nightly outings consisted of driving from point A to point B, always with someone, and never spending more than a few minutes outside. The night scared her. It had ever since she could remember. It was probably a transference fear from father to daughter. For as long as Kathleen could remember, every night before bedtime her father would ritually walk through their house making certain every window and every door was locked tight. He never admitted to being afraid of the dark, but, even as a small girl, Kathleen could tell her father was. Just like Kathleen, her father had a nightlight in his room that was always on at night. So, she was convinced that there had to be something bad about the night.

  The shadows grew longer and more plentiful inside the factory. The menacing shadows began overlapping one another, creating a frightening array of ghouly shapes. The dark spaces between the forest of wooden crates and pallets became sinister abysses with an unlimited number of possible terrifying creatures hiding inside. Watching Kathleen. Stalking her. Waiting for the opportune moment to pounce inside her cage and rip her throat open. Kathleen shivered. She shivered because of the horrifying images she was allowing her mind to manifest and because the temperature was dropping fast.

  Kathleen pulled her legs into her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs tightly and she began to rock back and forth in an effort to warm herself. But as the sun light disappeared and the dark abysses were only being subdued by the faint light of the moon shining through the windows, the night air brought colder temperatures. Thoughts of things Kathleen had long taken for granted swept through her mind like the night breeze sweeping through the windows of the old abandoned factory. The warmth of her brother’s forehead as she kissed him goodnight. Her toasty shower. Her comfortable nightgown. Her warm Egyptian sheets. Things she always assumed would be there for her. She missed them. She missed her brother. She missed her father. She even missed her mother.

  Kathleen loved her mother and she knew her mother loved her, but Kathleen felt she was never good enough for her mother. No matter how hard she tried, Kathleen felt her mother always had a negative comment or a disparaging word for her. Sometimes, Kathleen felt her mother was more of a drill sergeant than a caring parent, making sure her family walked the straight and narrow. But maybe that was the price they had to pay to have the things they had. To be who they were. Kathleen’s mother pushed her husband just as hard as she pushed her children. She pushed them toward hard work, discipline, values, dedication, goals, achievements, education, things that made them better in school, at their jobs, financially and as prominent pillars of the community. Was Kathleen’s mother really all that bad? Maybe her tactics could have been sweeter, but the end results could not be denied. Her husband was head of the largest law firm in the state of Nevada. Her daughter had a perfect G.P.A. in high school and was getting perfect scores in college and would soon be on her way to law school. Her son was following in his sister’s footsteps with perfect grades and attendance in school and was head quarterback of the junior football team. Perhaps, Kathleen had to admit, she was the one being too hard on her mother. Perhaps, her mother needed more recognition. Maybe she deserved more gratitude. Being behind the sidelines while your family gets all the glory and accolades for your hard work can’t be easy. Kathleen realized her mother deserved her daughter’s understanding and compassion and Kathleen promised herself that if she saw her mother again, that was exactly what she would do.

  “If we see mom again?” Kathleen said to herself. “Stop thinking like that! We’re going to see her again. We’ll make it out of here somehow. We will. Somehow.”

  Kathleen’s whole body shuttered hard. It was cold. The cage bars she was leaning against began to feel like icicles against her back. She took her hair out of its ponytail and let it fall down her back. Her only protection from the cold. The freezing metal of the cage floor began to make her bottom ache. She wrapped her arms tighter around her body, but didn’t feel any warmer. Her nose was starting to run and her face felt numb. Her toes and fingertips began to ache, the parts of her extremities that her body was willing to sacrifice in order to protect itself.

  As Kathleen was enduring another uncontrollable bout of shivers, a realization hit her like an electric shock down her spine. She now understood why her abductor had wanted her to take her clothes off. She had falsely assumed it was because of some sexual fantasy he was fulfilling, but she was wrong. She could see it now. It had nothing to do with sex. Her kidnapper wanted his prisoner’s clothing off because he knew how cold it got at night. He wanted her to suffer just as she was doing now. He wanted her to endure the agony of the cold frigid night with as little clothing on her as possible. He could have demanded she take off her bra and panties, but that wasn’t what he was after. The flimsy material of Kathleen’s under clothing couldn’t provide much protection from the cold. It wouldn’t have made much of a difference if she wasn’t wearing them. But why? Why did he want her to hurt? Why did he want to torment her? Was he a sociopath who found pleasure in others pain? If that was the case, Kathleen was determined not to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much pain and discomfort she was in. She was determined to stay strong. She refused to become more of a victim than she already was.

  For a short period of time, the moon had risen high enough in the night sky for Kathleen to be able to see it through the high windows of the abandoned factory. Looking at the moon, she was overcome with a strange feeling that the celestial object was looking directly at her, mocking her for allowing herself to get into the predicament she was in. The moonlight poured in through the windows, producing an eerie glow, illuminating the many irregular edges of everything inside the factory, transforming the forest of crates and pallets into an army of giant faceless demons standing at attention waiting for the order from their satanic creator to attack. The shadows of the bars of Kathleen’s cage began to slowly elongate, stretching toward her, reaching to rip her flesh from her body, while her own shadow fled. Kathleen pulled herself into as tight a ball as she could. The demonic army seemed to move slightly, anticipating the start of their charge, longing for the order to tear through the bars of Kathleen’s prison and drag her into the underworld. And just when the shadowy bars were nearly at Kathleen’s ankles, and just as the sadistic soldiers were about to storm Kathleen’s cage, the moon disappeared from the windows and the inside of the factory became dark again.

  The night remained cold, but, to Kathleen’s relief, it didn’t get any colder. It was miserable, but tolerable. And a couple hours before sunrise, Kathleen fell asleep.