As quietly as we could, we tested the door handles. Safety-locked. The window mechanisms were disabled as well. We were trapped.
Jennifer slowly leaned down and picked up her bag from the floor, keeping her eyes on me as she rummaged in it silently. She pulled out her pepper spray. I shook my head, knowing it was of no use to us in our sealed-off space. Still, we felt safer having it.
I dug into my own purse at my feet. I found an identical canister and a small hand-held alarm with a panic button. We would have to wait it out, in silence, in terror, with our shaking hands clutching our pepper sprays and sweat beading our foreheads despite the October chill outside.
I scanned the interior of the car, trying to come up with a plan. And then I noticed it. There were small open air vents in the partition on my side, but those in front of Jennifer were connected to some kind of homemade metal and rubber contraption. Valves were connected to a pipe that disappeared from our view into the front floorboard. I sat very still, gaping at this intricate mechanism, my mind racing but unable to grasp a coherent thought for a moment. Finally, it sank in.
“We’ll be drugged,” I said at last, whispering to Jennifer. I looked down at the pepper spray in my hand with regret, knowing I’d never be able to use it. I stroked it almost lovingly, then let it drop to the floor, as I stared back up at the source of our impending doom. Jennifer followed my glance and registered at once what it meant. There was no hope.
He must have heard me speak, for just seconds later, a slight hissing sound told us we were about to get very sleepy. The air vents on my side slid shut. Jennifer and I held hands tightly, our other hands gripping the outer sides of the faux leather seat as the world slipped away.
When I came to, I was in the dark cellar that was to be my home for more than three years. I roused myself from the drugs slowly, trying to focus my eyes in the sea of gray that swam before them. When they finally cleared, I had to shut them tightly again to stop the panic that threatened to take over. I waited ten seconds, twenty, thirty, and opened again. I looked down at my body. I was stripped naked and chained to the wall by my ankle. A chill prickled up my spine, and my stomach lurched.
I was not alone. There were two other girls down there, emaciated, naked, and chained to the walls beside me. In front of us was the box. It was a simple wooden shipping crate of some sort, maybe five feet long by four feet high. Its opening was angled away from me, so I couldn’t tell how it was secured. There was a dim bulb hanging from the ceiling over us. It swayed just slightly.
Jennifer was nowhere to be seen.
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Copyright © Koethi Zan 2017
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First published by Vintage in 2017
First published in London by Vintage in 2017
The line from ‘Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law’. Copyright © 2016 by the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust. Copyright © 1967, 1963 by Adrienne Rich, from Collected Poems: 1950–2012 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
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Table of Contents
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Koethi Zan
Title Page
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Copyright