Goldfish on the Mountain Chapter 11

Chapter eleven

Molly woke up as she heard a noise outside her window. As much as it hurt she forced her eyelids to open further than she had dared try in as long as she could remember. It was not easy but she managed to turn her head just slightly in the direction of the noise she thought she heard. It didn’t take long before she realized she must have imagined it.

She knew this bedroom was set up like her room from her childhood, and she expected there to be window to her left. She was not looking at a window, but a frame where a window had once been. She should have known better, he would not leave a window open where a passerby could see his prized victim and make an attempt to rescue her from his evil clutches. She sighed, at first a sigh a relief then she realized what did she have be afraid of, getting rescued?

She was awake now, more so than ever. She didn’t know what the noise was that had awoken her to attention but it didn’t matter anymore, she managed to get her head propped up enough to look around and she was determined for the first time in who knows how long, to assess her surroundings.

Now was the time to take action. If she was ever going to be rescued she was going to have to toughen up and fight back. And the first step in doing that is overcoming the obstacles he placed before her and learning as much about where she was as she could. It was no longer about survival anymore. Waiting for some hero to rescue her was such an antiquated logic in the first place. She knew she was on her own and the time for feeling sorry for herself was over, the time for action had arrived.

Just as she suspected they had re-created her bedroom from her youth nearly exactly as she remembered it. She slowly began to associate memories with the objects she saw around the room. The dolls on the top of her dresser, the blue ceramic horse on her night stand, the music box, her diary even, as she looked around she saw they had meticulously recreated her bedroom exactly as it had been when she was sixteen years old.

In a way that shouldn’t surprise her, after all she was just sixteen when she met her ex-husband by way of the joint craftiness of both hers and his mothers. Never mind that, no time for going down memory lane, keep looking for anything that can be used to your advantage she thought to herself. She was going to have to get control of that mental voice; she needed to regain her sanity and sense of identity. She didn’t know how long she had been here but she did know it was quite some time, and she had enough.

She was afraid to raise her head to get a view of her broken, shattered body, but she figured might as well know everything there is to know. It was far worse than it felt. The pin points were still clearly visible on her chest and thighs where he had punctured holes into her skin and set up little matches in the holes, lighting them and letting them burn down to close up the very same punctures that held the matches in place.

She could see the burns all over the place. She wondered why she didn’t feel the burns, there had to be some explanation for that.

Keep going Molly, I don’t care how much it hurts you need to know how bad it is or else you will never recover. She saw the bandages on her hips where her legs were attached to her torso. He had broken those bones out of place and wrapped them up tightly with bandages and duct tape. She knew why he used the duct tape, because it would cause further pain when he removed the bandages.

She couldn’t see further south, her legs and pelvis were bent in a manner that blocker her line of sight. He must have drugged her or perhaps her mind was just blotting it out. At first she dismissed it as unimportant then the voice reminded her, no Molly, nothing is unimportant, you need to remember everything you can, no matter how much it hurts, remember. If you don’t not only does he win, but you will never be able to put yourself back together and get the hell out of here. And just as suddenly as some imaginary noise had woken her up, she passed out from the pain she was trying unsuccessfully to suppress.