I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.
Terror trickles down my spine when I wake up enough to realize that this isn’t a dream.
This is real.
Where the fuck am I?
It’s pitch dark, and I scramble up from whatever surface I’m lying on, only to wince in pain as I hear the clanking of metal and my leg jerks.
I’m stuck.
I reach my hand down under the layers of blankets and feel a hard lump of metal, like a clamp, fitted to my ankle.
I shift my body forward, following the thick chain until I feel that it’s attached to the wall by a heavy metal ring and secured with three thick bolts.
This can’t be happening. This doesn’t happen in real life.
I can’t breathe.
I try to back away from the wall but I’m shaking so much I can barely take the weight of my body on my hands. My chest tightens, my heart hammers and I struggle to find enough air.
Oh god.
Oh, fucking god.
Fear washes over me, consuming every part of my body until I feel like I’m sweating all over and I’m struggling to think cohesively.
I think I might pass out.
I don’t want to pass out.
But the walls are closing in on me. The world is going even darker than it is already.
I try to lie down, I try to focus on breathing but it‘s like I’ve forgotten what to do.
I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
I’m going to die right here.
I’m going to die.
“Lacey?”
Someone shakes me awake. A familiar voice.
A woman’s voice.
I’m confused. Was I dreaming? Was it real? Is it over?
I open my eyes and see Alice looking down at me. Her face is familiar, but our surroundings are not. I look behind her at the ceiling. Wooden beams. Loose cables. This isn’t my house.
It wasn’t a nightmare.
“I thought you might be hungry. I brought you some stew,” she says, her voice gentle.
I sit up in bed, backing away and looking at her like she’s offering to feed me my own left arm.
“It’s alright, honey. You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you.”
Why don’t I believe her?
“What is this?” I say, looking around the room and trying to make it sound like I’m demanding an answer. I know it’s a basement but I want to know exactly what the fuck I’m doing in it.
Alice puts the bowl down on what looks like a workbench and takes a seat on a stool in front of me. Her eyes are doing that thing again, that simple warm look that conveys she understands.
She doesn’t understand.
How the fuck could she understand?
“There’s a lot to explain, dear. Shaun told me about the trouble you were in,” she says.
“Shaun?”
Suddenly the pieces all start clicking together. It’s like someone has turned a tap on, a slow trickle at first and then a whoosh.
I never questioned how Shaun always knew my father was away on business. That day in the car when he was telling me about his grandparents, that was Alice and Jim. And how was he getting into my house? Was she letting him in?
“When I told you I had grand-bairns who kept me up all night, well, I was mostly talking about that little shit. But you’re safe now,” she says.
Funny because that’s exactly the opposite of how I feel.
“You need to let me go,” I tell her. “This is insane. I don’t know what he’s told you but it’s just not true. There is no trouble. I wasn’t in any trouble until I woke up chained to a fucking wall!” I can feel myself losing it. I shouldn’t swear at her. I should be nice to her and try to appeal to her softer nature. But this is madness. I can’t help myself.
“I can’t let you go,” she says, getting up from the chair. “Shaun will be home soon. I’m sure he’ll explain what’s happening.”
“I don’t want to hear it from him. I want to hear it from you. Right now,” I demand.
She sighs and looks at me for a moment. There is sympathy in her eyes, which instantly worries me because it signals she knows this is wrong. She knows this is wrong and yet she’s doing it, anyway.
Why? Because Shaun asked her too? Does everyone in his life blindly follow his every whim?
She clears her throat and sits back down on the stool. “Your father is forcing you to marry… Liam McGuiness.”
Huh. Well, I suspected the conversation I had with Shaun yesterday wouldn’t be the end of it, but this? I couldn’t ever have dreamed he would go to these lengths.
“My father can’t physically force me to do anything,” I tell her. I’m not going to explain to her that while my father has his own reasons, I had my own agenda too. I wouldn’t have gone through with it. He’d have got his shares, Shaun wouldn’t be able to retaliate or break my heart or whatever the hell he was trying to do, and I could finish high school in one piece.
At least, that was my logic at the time.
“Oh, you’re sure about that? Your father owns you. He puts the roof over your head and the clothes on your back. You ought to wisen up quick, Lacey, and start seeing that this is a man’s world, and if you’re going to survive in it, you at least have to acknowledge that we don’t get choices.”
“It was my choice to go through with it, though,” I tell her.
She shakes her head at me. “Don’t talk wet — I didn’t come down in the last shower. I knew it was my Shaun you were talking about yesterday and not that… Liam.”
She practically winces when she says his name. I thought I’d imagined it the first time but this time it was unmistakable. Does the rivalry really run that deep that a grown woman — a grandmother — would hate him so much?
But I store that question away for later, there’s something else bothering me more.
“So that’s why you said what you did yesterday? You were talking like I should give him a chance, but you would say that, considering he’s your golden boy who can do no wrong,” I say, sarcasm dripping from my tongue. Right now, it’s the only weapon I have.
She laughs and looks up at the ceiling, rolling her eyes. “I can assure you he’s no golden boy. That laddie came out of his mother with the sole intention of causing trouble. I said those things yesterday because I know him, and I can tell when he’s lying. And I don’t think he’s lying about you.”
“Let’s say for the sake of argument, he’s not lying. What would you have me do? You don’t know half of the things he’s done to me. When I first met him, he hated me. Even now… you, my friend, his friend, all say he likes me. But his actions don’t say that. You don’t steal someone from their bed and chain them to a wall. That’s not normal,” I say.
It’s not normal.
In fact, it’s probably one of the most fucked up things you can do to a person. If this is how he treats me when he ‘likes’ me, what the hell is he capable of doing to someone who he despises?
He’d destroy them, that’s what.
But Alice just laughs, like he’s nothing more than a lovable little rogue. It’s mildly disturbing. “No one ever said Shaun was normal. He acts first and thinks about it second, if he ever thinks about it at all. Just like my Jim. As for what I’d do? I’d listen to him.”