Tarryn Fisher - Mud Vein

But that was then…

He runs his hand over the stubble on his jaw, and I notice the deep purple bruises on his wrists where his bindings dug into his skin. How long had he been tied up like that? How long had I been unconscious?

“We need to get warm,” Isaac says.

“I made a fire … in the room up the ladder.”

We search for the thermostat. I notice how white his knuckles are around the handle of the knife. We find it in the carousel room, behind the door. He turns on the heat.

“If there is power, we must be close to something,” I say hopefully. He shakes his head.

“Not necessarily. It could be a generator. This might not last.”

I nod, but I don’t believe him.

We climb up to the round room to sit by the fire and wait for the house to heat. He makes me go first. Once I am up, he glances over his shoulder one last time and then quickly climbs up to join me. We close the trapdoor and lock it. We try to scoot the armoire over it, but that’s bolted too. The fire I built is puttering out. There are three extra logs. I reach for one and place it on the flames while Isaac takes a look around.

“Where do you think we are?” I ask when he comes to sit on the floor next to me. He sets the knife down between us. This makes me feel better. I don’t trust anything yet. If he’s not hiding his weapons from me, that’s a good thing.

“This much snow? Who knows? We could be anywhere.”

We are nowhere, I think.

“How did you get out of your bindings?”

“What?” I don’t understand what he’s saying, then I realize that he thinks I was tied up too.

“I didn’t have any,” I say.

He turns his head to look at me. We are so close the vapors of our breath are mingling mid-air. He has dark stubble on his face. I want to rub my palm across it just so I can feel something sharp and real.

His eyes, always intense, are two dark thinking pools. He hardly ever blinks. It unnerved me in the beginning when I first met him, but after a while I grew to appreciate it. It was like he was afraid to miss something. His patients, who also noticed it, used to say they appreciated his lack of blinking in surgery.

You know Doctor Asterholder is never going to nick a vein, was the running joke in the hospital.

Why wasn’t I gagged and blindfolded, with my arms tied to the posts of my bed?

“So you could free me,” he says, reading my thoughts.

A chill runs up my spine.

“Isaac, I’m afraid.”

He shifts closer, puts an arm around my shoulders. “Me too.”

When the house is warmer and our limbs feel like they can move again, we unlock the trap door and go downstairs. We sit facing each other at the table in the kitchen. Our eyes have the glazed vacant look of two people in shock. Though I have no doubt we’d spring, quick as cats, if we needed to. I touch the handle of my knife. Both Isaac and I have set our knives on the table in front of us; the knives are pointed in a face off. He doesn’t have to say anything for me to know that there is suspicion on his face. I wear it too. We look silly; abducted and locked in a house, waiting for whoever did this to return.

“Ransom,” I say. My voice is raspy. It catches in my throat before I can say anything else. I swallow and look up at Isaac.

His eyes dart to the corners of the room. His leg is bouncing up and down, I can feel the vibrations of it in the wood. Every few minutes his eyes move to the window, then back to the door.

“Maybe…”

I catch the pause after maybe. He wants to say more, but he doesn’t trust me. And if I were to really examine my theory it would most likely fall apart. Kidnappings made for ransom were fast and messy; guns pointed at your head, urgent demands. Not keypads on the door and enough food to last through one of George R.R. Martin’s long winters. I lay my hands flat on the table, fingertips pointing inward, and rest my chin over them. My pinkie is touching the handle of my knife.

We wait.

The cabin is so eerily silent we would hear a car or person approaching from a mile away, but we keep checking anyway. Waiting … waiting. Finally, Isaac gets up. I hear him walking from room to room. I wonder if he is looking for something or if he just needs to move. I realize it’s probably the latter. He can’t sit still when he’s nervous. When he comes back in the kitchen, I break the silence.

“What if they’re not coming back?”

He doesn’t answer me for the longest time.

“There is a pantry, there—” he nods toward a narrow door to the left of the table. “It’s stocked with enough food to last for months. There is a fifty-pound bag of flour. But the wood closet only has enough wood to last a few weeks. Four at most if we ration it.”

I don’t want to think about the gargantuan bag of flour, so I pretend I didn’t hear him. The wood, however, bothers me. I’d rather not freeze to death. There are plenty of trees outside. If we could get outside, that is. We’d have wood.

“The carousel room,” he says. “Do you find it strange?” His voice is clear, precise. It’s the one he uses with his patients. I’m not one of his patients and I don’t appreciate being spoken to like one.

“Yes,” I say simply.

“The book?” His voice moves to gruff. “There was nothing in there about the carousel, was there?”

“No,” I say. “There wasn’t”

There didn’t need to be.

“Do you think this could be one of your fans? Someone obsessed?”

I don’t want to think about that, but it has already crossed my mind. I didn’t want to be the one responsible for this.

“It’s possible,” I say cautiously. “But that doesn’t explain you.”

“Have you been getting any threats, strange letters?”

“No, Isaac.”

He looks up when I say his name.

“Senna, you need to think carefully. This could make a difference.”

“I have!” I snap. “There have been no letters out of the norm, no e-mails. Nothing!”

He nods, walks to the fridge.

“What are you doing?” I ask, spinning in my seat to watch him.

“Making us something to eat.”

“I’m not hungry,” I say quickly.

“We don’t know how long we’ve been out. You need to eat and drink something or you’ll dehydrate.”

He starts taking things out of the fridge and putting them on the counter. He finds a glass, fills it with water from the faucet, and brings it to me. It’s a funny color.

I take it. How can I eat or drink at a time like this? I force the water down because he’s standing in front of me, waiting.

I stare blindly at the snow outside as he stands at the stove. The stove is gas; brand new from the looks of it.

When he comes back to the table he’s carrying two plates, each piled with scrambled eggs. The smell makes me sick. He sets it down in front of me and I pick up the fork.

Weapons, we have so many: forks, knives … you’d think if someone were coming back, they wouldn’t provide us with these things to attack them with. I voice my thoughts, and Isaac nods.

“I know.”

Of course he had already thought of this. Always two steps ahead…

“Your hair is different,” he says. “It took me a minute to recognize you … upstairs.”

I blink at him. Are we really talking about my hair? I feel self-conscious about my white streak. I make sure it’s tucked away, behind my ear.

“I grew it out.”

Put food in mouth, chew, swallow, put food in mouth, chew, swallow.

We don’t speak about my hair anymore. When I am finished eating, I announce that I need to use the restroom. I ask him to come with me. The only bathroom in the house is the one in the bedroom where I found Isaac. He waits outside the door, knife in hand. Before we leave the kitchen he upgrades to a larger one. It is almost funny, but not. Big knife, big wound. I had settled for a steak knife myself. They are easy to handle and sharp as hell.

I relieve myself and step over to the sink to wash my hands. There is a mirror hanging above it. I look at myself and flinch. My hair is limp and greasy, the inch-wide streak of grey that showed up when I was twelve is startling against my pale face. I have done everything to rid myself of it: dying it, cutting it, pulling it out strand by strand. Color won’t take to the grey. I have sat in dozens of chairs over the years and every stylist has said the same thing. “It doesn’t make sense … it won’t take the color.” No matter what I do, it always comes back like a stubborn weed. Eventually, I let it be. The old part of me won out.

I turn on the water, it sputters like the croup for several seconds before a weak brown stream comes dribbling out. I splash it over my face, drink some. It tastes funny—like rust and dirt.

When I walk out of the bathroom, Isaac hands me his butcher knife. I have to put my knife down to hold it, since my wrist is a gimp.

“Me too,” he says. “Don’t let the bad guys get us.”

I grin—I actually grin—as he closes the door. His humor always shows up at the oddest moments. I thought I was the bad guy, I didn’t think I’d ever be at the mercy of one.

When he comes out, his face has been washed, too, and his hair is damp. There is a trickle of water running from his temple.

“Now what?” I say.

“Are you tired? We could take turns. Do you want to sleep?”

“Hell no!”

He laughs. “Yeah, I get ya.”

There is a long awkward pause.

“I’d like to take a shower,” I say. What I don’t add is, in case the sick fuck touched me…

He nods. I climb up the ladder to get something clean to wear. It makes me sick, putting on clothes that someone chose and put here for me. I wish I had my own, but not even the pajamas I’m still wearing are mine. I study the contents of the wardrobe. Almost every article of clothing is something I would have chosen for myself—except for the color. There is too much of that. This is creepy. Who would know me well enough to buy me clothes? Clothes that I actually like? I pluck a long sleeve yoga top from a hanger and find the matching pants underneath it. In a drawer are a variety of panties and bras.

Oh God!

I decide to go without either. I can’t wear underwear that some sicko bought and folded into a drawer. It would feel like was touching me … there. I slam the drawer closed.

Isaac helps me down the ladder. Since my attack on the door, my wrist has swollen to twice its size.

“Keep it elevated and out of the hot water,” he says before I go into the bathroom.

I find soap and shampoo under the sink. Generic stuff. The soap is white and smells like laundry. I keep the shower to five minutes even though I want to stay longer. The brownish water never gets really hot and it has a strange smell.

I get out and dry myself with the lemon-colored towel that is hanging on the towel rack. Such a cheerful color. Such an ironic color. And so thoughtfully hung here for us. I rub at my arms and legs trying to capture all of the drops. Yellow to soften the blow of the snow and the prison and the abduction. Maybe whoever brought us here thought that the color of this towel would stave off depression. I drop it on the floor, disgusted. Then I laugh, hard and shrill.

I hear Isaac knock lightly on the door.

“You okay, Senna?”

His voice is muffled. “I’m fine,” I call out. Then I laugh so hard and loud he opens the door and lets himself in.

“I’m fine,” I say to his concerned face, trying to stifle my laughter. I catch the laughter behind my hand as tears begin to leak from my eyes. I’m laughing so hard I have to hold myself up by the sink.

“I’m fine,” I gasp. “Isn’t that the craziest thing you’ve ever heard? Like I can be fine. Are you fine?”

I see the muscles in his cheek flicker. His eye color is metallic, like a tin can.

He reaches for me, but I bat his hand away. I’ve stopped laughing.

“Don’t touch me.” I say it louder and harsher than I intended.

He tucks his lips in and nods. He gets it. I’m crazy. No new revelations there. I sit on the bed with the knife and stare at the door while he takes his turn. If someone were to walk into the room right now, I’d be useless—knife or not. I feel like my body is here, but the rest of me is down a deep hole. I can’t reconcile the two.