Room

She awoke, barely lifting her swollen eyelids, unaware of time in this place. The cold cement numbed the right side of her body, having played spin the bottle with random parts while she slept. At the moment her entire right side was declared the winner - a kiss of tingling pain her redeeming prize. It was no seven minutes in heaven. Rolling onto her back she smiled briefly at the thought of her youth; the only memories she could squeeze from her brain, were pleasant ones, at least. She went back to them often, relishing each one, over and over, sometimes for hours at a time.

Robert Ortiz. Her mind lingered there for a moment. Her mother’s basement closet. His soft cupid’s bow lips pressed against hers, and with it, the promise to teach her to kiss. She, a fifteen-year old novice, knew one seven minute lesson from this Latino master and she would acquire a skill-set that would last a lifetime. Taking a hard gulp, she followed his lead. At first a bit out of sync, with a little correction, she finally started to get the rhythm. Lips now dancing, unexpectedly she felt his tongue begin to move inside her mouth, making her stomach ache with pleasure. He took his time, licking each lip seperat..

SHIT!

Her eyes forced opened wide by searing pain in her left ribs, leaving Robert Ortiz and her mother’s basement miles away. She lifted the tatters of her shirt to find magnificent shades of purple, yellow, and green bleeding together to form an artistic creation on the canvas of her skin. She knew she must find beauty in the small and even brutal things, now. If she wanted to survive. Her breath was shallow from either pain or the lack of oxygen in this place.

She tried to retrace the steps of what happened the night before, how she got to this moment. Her earliest memory was when she was four years old and had snuck out in the middle of the night, plopping all of her stuffed animals on the tailgate of her parent’s station wagon. And with popcorn and soda in hand and her whole entourage of soft playmates, she pretended to watch a drive-in movie. She remembered little league games and dance recitals. The time she broke her wrist doing a back flip off the trampoline in sixth grade. She could picture the exact red dress she wore for senior prom and the speech she made at graduation. She knew every family member’s name and birthdate. But thinking of them now only brought tears to her eyes.

She looked to her left desperately seeking a source of light, her only connection to the outside world. There, far above her head, was a tiny crack that proved she was not in one constant state of being, that there was still such a thing as time, such a concept as night and day. She bathed in that pinhole of sunlight for as long as she could.

Then she heard it. A tiny scritch-scratch, as if two pieces of fabric were being brushed across one another. Aware that this was most likely a figment of her imagination, she held completely still, praying for another sound to fill that void of indeterminable silence she had been enduring.

Scritch-scratch. There it was again. She intrinsically turned her swollen eyes toward the noise, finally able to make out a form. Why hadn’t she seen it before?

...to be continued