Control Ch. 04

Jesus fucking Christ!

In the light the box is smaller than it looked on the net. Flat-black paint, rectangular, completely sealed. Like a trunk. A clear tube comes out the middle of one end and nestles on the floor. There's a latch, but no lock, just a dirty bolt pushed through the hasp. Geoffrey pulls it out and opens the top, which is heavy, filled with insulation and lined with cloth. It opens with a squeak, and as he swings it up and back there's a powerful stench of urine.

And there's Anne.

She's hunched far down inside. In the belly of the belly of the beast. For a moment Geoff doesn't know what to do. He just stares at her.

She is exactly as in the video, closed in on all sides by Styrofoam, her head far down in the stock, encased in a vinyl mask, and she must still have the ear and nose plugs. Her arms are secured with handcuffs. She's tiny, hardly child sized, so much smaller than he remembers, with bones that push outwards against her skin. There's a recurrent raspy sound where the tube from the floor ends at her mouth.

She surely feels the movement of the box and the cool air. She has felt nothing at all, for how long? She undulates and the sweat of her back, which had pooled in the hollow places, runs down her sides.

Geoffrey touches her. Her spine feels sharp under the thinnest skin he can imagine. God. Annie. He touches her again. He wants to keep touching her but he has work to do. He loosens the nut and lifts the top half of the stock from her neck. He takes the straps off her ankles. She begins to move her head back and forth a little and make little, whining noises. Geoff gets excited. When he bends to lift her out of the box, the breathing tube pulls out of her gag.

Damn, she's light!

Geoffrey sits Anne on the floor and holds her up while he tries to unfasten her. She sits with legs splayed, head falling backwards, making a whistling sound through the rubber ball.

The gag is easy. It comes away slimy. The mask adheres to her skin and makes a tearing sound as it comes off. Anne's flesh is damp under it. The hair under the mask is plastered to her head. She seems blind. The nose and ear plugs aren't any problem. They pull right out. She's trying to move her legs, to stretch them, and to move her head. She's making those mewling sounds. Her eyes seem to focus but she doesn't understand at first. Something is wrong. Something is different. Then she knows who he is.

"Geoffy! Geoffy!" She looks like she's yelling but he can hardly hear her. "Geoffy!"

She doesn't have enough wind to push her words or even to make sentences.

"Geoffy!" She doesn't believe it. She looks around for her husband and tries a sentence. "I'm sorry. Geoffy. I'm. Sorry. Help. Me. I'm sorry. Please. I tried to be. Be good. Geoffy. But I. Couldn't." She looks all around the room again. She's shivering. "Geoffy!"

"It'll be okay, Anne. I'm here."

"Geoffy!"

He carries her out to the main basement area, Anne shaking harder, her head on his shoulder, whimpering more. He can't believe her lightness. She doesn't weigh anything. She almost floats in his arms. Every few seconds she wheezes his name.

The desk has dozens of keys, the very first one of which fits the cuffs. He removes them and Anne's arms fall straight down to her sides. It's like they're attached only by skin. She is utterly flaccid, and passive, but she keeps saying, "Geoffy!" She really can't believe he's here. She doesn't understand anything.

The corset straps are a problem. They're much too tight to unfasten so Geoffrey lays Anne on the concrete and rummages through his tools for a box cutter, slices through them, and peels the corset off. There's another tearing sound. It leaves behind a brown scum of old sweat and dead skin. Anne begins to get air in a series of gasping, phlegm-clotted wheezes. She coughs, breathes, coughs, breathes some more. It's some time before she can control the coughing, and she wheezes the whole time. Her breath is foul. There's a rattling when she inhales.

Get going, Geoff. Up the stairs. It's like carrying an eight year old. Geoffrey looks upward but he keeps seeing the box, below in the closet, holding Anne down in the darkness. Concrete. Nothingness. Anne.

9-1-1. Come on! Come on! Geoff has to lay Anne on a couch to call, and she says something that sounds like she's becoming aware.

"No Geoffy. No police. Please. No police. He'll be mad!"

He leans down and puts a hand to her cheek. She is cold now, still damp. Her small breasts are absurdly well defined, there being no fat to soften them.

"It's okay, Annie. We need them. I'll be with you the whole time, okay?" Anne tries to use her hands. She inches her arms along, takes one of his hands with both of hers, and pulls it to her face. "Geoffy, Geoffy. He'll punish me. For being bad." She coughs some more while he talks to the EMS operator. Her cough is ragged and coarse. Then,

"Where are your clothes?"

"Clothes? I..." She looks at him blankly. "Geoffy."

"I'll go look."

"No!" She grabs his hand. Where did she get that strength? "Don't leave, Geoffy! He'll punish me! Tell him I tried! Tell him!" She starts coughing again and it looks like she's crying, but there aren't any tears. The coughing seems to hurt her. She holds on to Geoffrey's hand and coughs and tries to say "No!" through the coughs, and finally Geoffrey holds her to him and caresses her damp hair.

"Okay. Okay, Annie. I won't leave you. I promise."

"He'll punish me!"

"No he won't Anne. Never again. He'll never hurt you again."

"But he will!"

Geoffrey looks her in the face for a minute, patting her hair. "Anne, he can't hurt you anymore because I'm here."

"He will." But there is uncertainty in her voice.

"Listen to me, Anne. Listen." He kisses her forehead. "If he ever comes back I will kill him. I will. I will kill him. He can never come back, ever again." Geoffrey says this in as calm and matter-of-fact a voice as he can manage, and Anne stares up at him as though she can't comprehend what he means, but she becomes calmer.

He carries her back to the bedroom. It isn't any trouble, though he catches himself staring at her body. Her clothes are where they've probably been for months, in her closet and dresser as in any middle-class bedroom, your private, safe place. He dresses her in a little short-sleeved blouse, panties, and slacks. The slacks won't stay up, so he uses a safety pin at the waist to make them fit. Then he carries her to the kitchen.

* * * * *

That's where the police find them, in the kitchen. Anne is curled on Geoffrey's lap, her head on his shoulder, looking like a sick child, and he is giving her sips of water from a glass. Shreds of bread and an open tuna can show that he has fed her a little.

A paramedic tries to take Anne to a gurney. "No, no, no, no, no! Geoffy! Geoffy!" They can't get her to let go of him.

"Come on, son," says an older cop. "We need to ask you some questions." But the result is the same. Geoffrey strokes Anne's hair and kisses her face. "There, there, Annie. I'm here." She is shivering again. Finally he looks apologetically at the cop.

"I'm sorry, officer. I can't go anywhere as long as she's like this. Can you interview me here?" So they do. "Send someone down to the basement. Look at the set-up where he tortured her. And look at the box he kept her in."

One paramedic examines Anne while the other begins a glucose drip. As long as she can hold some part of Geoffrey she cooperates.

When the police come back up, their attitude has changed completely. They call for criminalists to catalogue the basement, and they arrange for an arrest order for Victor. The older cop asks if Anne really had been kept in that box, but Geoffrey isn't paying much attention anymore. He holds Anne and tries to answer questions, but he keeps finding himself waking with his head leaning on hers.

More strange people come and go, more all the time. Every time Geoffrey raises his head off Anne's there are new people. He wants to be helpful but he can't keep himself awake. At some point a pack of reporters gathers just outside the crime scene tape, to film everything and shout questions. Later the paramedics wake Geoffrey enough to have him help get Anne onto a gurney, and he holds both her hands and leans over her to calm her and shield her from the reporters, while someone else guides them past the press and into the EMS van. He will never know how his car gets to the hospital. All he knows is that she holds him the whole way. She burrows her face into his chest, right up by his underarm, and he keeps his face against her cheek and whispers to her, when he isn't nodding off, about how everything is going to be fine now, and he is shocked at himself to find he is happier than he can remember ever having been.

End of Chapter Four.