Carlos was not claustrophobic, but these metal walls seemed to constrict with every breath he took. There was no relief from the pressure or from Marla. He loved his wife, but being trapped with her was fraying both their nerves.

  He could not accurately account for how many days had passed. Their lives had become a blur entombed in concrete and corrugated aluminum. All of this time seemed wasted, the simple act of living was becoming a chore. This had to be what solitary confinement felt like.

  Carlos had passed shipping containers on the highway before. They seemed so large: but being stuffed inside with his wife made the space seem inhumanely cramped. Beyond these walls waited only concrete and soil. Above was something far worse, a “friend” that became a nightmare.

  It did not take the Espondas long to get a lay of their surroundings; three shipping containers connected by concrete elbows and buried deep. One container featured the bed, kitchen, and bathroom. The second housed shelves filled to the brim with shelf-stable foods, supplies, and bullets without a corresponding gun. The final trailer had a love seat, a Super Nintendo, a collection of white guy action movies, and the surveillance desk.

  He was duct taping a chef’s knife to a broom handle when she called for him. Her normally musical voice was distorted and made ugly by their tomb.

  He missed her laugh. It had been days since he had heard it after twelve years of dedicating himself to experiencing it daily. Carlos wanted so badly to hear a chuckle blossom in her throat and explode out as her thunderous guffaw. They weren’t back to that, at least not yet.

  His wider frame made traversing the elbows and the containers a little difficult. Navigating through them, he followed her call to the third trailer. She was illuminated by monitors stacked haphazardly on an ancient oak desk, highlighting the features of a face that had become foreign to a smile.

  This was all they had left. Even in grainy black and white, seeing the sun begin its descent was a little way to remember that there was something beyond this bunker.

  The camera system was ancient- six stationary units that overlooked the property. They were familiar with the orientations; one at each cardinal direction of the property, one that surveyed the driveway, and one that peered directly at the trailer above the hatch.

  The trailer camera was also the one they hated most. The image of Alvin haunted it, nothing more than a shadow in the poor resolution. Marla and Carlos had taken shifts watching this camera at first, reasoning that there must be some sort of movement from their captor- some sort of pattern that they could exploit to escape. This many days in, and still no opportunities.

  Alvin was not human any more. He apparently had no need to sleep, to eat, to shit, to do anything other than watch. Carlos put his hand on Marla’s shoulder, which she squeezed gently as she looked up to him and frowned at his makeshift spear. As well as they understood, Alvin had not moved from his post in days; assuming they didn’t miss something in the time they kept losing. While it was nothing he voiced, Carlos questioned if Alvin even blinked.

  Carlos gently guided Marla away from the monitors when the sun went to rest, he may not have known the actual hour- but he was certain that it was time for dinner. He was determined to keep them alive and to provide as much normalcy as possible. That was at least feasible, something he could control. This bunker may not have fresh food, but it had water and a couple of hot plates. Spaghetti and sauce would at least give some semblance of a homemade meal. Some time in the kitchen, sharing a meal at that stupid tiny table, was preferable to spending all of their waking hours staring at a bunch of screens waiting for an opportunity that may never come.

  Unfortunately, there was little left for them to discuss. Living only to survive drains the joy out of the heart and the spark from the mind. He tried his best, but he had about as many jokes as Marla had smiles. Worse still, pouring the sauce over the noodles triggered memories. It was a thin thread, but sometimes that is all an association takes. He remembered hauling Alvin away from the wreck, those horrible long necked creatures looming over the wreckage they made. He couldn’t fight back the image of the things chowing down on those men. He winced at the sloppy splatter of chunky sauce hitting the spaghetti.

  It sounded exactly like entrails getting sucked out of a torso.

  The red sauce reminded him of the blood pouring out of Alvin’s side before it turned this shade of purpled black. Carlos remembered the body sucking that fluid back into a gunshot wound and redistributing under Alvin’s skin like a blooming bruise. Carlos remembered the first time he saw a second pair of hands birth themselves from Alvin’s shoulders and how his ribs slid out from beneath fat and skin, becoming a profane second set of teeth that led to a maw in the gut.

  Then Carlos was sitting across the table from Marla, his breakfast half eaten. The shimmer of her barely restrained tears said all he needed to know: he had lost time again. Her grip was soft around the bruising of his wrist and forearm, an aching reminder that Alvin was less than gentle responding to their attempts to escape.

  During breakfast, they agreed to stop referring to Alvin by name; that they would only refer to him as their captor. In that same exchange, Marla brought up something that hadn’t really occurred to Carlos. It was something that he hated to imagine: that they never really were people to him.

  They were props; a redemption story arc for a man that didn’t really have an identity of his own. It was a difficult pill to swallow, but the more they discussed it; the more true it rang. At a first glance, Alvin was among the few kind residents of Sapphire Falls. Now, in hindsight, it was clear his concerns were self-serving and performative. With kindness and humanity in such short supply, both Espondas understood how they fell for the veneer of someone building a white savior narrative. They ruminated on that for a moment, until the groan of the hatch broke their silence.

  Marla snatched up the spear and was the first to move, being a bit more lithe and possessing full use of her arms. Carlos struggled behind her as they rushed to the supply container, his breath rattling in his chest. Of course their captor moved when they were away from the screens. Of course sickness was coming now.

  The captor’s long and oily arm was retracting back up when they reached the container. It was damper than last time they saw the limb, like it was sweating profusely over a fresh bruise. Blood seemed unnaturally bright against the gray talons that sprouted from the tip of each finger. It slithered back away, slamming down the hatch as it exited- only the scent of freshly spilt blood left in its wake. Their captor had left them a gift, a trio of rabbits; the last of which spasmed out the last of its life before the Espondas reached it.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  This was the second time their captor had left them fresh meat; like they were supposed to be grateful for it in this crazy person’s shit hole.

  Like this imprisonment was somehow a gift. Carlos pulled the cadavers away as Marla watched the hatch, weapon in hand. The air of defeat was heavy as they cleaned the animals and the puddle of crimson left in the wake of their deaths.

  -----

  It had been three days since the rabbits when Marla paused A Link to the Past. Carlos had been too quiet on his shift at the cameras. She felt a bubble of concern pop in her stomach. Something was very wrong, she was certain of it. Marla looked over to her husband and gasped when she beheld the way the light shone upon his vacant, sweaty features. He was asleep in the chair and breathing too rapidly- like a rabbit is the throes of a panic. Carlos shuddered in his fitful sleep as a man abandoned in the snow, but his temperature was blistering to the touch.

  Marla was beginning to panic as she searched the supply container, feeling only the most fleeting sense of relief when she located the first aid kit. She was no nurse and there was no internet to check her husband’s symptoms against; nor a phone to call for help. She did her best, force feeding Carlos water and painkillers. Concern was choking her as she watched her husband begin to slip away.

  Fuck it. This would not be how their story ended

  She would not let Carlos die here as some set piece. Their captor’s truck may have been wrecked running from the frenzied mob, but Marla knew damn well that he also had a car.

  She gripped the rudimentary spear and laid a kiss upon Carlos’ scarlet brow. Marla knew that her options had become limited. She needed to either hotwire the car and haul Carlos out, or get to the house phone in the trailer and call for help.

  Both seemed impossible tasks. She’d have to risk the phone, Carlos was too heavy to lift.

  Fear grew with each rung as she began to climb, the type that reverberates through the entire body and robs it of dexterity. Each rung seemed a new milestone; an ascent closer to freedom.

  Then she was in the kitchen of the mobile home, without sight of her captor. The small dwelling possessed a potent and oppressive smell; with notes of blood, beer, and energy drinks. There was an stickiness to the place, a tacky sheen of some purple, honey-like fluid coating the counters and the floor. The receiver of a wall mounted landline was in her hand as she fumbled out the digits 9-1-1.

  The line was busy.

  She dialed again.

  The line was busy.

  She dialed again.

  The line was busy.

  From a list of numbers posted on the wall, she dialed the direct line to the police and someone picked up. She was so consumed by relief that she cried out and wept, barely vomiting out her location through waves of terror and despair. The man on the other side of the line begged her to stay on, he said that he didn’t know where she was. The veil of relief was beginning to fall as Marla grew suspicious that she was not actually speaking with an officer or a dispatcher.

  That realization was quickly torn away with the sound of breaking glass. A terrible and monstrous grip took hold of her torso. Sharp talons dragged against her stomach, easily sliding through the cloth of her sweatshirt. An immense strength hauled her through the still falling glass, dropping her onto the dampness of the yard.

  Her captor loomed over her, a pair of taloned hands sprouting from his shoulders and dancing back and forth in the manner of puppets on strings. In his left hand he held the ruination of a doe’s throat, his skin now completely shifted to that purple black that made him seem like walking shadow that stalked the night. He had no features anymore- just the flat face of a shiny carapace .

  “Safe.” it hissed, “...stay.”

  Marla rose to her feet, tightening her grip on her ramshackle spear. She screamed back at the creature, which responded with an eldritch howl from the hollows in its stomach, a tongue rattling and rasping where the guts should be. Those terrible, overlong and dangling arms waved free of their shoulder mounts in a display intended to intimidate, the ribs gnashed with anticipation over the pit of his stomach.

  “We are not your toys!,” she cried out. “Alvin, you have to let us go!” Marla pleaded through clenched teeth as she reconfigured her grip on the shaft of the spear.

  Maybe using his name would reach him, resonate with his core self and snap him back to whatever humanity he used to have.

  The head of the thing cocked to the right, assessing her. That long tongue, dripping with purple ichor, lazily ran across those rib teeth. Drifting slowly, it brought attention to the serrations of the bone as it travelled. A cheap intimidation tactic from a little man given a modicum of power. What stood before her clearly did not understand who it was trying to make submit.

  “Just let us go.” Marla said, half pleading and half demanding.

  “No,” another hiss rose from the hollow. “Mine. My proof. Good person. Me. My gold star.”

  “Good person? My husband is dying, Alvin!”

  “I am your husband now.”

  Those tendrilous hands thrust forward, fluid in their boneless motion. Marla dove, but not quickly enough to evade the serpentine grasp. Once again they manhandled her, hauling her toward the belly maw. Marla twisted herself in the grip, driving the blade at an odd angle through the limb.

  It ruptured, deflating as it sprayed out the fluid that kept it mobile. Limp and useless, the limb flopped to the ground and began to shrivel away. Enraged, the captor howled as it lashed out. He caught her again, hauling her to the ever slickening maw. The strength of the thing redoubled as it took grip of her with the arms proper.

  It grew taller as it pulled, until the hollow was massive enough to stuff her in. Marla drove her weapon into the meat of it repeatedly, until the tongue was severed and the knife snapped free of the tape that bound it. The shaft clattered to the ground when she was finally hauled within. With a terrible and resounding clack; ribs became bars. Marla screamed her fury, beating her fists against the meat of the hollow and the flat of the ribs. Time distended, threatening to flee her again.

  She screamed against defeat. Louder and louder she screamed her rage. Blood dripping from the folds of her knuckles, she pushed and pried at the ribs; forcing them open just enough for her to scramble free.

  Something roared in response, startling her captor. There was another creature between them and the hatch, illuminated in the headlights of an approaching vehicle.

  A bear, huge and crimson. All seven of its eyes took an unearthly shine when exposed to the jaundiced light of the car bobbing up the driveway. It roared, taking up the potency of the despair and rage she cast to the still Oakvane air. It took a single step forward, lips curling back to reveal teeth of solidified flame.

  The captor backpedaled, shuddering with alien emotion. It shrieked at the bear, the remaining extra appendage snapped back and forth.

  The red-hot claws of the bear unsheathed, sizzling when they dug into the soil. The monsters rushed each other, their roars thunderous in the dead night.

  Marla lost time, moments and knowledge stolen away from her eyes. There was only her, sitting in a pool of yellow illumination, with a tired looking man kneeling next to her.

  His name was Barnaby Whistler. He had heard her call.