I rest my head against the steering wheel. No. No, I am not responsible for his death. I continue to repeat this, yet, this tiny voice inside me questions what would have happened had I admitted the truth under that waterfall. Is this regret?

“That is seriously twisted logic.” Shit, he abducted me and tortured me and would have killed me in the end. I’m just exhausted. I need sleep. Or to eat. Or… I hit the dial to shut off the fucking song.

A drop of wetness hits my cheek, and I wipe at my eye. I stare at the tears on my fingertips and a tremor of fear takes hold.

I can deny what I felt on that cliff with Alex. I can refute that it wasn’t all just pretend. I can claim it was temporary lunacy. A side effect. An infection of my brain.

But I can’t lie to myself.

Whatever I experienced with him, I have to leave it behind at that waterfall.

I put the truck in Drive and swerve onto the road.

The farther I get from Alex, the farther away from these emotions I’ll be, and the more I will start to feel normal.

23. Affliction

23

Affliction

Blakely

I check news stations daily for any mention of Alex.

So far, there’s been nothing. No account of a man gone missing. Not even a press release of the fire. Which someone had to see…had to report.

I’ve combed the Internet, searching all the local sites in New York for an obituary of a John Doe. Nothing has turned up citing anyone dying in a freak fire in the middle of the wilderness.

I’ve spent the past few days in a state of staggered wonder, questioning if I was somehow gaslighted, if the whole thing had even happened at all. Did I imagine a cabin combusting into flames? Did I really spend almost a month chained in a basement, being experimented on by a mad scientist? It sounds absurd even in my head.

Which is why I haven’t said any of this out loud. To anyone.

After I escaped, I drove Alex’s truck as far as some one-stop town before it ran out of gas, then I used a tow truck driver’s phone to call Rochelle. In the middle of a highway, wearing filthy clothes, barefoot, and having zero access to money, she was the only person I could think of to call.

I explained away my circumstance as a “scheme gone wrong,” to which she laughed and gave the driver her credit card number and told him to rent me a limo.

There were no limos to rent at two o’clock in the morning in bumfuck, New York, so he very suspiciously but courteously called for a Taxi.