Her body was in terrible shape, but she had a lot of fight left in her. If Ken or Vivian got too close and dropped their guard for just a second, she'd tear their face off with her teeth. She was not going to die in this goddamn cage.

Though she was at a loss for how to avoid dying in the cage.

Swinging it hadn't worked. She'd hoped that it would eventually pop free of the ceiling, but it never happened and eventually she was too exhausted to continue. Bouncing around in the cage—not that she had much room to do so—hadn't worked either. Her captivity was not a flimsy setup.

She'd screamed for help for a while, but of course nobody came to investigate, and she was only hurting her throat.

Since screaming and swinging didn't work, that left her options to escape as...none.

Nothing unless Ken or Vivian discovered the kindness in their hearts.

Or got too close.

* * *

Vivian's car wasn't in the driveway when Ken got home. He went inside and upstairs to Jared's room. His son, not so shockingly, was staring at a video game in progress.

"Where's your mom?" Ken asked.

Jared shrugged.

"You wanna pause that and acknowledge me?"

Jared paused the game. "I said I don't know where she is."

"She didn't text you or anything?"

"She left a note on the table."

"What did it say?"

"Something like 'Went out. Be back soon.'"

"So you could have started there instead of pretending like you didn't know what I was talking about."

"You asked if I knew where she was," Jared said.

Ken decided that continuing this conversation would lead to mental illness. He was very interested in Vivian's whereabouts, so he wasn't sure if he wanted to waste time by pointing out the faint marijuana scent or not. But he didn't want Jared to think that he was oblivious. "Can you at least try to hide the pot smell, instead of assuming that I won't notice?"

"I wasn't smoking pot," said Jared. "I just say no to drugs."

"Okay, smartass, then why does your room smell like weed?"

Jared shrugged.

"Let me answer that for you. It smells like weed because you were smoking a joint in here before I got home, and then you did a bad job of getting rid of the smell because you're either lazy or figured I wouldn't give a shit."

"If I was smoking weed, how come I'm not stoned?"

"How do I know you're not stoned right now? You think you're being such a brilliant conversationalist that there's no way you could be high?"

"Ask me to count backwards or something."

Ken sighed and left the room. He'd search it later. He hated to admit such a thing about his own offspring, but Jared was probably dumb enough to leave evidence in his room even after this conversation.