Silent - Part 18: No Way Out

Gavin, Saturday May 2019:

In captivity, in this damp place, drugged up from the chloroform, glimpsing around in the dark to see if there's a way of escaping. There isn't, apart from physically attacking the Angel of Mercy - and to do that, I would need free legs and arms. He's tied them.

I don't know where he's gone. I've tried calling out to Lucy in the next room, my voice tiny in this vast space. But she hasn't heard me.

Or, maybe, she's heard me but chosen not to answer.  Our relationship is complicated.  Always has been.

Jace and I should have had our meeting outside the House by now. Hopefully, he'll realise something's happened and go to get help. Amazing; I once helped him when I thought his life was in danger and now I'm relying on him to help me.

Got to get out of here!

Can't stand the dark and the damp and the dust.  That's the problem with suffering from claustrophobia, as I've done for most of my life. The imagination offers up all sorts of possibilities. The ceiling caving in, burying me. The walls crushing me, burying me in debris.  If the floor were to give way too, I would fall into blackness, panting and suffocating and struggling to claw my way out, knowing I could never escape. Worse, the monsters buried deep in my imagination would get me.  

Buried alive.  Like in the famous Rachmaninoff Prelude.  Pounding chords as the man attempts to fight his way out of a grave.  A reality, not a fantasy.  One big monster sucking me deep within the ground, eating my insides first, and then the rest of me.  Finally, my brain. I would feel everything, each sensation and pain, and lose my mind.  Go mad before dying, and that might last a while.

No way.  I have lectures at Uni on Monday, back in London.  I need to be out of here by then.  Correction, I will be out of here by then. Definitely.    

My birthday next month.  Think about that. My older brother Kieran and his mates are planning on something crazy, like getting me drunk, then dumping me in a remote spot in the middle of country. They'll leave me there for about twenty minutes, then come back and give me a choice: Birthday Beats or Birthday Bumps. That's so like Kieran. Always teasing me, calling me Little Gavin when he wants to wind me up.  He loves patting me on the head and prodding me with his finger, goading me to throw a punch, then blocking it.  

I kick at the wires again, grit my teeth from the pain. Let me go, you nutter.

Then, I hear the footsteps. The Angel of Mercy returning. He walks straight past the room.

No! Leave her alone, you freak.

Too late. He undoes the padlock to Lucy's room, and I hear him go in.