time. Once I had been down here for two weeks because I didn’t behave the way he wanted when we were out talking to his voters. The whole basement smelled from all the times I had been down here with no bathroom. There were no windows down here, and he had taken out the lights a long time ago for times like this.
My heart thundered in my chest and sweat broke out in my armpits. I hated this place. It was creepy and the days at a time that I spent down here gave me the worst nightmares. I took deep breaths to calm down. As long as I didn’t panic, I knew I could survive my time down here. I just had to stay at the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t know what else was down here, and I didn’t want to.
When this had happened in the past, I had always wished that my mom would come get me. I would wait for hours, praying that any minute she would open the door and rescue me. It never happened. That first time was the longest of my life, and when I was finally released from my prison, I saw the reason my mom never came for me. The senator had beaten her so badly that I didn’t even recognize her face. I had run to her and apologized for getting her in trouble, but she just turned away from me and refused to look at me for the rest of the week. After that, I very rarely wished for her to come get me.
I could be thrown down here for any reason. Most of the time, I wasn’t even sure what I had done. But I was always brought up in time for my bruises to heal so the senator could take me out for family photos. I always had to smile for the cameras or my next beating would be even worse. But this was his favorite form of torture.
I curled into myself and put my hands over my ears. It helped to close my eyes. That was darkness by choice. If I opened my eyes and tried to see what else was down here, I would go crazy. It was hard to not listen to every single noise that sounded down here. I could imagine all sorts of creatures waiting for me. Sometimes I thought that there was a murderer waiting down here, ready to kill me and stuff me in the walls. And no one would know. My mom wouldn’t care, and I was really sure that the senator could come up with a reason that I wasn’t around.
I passed the first hour by counting. The second hour, I started listing dinosaurs that I remembered from my dinosaur phase when I was younger, but I had forgotten a lot about them. I stayed quiet for the third hour. My head was pounding and all the thinking was only making my headache worse. By the fourth hour, I was struggling not to cry. I didn’t cry often. I had learned to hold back my emotions, especially around the senator. But here, alone in the dark, I was scared and I just wanted to go back to my room.
Days passed with no light and no food. Occasionally, a bottle of water was tossed down the stairs, but there was never any rhyme or reason as to when it happened. I was so thirsty and hungry, but I knew better than to go knock on the door and ask for something. The last time I tried that, a dead squirrel was thrown down the stairs. I never asked for anything again. The only thing I could do was wait.
The third day was always the hardest. The first, I could usually force myself to be strong and think of all the things I could do when I was old enough to get away from the senator. I didn’t have any big plans. I would work at McDonalds if it meant that I never had to see him again. The second day, hunger really set in and I started craving peanut butter sandwiches or hot dogs, anything that could fill my stomach. But I still had those hopes that when I finally got away, I could do whatever I wanted. The third day, a day like today, I didn’t even have the energy to think about food, let alone getting away from the senator. My head was still pounding and