Escape Plan

"How did we get here?"

He asks the question rhetorically, and she watches his face carefully. She's grown accustomed to his monologues, but she's never sure if he's seriously asking until she looks at him.

Her eyes dart from him to her fingernails. They've been freshly painted, but she looks for chips and waits for him to continue.

"It seems like only yesterday." He looks down at her and she catches his eye. She grins convincingly, and he leans down to place a hand on her head.

She ignores that it feels so very like when she used to scratch her dog.

"Do you need anything from the store, love?" His voice is soft, but she knows the kindness is only temporary. She is one missed que, one wrong word away from wrath.

Sometimes wrath pays a visit anyway.

"Could you bring me some peanut M & Ms?" She lays on a little charm, but not too thick. Puppy-dogs her eyes but doesn't bat her lashes. Lips set in just the right amount of pout.

"You've never asked for candy before! Certainly. Anything for my best girl."

She's reminded of that dog again, but she pretends to laugh good naturedly. "Thank you," she purrs.

He sighs. "It seems like yesterday when you hid in my little corner shop."

She nods. It was seven hundred and thirty two days ago, you fuck, she thinks, but can never say. "I love you," is a lie that slips past her lips so often that it leaves her mouth feeling oily.

"Be back soon." He leaves, and she sighs when the padlock clicks against the steel door. While not gilded, the cage is comfortable enough.

Buried twenty feet below the man's Brooklyn bodega, she remembers the night she dodged the cops and became a fly stuck in a far worse web. He let her into the store room, gave her a slushy, and she woke up a literal kept woman.

Her escape is imminent, though. For years, she'd studied him. Learned what made him angry, what made him happy. She feigned hope and good cheer, even though both had withered on the vine and rotted away long ago.

What he didn't know was that she nearly died in the sixth grade when she was at a slumber party. The host never considered severe allergies when she served peanut-butter chocolate chip cookies to the kid who didn't pay attention before taking a bite.

She'd never asked him for candy before, and she felt lucky to know she would never need to ask again.