the dice

Nel was a good girl. She enjoyed the simple things like a good book or movie. She liked school. She was smart, funny and popular. She enjoyed every subject in school accept Irish. The teacher was a bitch. She was always picking on her and asking her questions she just didn’t have an answer to. No matter how much she tried she just couldn’t grasp the language. On a Wednesday she had double Irish after lunch. There was a test planned and she had a headache so she decided to skip the afternoon. She passed the tree house she had her first kiss in en route and as she was walking back to school after a bacon sandwich with a couple of friends from her road she just threw her hands in the air and went to climb the ladder. Her friends asked her if she was ok and she asked them to just let her know when they were on the way home. She took two paracetamol and took out her math’s book to try and get a head start on her homework. She dosed off after reading about the Pythagoras theorem.

She woke to someone putting their hand over her mouth. She screamed but no one heard her. She then felt a sharp pinch in her neck and felt herself starting to float. It was a weird sensation. She heard a man’s voice but
couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then just white.

When she woke she found herself in the dark, naked with her arms tied up above her head by her wrists to a ring that was attached to a slimy damp wall of concrete. It took her a few minutes for her eyes to adjust. There was a dull light swinging like a pendulum in front of her. She could make out the shadow of a man.  ‘Glad to find you awake my dear’ said the man in a deep creepy excited voice. She heard the crack of what turned out to be a whip and felt a burning sharp pain envelope the top half of her body. She noticed a metallic smell which she associated with blood. She tried to scream but no one came. ‘Scream all you want to baby, no one will hear you here’ said the man and she felt the piercing crack again. She blacked out with the pain.

When she woke she was no longer attached to the ring on the wall. She was on the ground. She was shackled by both her wrists and ankles to a metal ring on the ground and was still naked. She looked around the concrete floor and heard the drip of what she could only guess was water dripping from a leaky pipe. Her only light source was a flickering bulb in the roof of the center of the room. The opposite corner caught her eye. She couldn’t quite make it out but she was convinced she could see a human skeleton shackled to a ring in the wall like the one she was tied to. She vomited and screamed for help once more.

‘Would you ever shut the fuck up!’ said a deep booming voice from what she could only describe as an intercom ‘you are driving me mad’. She couldn’t quite pinpoint where the speaker was. She scanned the room seeking the monster. ‘No no no!’ said the voice in a playful tone. ‘You won’t find me there. I am in a comfortable armchair, not in the dark damp dungeon with you and Mr. Skeleton.’ ‘Who are you you sick bastard?’ she asked. ‘I think I’ll call you penny.’ ‘My name is nel!’ she shouted. ‘Find a penny pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck’, he recited in a playful tone three times. ‘Hang on! I’m coming down! I want to play!’ nel couldn’t help but vomit in apprehension.

Nel’s heart skipped a beat when she heard the keys turn in the padlock of the door that was the only thing keeping her from freedom. In walked a very wiry bald man with glasses and a limp. He had a bucket in his hand. He had a crooked smile and a sort of shyness about him. Nel was a big girl and was pondering how this wimp like him got her out of the tree house in the first place. ‘You’re even more beautiful than your picture’ he said in a predatory tone that was in no way the same voice from the intercom. He sneered. That comment made her think he had an accomplis.

He put the bucket on the ground beside the door and hung the key on a hook imbedded in the door frame. He took a stool from the corner that nel hadn’t previously seen. He placed it in the center of the room. He came towards her and as she recoiled he placed the bucket beside her and said ‘here you go pet’ in a gentle and caring tone. He took a small brown paper package out of the bucket before he sat down in front of her. She sat up and placed her knees up to her chest trying give herself some sort of dignity. ‘So pretty,’ he said softly. ‘We have gotten a good one this time George!’ he shouted at the door. ‘So so pretty’. He was talking softly under his breath but they were words she could not hear.

‘You must be hungry my angel’ he presumed. She did not answer. He opened the package and opened it. Inside was a sandwich. He slid it on the floor to nel. It was what looked like a ham sandwich. Nel was starving. She didn’t know how long she had been there but boy was she hungry. By the vibes coming from her captor she felt it would have done more harm than good eating it so she threw it back to him. ‘Now, was there any real need for that?’ he asked inquisitively. ‘I'd rather die than eat anything you give me’ she exclaimed. ‘Fine’ he said calmingly. ‘I’ll just put it beside the bucket in case you change your mind’.

‘Now’ he said with excitement. He put his hand in his right pocket and took out a dice. ‘Let’s see what we’ll do next. A one will be sex, two a beating, three the whip, four cut, five burned and six a free pass. Do you understand the rules?’ She nodded petrified. ‘Right, here we go,’ he bent over and threw the dice gently onto the concrete in front of him. He threw a one. ‘Just the number I was hoping for!’ he smiled.

He proceeded by taking off his pants. He was aroused. She was so scared she couldn’t make a sound. He came at her. She tried to get away from him but to no avail. He grabbed her and hit her because she was squirming too much. He then thrust himself into her. She could do nothing but scream. When it was over he smiled at her. ‘That was great!’ he exclaimed. ‘Ill let you rest now. I’ll be back later so we can roll the dice again.’ He fixed his pants and as he was walking through the exit he winked at her. Once the lock clicked she cried uncontrollably and vomited a few times into the bucket beside her. She felt so alone and dirty.

The dice was rolled whenever her bucket needed changing, for what seemed like forever. No matter what she never stopped fighting back and resisting. The day she was to give in was the day she was another skeleton in
the room. She clung onto the premise that there was someone looking for her. Yes her parents were separated and her brother lived in Paris but all she could do was to keep positive and hang onto the fact that her guardian angel max was looking after her. Max was her dog in a previous life.

Her inkling of there being more than one captor was true. The body of the deep booming voice came in on one occasion. He was tall and very muscular. He looked like a body builder. He introduced himself as he put the key on the hook on the wall. ‘Hi penny, I’m George’. He said it in such a way that it led nel to wonder whether he had all his faculties. ‘Don’t worry penny, I have no dice’ he exclaimed showing her his hands after changing the bucket. ‘Don’t mind Lenny, he can be frightening.’ ‘Yeah’ answered nel shyly wondering what he was going to do to her. ‘He’s asleep and I thought you might like to play cards.’ He took out a deck of cards with the batman insignia on them and the key to the shackles. ‘Don’t tell Lenny I’m taking these off you. He would be very mad at me’.

George always treated nel with respect. He was the one who gave her some of her possessions, one of which was a tiny photo album of her angel max. He was only allowed into nel when Lenny was either asleep or away from the reservation. Lenny was under the impression George was always rolling the dice when he went into entered the enclosure and that was the only reason he put up with nel getting some of her possessions back – because he saw them as a reward.

It was George who noticed that one of the cuts on Nel's leg was severely infected. He was a paramedic in his previous life and cleaned out and dressed the wound four times a day every day and gave her some penicillin. Each time he found a new cut he stitched it and applied antiseptic. He knew Lenny used the same knife to cut nel as he did to gut fish.

One afternoon George was in with nel because Lenny was off the reservation hunting. Lenny got home early and wanted to see what nel and George were doing. Still with his shot gun in his hand he entered the enclosure. He found George playing with nel rather than punishing her and he hit the roof. ‘For god’s sake George I give you one task.’ George kept saying ‘I’m sorry Lenny, I’m so sorry’. ‘Shut up’ Lenny snapped. He started to walk over to George arming his gun as he walked. ‘Please Lenny, I swear I was just preserving her for you’. Lenny pointed the gun at George’s head and in a very soft tone said ‘your job is to make her life miserable not easier. I mean I’ve turned a blind eye over the possessions but this’, he points to the cards on the concrete floor. George was silent. ‘I truly hope you at least rolled the dice?’ George’s eyes were pointed at the floor from guilt. ‘I see! Your body language says it all’. Lenny pulled the trigger.

Nel jumped out of her skin as the splattering of George’s grey matter covered her from top to toe. She got up slowly as Lenny proceeded to  point the shot gun at nel. ‘No shackles I see! Foolish bastard!’ he said in a very calm and collected tone. He pulled the trigger but nothing happened. Lenny had a puzzled look on his face. Nel’s eyes drifted to the bucket. Lenny's followed them. They both made a dash for it but nel being nearer reached it first and swung it to no avail. Lenny took out his knife. Nel used the bucket as a shield. She was swinging it as vigorously as she could. Lenny was ducking and diving and swinging his knife. Nel gave one great swing which knocked the knife out of Lenny's hand. It landed near Nel’s right foot. She picked it up. ‘Come on now darling, put the knife down. We don’t want to do anything too drastic!’ he pleaded. ‘You raped and beat and cut me, and you expect me to leave you alone?’ she said with an authoritative voice.

Lenny’s eyes followed Nel’s. She was looking at the open door. He looked at her and her him before she ran. She was much faster than Lenny and made it to the door first. He dove and grabbed her leg. She shook him off and planted her foot into his face hearing his nose break under the weight it. He screamed like a girl as the blood gushed out of his nose. She passed the threshold and dropped the bucket to close the door. She fidgeted around with the outside lock for a few seconds before hearing the click of freedom.

She ran barefoot over gravel towards the light of the house of Lenny and George. She reached the van and saw the keys were present and sighed with relief. She didn’t know how to drive but she sure as hell wasn’t going to give up the opportunity to try. She sped down a bumpy dirt track as fast as she could. The track morphed into a road which was when she realized she was doing it, she was actually breaking free.

After driving for what seemed like hours she found a petrol station. She screeched to a halt and ran into it screaming. The cashier didn’t know what was happening. He saw she was almost naked and bleeding so he quickly came from the till over to her. She grabbed hold of him and looked into his eyes sobbing and said ‘help’ before blacking out.

She opened her eyes and saw a white ceiling when she woke. Her lips were dry. She felt someone’s hand in hers. She heard whispers saying ‘she’s awake, she’s awake!’ She looked around and saw her parents and her brother smiling at her. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She smiled. Her mom said ‘here love,’ shoving a straw into her mouth. She drank it and enjoyed the ice cold water. She gulped it down and thoroughly enjoyed it. ‘Thanks mom’ nel said with the biggest grin she could muster.

About an hour went by when there was sharp knock on the hospital door. It was the garda. Nel told them everything, she told the whole story. When they went to get Lenny to punish him they found a corpse. He had had another few bullets in his pocket and he had killed himself. When the word got back tonel she was told that they had found two dead bodies and that the case was  closed. She had survived two severely sick individuals and she started crying with joy. The idea of Lenny being alive had made her sick but when she heard the words suicide she was free again. Free to create a new life for herself.