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When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see. His head throbbed. His brain was set to burst. He couldn't tell if it was hot or cold, but the floor was hard and he couldn’t move his hands or his legs. His head hurthurthurthurt. It took him a long time to pass out.
His head still hurt when he woke up the second time. He still couldn't see much but that was because it was dark in the room and not because of the pain. He had a headache. His hands were taped together and stuck under his body and he had just enough energy to roll onto his side. The migraine was a promise on the horizon.
He couldn't tell where he was. The room felt small but with enough space to move around. He didn't test it out. He tried to speak but his throat was too dry and all he managed was a scratchy croak that drifted off, fading slowly.
The last thing he remembered was getting into the car at the graveyard. Speed dialing his phone. The abandoned building. Polly tied up in a pool of gasoline. Fire and flames. Screams. Then nothing.
He wondered what was going to happen to him.
Light, two pills, and a glass of water with a straw greeted him when he woke up the third time. Tylenol gel caps. He stared at them then, fuck it, rolled enough to get them in his mouth and sucked down the water.
“Feeling better?” He jerked, arms catching when they couldn’t pull apart. He knew that voice. He hated that voice.
“Go to Hell, you fuck.”
He was helpless and he could hear Griffin coming closer, footsteps soft on the floor. It was cold.
He shuddered when hands caught his own, holding them still while Griffin pulled off the tape - pulled off his skin - and replaced it with hand cuffs, probably Joel’s own.
When he untaped his feet Joel tried to kick out, but Griffin dodged easily, expecting it.
“Whoa, there,” said Griffin. “I’m just trying to make you more comfortable. Don't you want to be comfortable?”
Joel struggled till he was sitting upright and looked him right in the eye. “No.”
Griffin was smirking at him but Joel didn't break his stare, teeth grinding with more anger than fear. He wasn’t going to let the bastard win.
The smirk fell away.
Griffin smoothly rose from his crouch without checking for balance. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” he said, but then he left, hitting the light on the way out.
He brought food the next day, and a fresh bucket. “Phew! You sure know how to clear a room,” said Griffin, arm and head going in opposite directions. “I haven’t smelt anything this bad since I killed that Mexican girl and she crapped all over my shoes,” he laughed. Joel looked away. She’d been seventeen and missing two days before it was reported. “You remember her, right?”
“Let me go.”
“Don't worry.” The corners of Griffin's mouth twisted upward, like he was sharing a secret. “I’m the only one who knows where you are. They're looking though. It’s all over the news. Nice to be appreciated, isn't it?”
“You’ll never get away with this,” said Joel, pinning him with his stare again, but Griffin only laughed.
“Joel, Joel, Joel. The closest they've ever come to catching me was because of you.” He smiled again, delight shining in his eyes. “And you know where I am.”
Joel couldn't figure out Griffin’s game. He knew he was part of the ritual, but kidnapping him made no sense. It broke the pattern, it broke the ritual. Griffin had fixated on him but he wanted Joel's acknowledgement of him, of his murders. Victimizing him took him out of the role of validator.
The obsession had crossed into something else but what exactly it meant, he couldn’t figure out. Griffin hadn't threatened him, hadn’t tried to scare him, hadn’t touched him beyond releasing his bonds. He brought bad Vietnamese food and then a meal each from the other restaurants on the block.
“Now this place,” he said as he set the Styrofoam container near enough for Joel to reach if he stretched. “This place is good. No MSG, no questionable meat, and I got them to use the low sodium soy sauce.”
Joel caught the plastic fork Griffin tossed him.
“And look,” Griffin reached into the takeout bag again with a grin. “Fortune Cookies!”
When Joel cracked his open it read: You can open doors with your charm and patience. Looking over at the heavy metal door, somehow, he doubted it.
Joel’s room was fifteen by twenty feet, approximately. It took him three paces to get from the door (iron with sixty-eight brackets on each of two seems that stretched top to bottom and thirty-four on each of two seems across for a total of two hundred brackets) to his cot (army surplus and uncomfortable as hell but better than the floor which left him with a crick in his neck and a back ache. Honestly, the back ache hadn’t gone away with the cot, but at least he was warmer.)
It took him four paces to traverse the length. The ceiling was plastered, smoothed with a teethed tool in fifty three and two-thirds circles. Rounded after combining the partials. There was a stain that looked like a sheep directly over his cot and another that looked like a dolphin two feet directly to the left of the bucket.
There were no cracks to pry loose, the vent was too small to slip through, and he didn’t have shoelaces, a stick of gum, or charm to get him out of this one.
The handcuffs clasped only around his left wrist now and his right ankle was chained to the wall. The weakest link was still pretty damn strong.
He’d tried fighting Griffin the day after he woke up with his new restraints. Griffin didn't feed him for three days. Joel tried to hunger strike after that but then Griffin had come in with a bowl of yogurt and granola and told Joel about the manhunt that was still going on though he was no longer on the news and he couldn't do it.
He didn't know how long he’d been a prisoner. He controlled the light now, but he didn’t know when it was day. He wasn’t sure if Griffin came once a day or twice.
He refused to speak to him so he couldn't ask. He doubted he'd get a truthful answer anyway. Griffin had come seven times. That he knew of. He scraped it onto the wall with the edge of the handcuffs, perfect marks all exactly the same height.
“What does this accomplish? Kidnapping me?” he demanded when Griffin opened the door. His sudden words caught him off guard; Griffin stopped short, face blank, processing.
“The building was burning down,” he said after a moment. It was like watching time start again. Griffin came in like usual, a bag of takeout, a gallon jug of water, and a new bucket of kitty litter to swap out with the one in the corner. Joel could move and fight him if he wanted, but suddenly he didn’t have the energy. He was pretty sure these were once a day visits because he spent most of the rest of the time hungry.
“Because you set it on fire.”
“I set Polly on fire,” said Griffin. He set the water and food on the cot and went to take care of the bucket. “Then it got out of hand and your shoes were covered in gas.”
Joel blinked, disbelieving. “This is about saving me from the fire?”
Griffin glanced up and shrugged. “Didn’t exactly think it through.”
Abruptly, Joel snapped his mouth shut but he didn’t stop watching as Griffin took the old bucket and put it in the hall before returning and tossing him a plastic fork. As usual, he sat on the floor opposite Joel. As usual, he began separating the piles of food that had mingled together in transit. Routine. Ritual. Griffin always knew every pattern, had a plan for every victim. But not for him.
Psychologically, Joel knew he was in trouble. Man wasn’t meant to exist alone. He knew the literature. Deprivation of contact led to paranoia, hallucinations, loss of cohesive thought (Cohesive: c-o-h-e-s-i-v-e). Worse, he'd seen Murder in the First and now more than ever he understood Henri's need to relive every baseball game he’d ever heard on the radio (Baseball: b-a-s-e-b-a-l-l) with an agonizing need to fill the minutes that he passed alone with nothing to do except think.
Joel thought about the Hollis and Ibby looking for him. Procedures, search grids, the rapid decline of hope that they’d find him with each passing hour. He wondered where he was. He wondered how long it took before they had to stop wasting resources and give up. He wondered if this was how the Lost Boys felt when Peter left.
Griffin came once a day, or twice, and Joel started to look forward to his visits, if only to break the boredom.
“What’s your real name?” he asked on visit eighteen. (Eighteen: e-i-g-h-t-e-e-n).
“David,” said Griffin easily.
“No last name?”
“That part of me's dead.”
“How?” Joel could guess. Same old sob story. Depressing every time, no matter the melodramatics.
Griffin went about his ritual of taking care of Joel without answering at first, but his shoulders were stiff and he didn’t look at him until there was nothing else to do.
“They said I was nothing when I wasn’t. They said God would love me if I changed and then they locked me away with silence. I screamed at them and they didn’t care. I was always screaming.” His eyes fell away, dark and unreadable, but then he smiled faintly and looked up again. “They wouldn’t listen till I made them, and then I wasn’t one of them anymore.”
“So you started murdering young lonely women to make us listen, too?”
“Make you listen to them.”
“Make us pay attention to you.”
“You need me, Joel. Remember what Polly said?”
Griffin crossed the two steps between them with his plastic fork, their fingers brushing when he handed it over. Joel jerked back as if burned. Griffin smirked and didn’t move back out of his space. Instead he leaned closer, his breath brushing Joel’s cheek. “If a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear, does it make a sound?”
Joel was conscious of his breath, in, out, in, caught between Griffin and his cot. “Yes.”
“But no one would notice,” said Griffin. “It’s just another log left to rot and the next hiker wouldn't know if it’d been there for five days or fifty. But if it’s cut down with piano wire, then the hiker knows something’s not right in the forest. Notices the tree, what kind, how old, where it is.”
“The tree’s still dead.”
Griffin stepped back and the air seemed to rush into the space he’d occupied all at once. “The tree was doomed anyway. Don’t forget to eat your vegetables.” He sat in his usual spot and separated his food where it had run together in the carton. “So Joel, were you named after anyone?”
“My great grandfather,” Joel said before he thought about it. The sound of his own voice was soft to his own ears but it was better than listening to Griffin.
He still had migraines, two so far, but the first one he had that overlapped with Griffin's visit didn’t happen till visit twenty-eight. Joel didn't hear the door open. Caught in the midst of agony behind his eyes, he wasn't paying attention to anything except the pounding pain that he knew was only going to get worse and worse before it got better. He didn’t have any medication for them now, he simply had to grit his teeth and pray for something to end.
So he didn't hear the door open or see Griffin stop short at the door in surprise. He flinched hard, however, when Griffin put a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey.” The whisper that close scraped against his brain, and Joel clenched his eyes even tighter shut. Griffin didn't go away, though; he started rubbing Joel’s back, smooth even strokes from base to nape, a point of contact that gave him something else to focus on than the pain. The pain didn't go away. It didn’t lessen, but getting through it was easier.
Joel didn’t know how long it lasted. It felt like days, a lifetime, but when it did he was exhausted. Griffin’s hand was still soothing his back in a rhythm that matched his breathing. Joel was too tired to push him away.
When he woke, he was warm. The weight of an extra blanket was comfortable above him but when he realized his head was pillowed on Griffin’s lap, the man leaning against the wall behind him and running his hand lightly up and down his side, Joel stiffened. The hand stopped. Squeezed gently on his waist.
“Feeling better?” Griffin asked softly.
“Why don't you kill me?” Joel asked, voice as devoid of feeling as he was.
The hand started moving again, and against his will, Joel started to relax.
“Go to sleep,” said Griffin.
On his next visit, Griffin brought a little orange bottle with him that didn’t have Joel’s name on it, but it might as well have. It only had one pill in it: vicodin. “For next time.”
Joel stared at him. “Why don’t you kill me?” he asked again. He was tired of this game. He wanted it to end. (End: e-n-d. Period.)
“Because you're not my type,” Griffin grinned at his own joke and handed him his food. He started talking once he was settled, telling Joel about the girl at the park who spent an hour feeding the pigeons in the morning before work and an hour in the evenings before going home to an empty apartment. “She doesn't get phone calls. Doesn't have any pictures except a calendar of birds. No friends from work. Just watches movies every night.”
“You should leave her alone,” said Joel. He should feel sick or angry or something other than grateful for the conversation.
“She needs to be noticed or she’ll die forgotten.”
“If you kill her, you’ll take away her chance to be noticed by someone.”
“Only the pigeons notice her,” Griffin scoffed. “And she’s not going to change her ways. She’s set. In stone. She doesn't like herself enough to try.”
“And you want to be in the paper again.”
“I want someone to care.”
Joel finished his egg roll. Swallowed. “About you or the girl?”
“Oh, they care about me,” said Griffin with a dangerous little grin.
“That why you keep me alive? Because you think I care about you?”
“Don't you?”
“No.”
Griffin’s grin flickered and his jaw clenched but he pasted the smile back on. “I’m hurt.”
Joel shrugged and focused on his food. He didn't look up when Griffin spoke again, responded with a distracted “hmm?” just to piss him off.
Griffin left angry, and Joel felt like laughing.
Griffin didn't come back. Didn't come back. Joel was pretty sure he’d missed his next visit but he didn't have a watch to check. Didn’t have a watch. He was hungry and he was starting to feel the passage of time like it was molasses. He tried counting seconds, losing count twice. He wasn't sure if he made it through the two-sixties either time. Wasn't sure.
He flipped the light on. He flipped the light off. He flipped the light on.
He played Six degrees of Kevin Bacon but only got as far as Christian Slater before he had to stop. Had to stop before he twitched himself into a wall.
He couldn’t sleep. He was too hungry. He couldn’t think. He wondered if this was how he was finally going to die, starvation and thirst, though water appeared after he fell into a light doze. The room smelled like kitty litter. He thought of his hunger strike and was pretty sure he could go through with it this time.
He saw Polly. He didn't know what time it was but he imagined the clock on her wall, but it was broken, the second hand twitching back and forth on the two. Twitching.
Food appeared once. Joel didn't remember the door opening. He must have fallen asleep again but he didn't remember that either. It was takeout from his Vietnamese restaurant. Joel forgot about his hunger strike and ate. He didn't know how many days it had been, but he fell on the food like a starving man he was.
He threw most of it up.
He tried to count seconds but got lost in the one-sixties. He didn't have a watch.
He screamed at the door. He yelled at Griffin, the fuck, to come face him. To go ahead and kill him like a man. Like the murderer he was. “Bring on your piano wire!”
He tried to count seconds but his voice was wrecked from screaming. It hurt to talk, but he tried anyway because his own voice was all he had.
All he had.
When Griffin showed up again, Joel thought he was hallucinating. “You fuck,” he said quietly, by reflex.
“Did you miss me?” said Griffin with a stupid grin. It was the smell of the food in the bag that clued Joel in. He never hallucinated the smell of food.
He was too weak to stand but he stood anyway with the help of the wall. “You fuck! You fucking fuck!”
“Aww. You did,” said Griffin. He set Joel’s dinner on the cot and took the fresh bucket to the corner. Took away the old one that even the kitty litter couldn’t help anymore.
“You fuck. I’ll kill you,” said Joel, his abused voice cracking. He didn't know how long it had been. He didn't have a watch. The rage that had been bubbling for the last however long was itching to burst free. He steadied himself on the wall and picked up the takeout carton. The throw was weak, but his aim was still true, splattering crappy chinese all over Griffin's boots. In the pause that followed, he swung, but he was too far away, vision blurry, and away from the wall, he stumbled, landing against Griffin instead of hitting him.
Weak, pathetic, he tried to lash out but Griffin caught his wrist easily and held onto him. Held him up.
“I’m going to kill you,” said Joel, hating the truth that they both knew he couldn’t. He struggled away, but Griffin held on, pulled him closer still. “You’re pathetic. One more scumbag that no one will remember after you’re dead.”
“You’ll remember me,” Griffin whispered. Joel closed his eyes, suddenly feeling tired.
“No,” he lied. “I won’t.”
“You will,” said Griffin. “You didn't forget me when you left LA. You won't forget me when I let you go.”
“You're not going to let me go. You’re going to kill me.” His head slumped, forehead landing on Griffin’s shoulder. The grip on him eased, shifted into a hug that Joel refused to return. It was warm though, and part of him wanted to even as part of him wanted to shove away and pound on Griffin's face until his head was bashed in.
It had been a long time since he’d been held like this. Not since the fire. The first fire. The fire Griffin set just for him. To make him feel warm and fuzzy. It seemed that fires heralded the turning points in their relationship.
“Come on.” Griffin shuffled forward, herding Joel back. He had to grab onto Griffin's coat to keep steady and when they made it to the cot it took him an extra moment to let go. Griffin squeezed him closer in that moment and then set him gently down. Joel missed his warmth as he crossed the room to pick up his carton of chinese that was still intact on the floor by the door.
He was a murderer. Serial killer. And a few seconds later he was sitting next to Joel, handing him a plastic fork, and sharing his dinner.
After a minute of eating in silence, Griffin said, “I’m not going to kill you.”
Joel nodded, not really surprised, but not really believing it either. He didn't know when he’d stopped being afraid. When the anxiety and the nightmares had drifted away into restless sleep and thoughts about how he could use the chain around his ankle to liberate himself. He wasn’t getting out of this room. And if he did, he wasn’t sure how long he’d last. This captivity wasn’t going to end.
“I haven’t killed her,” said Griffin. He’d brought yogurt and granola again today after Joel threw up yesterday’s chinese.
“What’s keeping you?” Joel tracked Griffin as he went to the corner, went to the door, came back. He didn’t move from the cot and Griffin sat down beside him, his shoulder warm against Joel's. He thought about moving away but then he had visions of Polly appearing like she had during the night, saying “Did you miss him?”
Griffin’s shoulder was at least real. Even if he didn't know what to do with that anymore.
“I though about doing it today, but it would have taken too long and I didn’t want to leave you.”
“How touching.”
“Good thing, considering the mess you made.” Griffin nodded toward the corner with the bucket.
“Well you keep feeding me crap.”
“Well you never complained. Besides, all you ate was crap before. I was trying to make you comfortable. Keep you in familiar surroundings.”
“Then why don't you bring me a book or a newspaper or anything.” Joel dabbed at the yogurt. It was cool on his throat.
Griffin hesitated. “Sorry,” he said. “I guess it must be a little boring in here.”
“A little –” Joel couldn't help the harsh laugh that bubbled forth painfully. It was hysterical, he knew, could feel it spinning out of control and then he could barely breathe. “I’m going crazy,” he gasped, realizing only then that he was crying. Whatever ghost of a life he’d had in Chicago had completely shattered in this little room. His one meaningful relationship up in flames and nowhere else for him to turn. His aunt was out there, somewhere, but what could an old woman do when he was chained to a fucking wall by a fucking psychopath who had gathered him into his arms, smoothing a hand down his back.
“Shh, I’ve got you,” Griffin whispered into his hair. “You're not going crazy. I won't let you go crazy.”
Too late, thought Joel, too late because he held on to Griffin as if he were the only thing holding him together instead of the thing that had torn him apart.
He didn't know why he asked, except Griffin had been gone for too long again, though this time he’d left apples and Italian takeout and a book. Crime and Punishment. Joel stared at the hardback cover for a long time, thinking, before he opened it.
“No,” said Griffin. “I was going to.” He stopped, shrugged, went about the chores. “Did you like the book?”
Joel hadn’t finished it but he nodded anyway. “Yeah. Why not?”
Griffin handed him his fork and joined him on the cot. Their shoulders settled together as usual. “Time’s not right.”
“Usually they're dead by now,” said Joel. Tonight was more Italian.
“Usually I’m not thinking of other things.”
The weight of the gaze on him made Joel pause and look over. Griffin's eyes were dark in the weak light, but no less intense. He wasn't manic tonight.
Then things clicked into place. “Thinking about what I think,” said Joel softly.
“I know you've been keeping the vicodin.” The migraines were few but that didn't mean Joel stopped pretending so he could get his refill. The question of why he hadn’t stopped getting them he left on his face. Griffin shrugged. “I want you comfortable,” was all he said.
Joel stared back until Griffin looked down at his food and resumed eating. He wasn’t sure what he was hearing. He was half crazy, isolated and had been for too long even before this captivity. Then Griffin had sent him the photos and given him a chance to save them. An impossible chance, but still a chance.
“Are you going to kill her?” he asked.
“Are you going to kill yourself?”
Their eyes caught, and Joel knew, he knew that Griffin was waiting on his choice. It was as if the world suddenly had settled on his shoulders, heavy and unyielding.
He didn't answer right then. They continued eating in silence, a dozen half formed thoughts flitting through Joel’s head - he couldn’t…, if he…, what would it take to... He just wanted it to end. He needed something to break so that he wasn't a man chained up in some little room in some little nowhere. He was so alone. Forgotten. Alone.
Griffin shifted forward when he was done, twisting to look over his shoulder before he stood. Joel’s shoulder was cold at his absence. He thought he saw Polly out of the corner of his eye. “Do you want another book?” he asked as if he were just going to run an errand. As if they were some fucked up couple and he was just staying in for the evening. Like he wasn’t alone.
He said, “Stay.”
“What?”
Joel reached out without thinking about it and tugged Griffin’s shoulder back. Towards him. “Stay,” he repeated.
There was a moment of hesitation in Griffin's eyes, but then he smiled, softer and calmer than usual, and sat back again. He didn’t hesitate when Joel leaned into him and slid down till his head was pillowed on his thigh, but wrapped an arm around him, warm and close. Slid his fingers through Joel’s greasy hair.
Joel calmed the breath that shuddered through him, unable to tell whether it was revulsion or relief. Maybe it didn’t matter. He was saving a girl who fed pigeons twice a day.
When Griffin leaned over and kissed his temple, he thought maybe he was saving what was left of himself, too.
Joel twisted, arm reaching up to pull Griffin back down, and when their lips mashed together - dry and chapped until Joel opened up, coaxed his way into wet warmth, Griffin kissing him back like he meant it, needed it like he needed to breathe - it felt like something finally cracked inside of him, a door finally opened.
In that kiss, he let go, and when he came up for air and met Griffin's flushed gaze with his own panting breath, the good parts of him that should care were gone.