My Life as a Rat

"Keep calm..." I mumbled.

"This is okay..."

"I can do this..."

I felt like a mime artist as I stalked along the dark corridor, staring into the shadows without seeing anything, listening to the sounds, but hearing just the usual groans and thuds. After an eternity I reached my destination, a place I dreaded. The twins. They were a pair of massive old machines that loomed in the near darkness like threatening giants. They were two spots of an even deeper black within an already dark room. The hall itself had once been lit by skylights. They were almost completely opaque by now, just panes of a dark brown color, not illuminating anything.

I felt, but didn't see, the thick layer of dust and debris covering the floor, which was a notable difference to the rest of the labyrinth. It seemed he had not prepared this area for his sadistic experiments and had probably just checked possible exits.

The corridor continued past the twins and led into the huge machine hall. I was afraid all the time, but in here, I was terrified. It always happened when I was at the twins or in the great hall. I wasn't afraid of him anymore. He was not relevant. Not in here. The place itself was evil. I felt it, like a physical force.

Even my kidnapper didn't seem to like this place, as I had never experienced a trap in the twins' room or in the great hall. He seemed to bow to a greater evil. This was not his territory anymore. Something else was ruling in here. These places seemed inhuman, not just deserted by humans. It almost seemed that humans didn't belong here, anymore.

If he had forgotten to secure some possible exit, it would be in here. I hated to be here, but it was my best chance.

The corridor ran along the front side of the twins, and smaller aisles circled them completely. The space behind them was almost unnaturally black and terrifying. I had dared to give it a perfunctory check once. It felt like the small space was filled with fear, so thick that I could almost touch it. I couldn't see anything; it was like staring into a black hole. I endured it for a few seconds before fleeing back down the corridor in sheer panic.

No way I would repeat that today. I was too tense, already; this was not one of my best days. Yes, I needed to check that place again sooner or later. I decided later. Instead, I continued towards the great hall, probably the only room that was even more frightening than the twins' hall. Trembling, I crept forward, listening to each groan and creak the old building emanated, trying to discern anything unusual. Even my eye had stopped twitching, which meant that I was close to breaking.

Just as I left the twins, I heard something rustling behind them. I was scared shitless. A rat. Probably. Calm down! I forced myself not to run again. I knew that if I ran, my panic would completely take over. 'For a woman seriously contemplating suicide you're quite the chicken,' I thought. Relax. If there's something evil in there, I should welcome it. It might free me of this nightmare, one way or another. Not really believing this shit, I still managed to calm down a bit and peeked into the great hall, looking back into the near darkness behind me all the time. I almost expected the twins to come alive and get me.

The great hall was almost completely dark. A few rectangular areas were illuminated by roof lights. I guess to any visitor from outside, they would have appeared pitch black, but to me they were almost glaring. Sometimes I felt like Gollum, all pale with enormous bugging eyes. The lit rectangles made the rest of the hall appear even darker. They were like islands of feeble light in sheer blackness. I never dared to enter these spots as I felt completely vulnerable there, like in the spotlight on a stage.

Where it was illuminated, the floor looked soft and plushy, like a carpet. The ceiling wasn't as high as in the twins' hall. I knew that there were machines everywhere, but they were hard to see and I wasn't interested in them as they held no chances for escape. They were present only as dark threatening shadows.

The only areas I was interested in were the walls. There must be exits apart from the big, immovable roll-up door and the exit at the opposite side, leading back into the labyrinth.

As usual, there were strange noises in here. The roof was cracking, there was a slight wind rustling through the machines. I felt like I was being watched by something evil, nonhuman, lurking in the shadows, as I always did in the great hall. There was something here far more dangerous than the asshole who had kidnapped me. This was something much more terrifying. I could feel its malevolent gaze on my skin, making my flesh crawl.

I heard the rustling again. That was not the wind. Something was moving between the machines. It wasn't that far away from me, maybe ten meters. I stared into the darkness, trying so see something, already knowing that it was hopeless. I moved backwards until I felt the cool wall on my back. Again, a rustling sound. Nearer, this time. A loud cracking sound shocked me to the core. I couldn't help it. I ran. I might even have screamed. Through the dirt and debris, towards black gullet I came from.

I plunged into it, leaving the hall behind me, running towards the twins. Just as I passed them, an inhuman scream from behind shocked me to the core. I ran past the twins at full speed, my brain completely wiped clean by panic. Just before I reached the main corridor, my foot tripped over something and I tumbled painfully again and again. I heard him laughing in the background.

"Good girl."

My panic left and the familiar hate took its place. I was back in my daily life, back in the shitty prison I was used to. This was bad, but the misery was at least created by a human. I knew that I would have to face the horror back there again someday, and the thought made me shudder.

"Fuck..."

It frustrated me that I still didn't know what had happened back there. Had there been something or someone? Had it been Asshole who had scared me? Had it been my own mind paying tricks with me? I had no idea, and the uncertainty would have driven me crazy if my daily life in here hadn't already taken care of that job.

I checked my body for broken bones, didn't find any and painfully struggled to my feet. I felt my face getting hot from the humiliation while he was still laughing.

"Having fun?" he was mocking me while I checked myself for open wounds.

One day I'll get you, I thought without really believing it anymore. I knew that I needed to stay away from fatalism, but sometimes I couldn't help it.

"I was all right for a while."

Nooooo!

"I could smile for a while."

The music was just to mock me.

"But I saw you last night."

Humiliate me.

"You held my hand so tight."

It was working.

"As you stopped to say hello."

I stumbled further through the now brightly illuminated corridor towards the permanently closed red door and the main corridor to the left. I was still trembling, unsure whether it was from the panic, the run, the fall or the humiliation.

Once again, I looked at that damn red door while he graciously turned off the music. I always had the impression that this might be the entrance he used. I had looked at it many times, wondering how to get past it. Wondering what lay behind it, what I could do to unlock it. I had imagined all kinds of idiotic plans to trick him, to ambush him there. It was pointless; he would never open it if I was around.

Today, though... something was different. The door wasn't completely open, but it definitely stood a bit ajar. Suddenly I saw a flash behind it and jerked back, starting to run again. I stopped, puzzled. What kind of trap was that? Had it gone off too early? Then came the biggest shock of my imprisonment so far.

Someone behind the door mumbled "perfect shot," whatever that meant.

I peeked behind the door and saw a huge guy holding a huge camera, looking fascinated at some worthless piece of old machinery. His face looked handsome in a chiseled delicate way. His face seemed to belong to an artist and his body to a lumberjack.

I risked a quick glance past him, down the unknown corridor. Unlike the labyrinth, it was very well lit. My eyes had trouble adjusting after having spent an eternity in the twilight. The corridor I saw looked so different and somehow normal that I immediately knew that this was the exit I had been looking for so long.

Who was that guy, though? With the same clarity that told me that this was the exit, I knew that this man was not my jailer. That guy looked totally harmless and blissfully ignorant while he still inspected that useless piece of junk. But who was he? One of Asshole's friends? The pry bar sticking from the back of his jeans told me that he wasn't. I was just trying to categorize him as an enemy, an enemy of my enemy or a friend when he turned around and saw me.

"Oh, sorry," he said, holding up his hands as if I had a gun. "I didn't know that the building was still in use."

This was an important, possibly life changing moment. I needed to be calm and rational, calculating the potential risks and chances emerging with the new situation. Idiotically, what I actually did was freezing and suddenly becoming self-conscious about my appearance. I tried to take care of my body hygiene as best as I could, working with the few things I had. I had cold water in my cell whenever my captor was in a good mood. He usually was while I was recovering from major abuse. I had a small piece of soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a cheap plastic hair brush.

There was nothing I could do about my clothes. They were worn and torn from my little "adventures." All I had was the jeans and T-shirt I was wearing when I was kidnapped. There was nothing I could do about my unhealthy pallor. While I didn't exactly look like a bum, I certainly looked a bit like a ghost. He seemed to come to a similar conclusion.

"You don't work here," he stated, elegantly avoiding coming across as a genius. "Do you live in here?" He seemed to think about his own statement while I was simply at a loss for words. "Can... can you hear me? You understand me? Tim," he stated while pointing at himself and looking at me as if I belonged to some isolated tribe or maybe as if I was deaf or retarded. "Tim," he repeated. "Me, Tim." More wild pointing at his muscular chest.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm no idiot. You're Tim," I casually answered, as if meeting him in here was the most normal thing in the world. "Dani. Me Dani. Look. Dani," I continued in the same idiotic voice, while pointing at my own chest and making ape-like noises.

We both cracked up and laughed until tears were streaming down our faces. It felt good. Damn, did that feel good. Those were the first words I had exchanged with a human being since I had entered this nightmare. Of course, I had communicated with my kidnapper, but you couldn't really call that a dialogue.

One of the worst aspects of my so-called life was the constant doubt of my own sanity. Was I still able to talk and behave like a human being? Had Asshole broken me, turned me into a mindless toy for his sadistic amusement? This short talk and the joke told me that I was still there. I was still Dani. I was not completely broken. I could even trust a stranger on an impulse and laugh with him. Hell, I had even remembered my name without having to think about it. I felt a huge relief.

"Dani. What doing in here? You safe?" he continued in that dumb, but hilarious missionary-meets-native voice.

"No, actually, I'm not," I continued in a civilized way, because I enjoyed talking like that. "I've been kidnapped and I'm held prisoner in here..."

My explanation was cut off by the sound of a door slamming shut down the corridor. I looked around in panic, but the dark red door leading towards the labyrinth was still open.

"What's going on here," he asked, now clearly agitated. 'Boy, if a slamming door is enough to frighten you, welcome to my world,' I thought.

"That was my captor, sadistic asshole, kidnapper, sick bastard, lowest scum on Earth. A man with many names. He's closing our way out, it seems."

"What?" was his reply, this time sounding naturally dumb, even without being in missionary-talks-to-native mode.

"This has the potential to get really ugly. Wait, let me check this door."

I checked and moved the dark red door, but it wasn't motorized apparently. Asshole hadn't been able to lock us in by closing it from afar. I felt some relief because I wanted to keep as many options as possible. For some inexplicable reason I was pleased to find the now inactive pepper spray nozzles. It was the first trap I could see from the other side. Seeing how simple, even dilettantish, it seemed, took all the mystery out of it. It had worked fine, though. I still vividly remembered the pain and the fear of being permanently blinded.

Tim was looking at his cell phone, meanwhile, mumbling something like "no service... Jammer maybe..." I thought that all in all, he had stayed remarkably calm. Either he wasn't bright enough to fully grasp his new situation, or he was intelligent enough to know that panic wouldn't help.

"Keep away from those," I said, pointing them out. "Pepper spray."

"Holy shit."

"Welcome to my world."

I watched his pleasantly open face as reality sunk in. No need to stress him even more now. I remembered how terrified and confused I had been in the beginning. Of course, I had no one to guide me, as he had.

"What do we do now?"

"Good question, Tim. I've never been in this corridor before. That seems to be the exit," I said while pointing at the grey steel door that had just been closed.

"Right. I came through there. I thought this old factory was abandoned. Schmidt closed down almost 20 years ago."

"What? We're in the old Schmidt factory? I'm almost home. Hell, I could probably see my house from the parking lot." Frustration engulfed me. To be that close to home made this even harder to bear, mainly because it made no difference at all. I was just as unable to escape.

"Again, what do we do now? What's going on here, anyway?" he interrupted my newly refreshed misery.

"The short form: I've been abducted from my home. I don't know how, but I suspect I've been drugged somehow."

"Is it just one person?"

"What?" I was truly baffled. "I've never thought about that. Yes, I always assumed it's just one guy."

"You know that it's a man?"

"Yes, I hear him over the speakers from time to time. His voice is distorted, but it's clearly male."

"Interesting."

"Why?"

"He distorts his voice. That means that he's at least thinking about releasing you at some point. He doesn't want his voice to be recognized."

"Yes, I agree," I answered, feeling like an idiot and trying not to show it.

"It could also mean that you know him."

"What? Oh God, you might be right."

In my mind, I frantically went through the list of men I knew, starting with that spooky salesclerk from the supermarket.

"So, you woke up in here?" he interrupted my useless mental flicker book.

"I woke up in my cell."

"Where is it?"

"Through the red door, to the right, along the main corridor, then it's a room at the right side," I said, using my hands to describe the layout and feeling like an idiot for it.

"Okay. Let me think."

No problem. We had plenty of time, although Tim might not yet be aware of that. I was reluctant to admit that I was a bit impressed by how quickly he had adapted to the new situation. He was thinking quite clearly, but that might just be the adrenaline. Shock and confusion might come later.

"So how does this work? How does he control you? Have you ever seen him?"

"No, I haven't. I just hear him. He puts me to sleep, probably using drugs in the food. Then he sets up new ways to torture me. When I wake up, the fun begins. I'll tell you later, in detail. There are cameras and microphones everywhere, but maybe not in this corridor. I'm not supposed to be on this side of the red door."

"Okay. What about the grey door over there? That's the exit. Let's check it."

He started towards the door in question when I stopped him.

"Wait, you have to learn to move cautiously. He has placed traps everywhere. We need to check the floor, the ceiling and the walls."

"Oh. Okay."

The good news was that corridor seemed to be free of nasty surprises, but the bad news was that the grey door was locked and looked awfully solid. Tim grabbed his pry bar and was about to work on the door.

"Wait, Tim."

"What?"

"Let's assume this corridor is unsupervised."

"Okay," he asked.

"He doesn't know that you have a pry bar then."

"So what?"

"Tim I've never had a weapon in here. I've never had a tool. That thing," I said, pointing at the bar, "might be a game changer. If you start working on the door now, he will know that you have something. Look at that door. Do you think the pry bar will make any difference?"

We simultaneously turned our heads towards the door. No chance. That thing looked solid enough to survive a nuclear war.

"No," he admitted. "No use in giving away an advantage for nothing." He gave me a resigned look. He was obviously just about to understand the situation in which he suddenly found himself. "There's no other exit, right? Wait, forget that. Of course, there isn't." I just nodded. "He has kidnapped you and I know about it now. He can't let me escape." Again, I nodded. Best to let him come to terms with it in his own speed. "He's kidnapped you, but he's kept you alive. That sure won't apply to me and might not even apply to you, anymore."

"Oh." He was right and he surprised me by thinking ahead of me this time. "You might be right."

"The time for games between the two of you might be over. This is now us or him."

"Right. Two people will be harder for him to control. He might feel threatened and become irrational or aggressive. If either one of us escapes, he's toast. He'd be locked away for quite a while."

"Let's make that happen," he said, obviously trying to sound convincing, but sounding like some cheap motivational seminar.

"You can't imagine how much I want that to happen. Prison might be too good for him. I want to see the bastard suffer."

"I can imagine that. Our priority should be to get out, not to kill him. He will lose in any case if we get out."

"Okay, let's worry about him later. We need a plan. Do we stay here, in this corridor?"

"Why should we, Dani?" It felt surprisingly good just to hear my own name again. It gave me a bit of my identity back, made me more of a person again, not just some nameless rat in an experimental labyrinth.

"Because this corridor is not a part of the labyrinth. No cameras, no microphones, no traps, it seems. I'm not supposed to be here, we are outside of his playing field right now. You need to understand the horror that's lying beyond this door, Tim. Everything there is being monitored. The whole labyrinth has been set up to give him every possible advantage. It is riddled with traps. We are completely at his mercy in there." I tried to drive home how serious the situation was, but I didn't like how whiny I suddenly sounded.

"Okay, that doesn't sound good. What's the alternative? Stay here and starve?"

"No, but he won't necessarily feed us in there, either. It would be very easy to get rid of us anyway, if he wants to."

"Are there any exits in there that might be opened with a pry bar?"

"I can't remember any, but we could check. It might be our only chance."

"Dani, I don't know. Wait a moment, I have to think."

He seemed to mentally leave this place and his face assumed a faraway look.

"I see three options," he said in a weird analytic voice I hadn't heard before. "One, he wants to kill both of us. Two, he wants to keep both of us. Three, he just wants to kill me. He might not have decided yet."