Prologue
About 12 Years Ago
LYNN
I'M a waitress at the Starburst Diner in the town of Fairview, Illinois.
I'm a beauty queen, Miss Teen Illinois, Miss Earth United Illinois, hoping to become Miss Illinois next year.
I love working with animals.
I was a waitress.
I was a beauty queen.
I loved working with animals.
I am a prisoner.
My mind wants to live in the past, wants to remember only the good times. But my reason still won't always let it. Even though I've been locked up in this dark, windowless room for a long time. Years it feels like, although if it were years, then I'd already be dead.
I've been beaten and raped and choked until I almost died. Blindfolded and threatened and tied up for so long my arms went numb. It feels like this torture has lasted a lifetime. But it can't have, or I'd be dead by now. I'll be dead soon. A part of my mind already is.
Day and night have no meaning for me anymore. Hours and minutes have no meaning anymore. My past—who I used to be—has no meaning anymore. I'm not even inside my body anymore.
My body is just a shell, a thing to be used by the cruel, vicious, ruthless men who locked me up in here, tore my clothes off and tied me to this bed. The man who abducted me visits. Many others visit too. Often. Sometimes one at a time, sometimes in groups. I don't see their faces anymore. They're not real. I'm not real anymore. This is just a nightmare.
Some are worse than others. The man who tied me up is the worst. I imagine a snake slithering across my body when he rapes me. Maybe it's because he told me his name is Lizard. He's a coldblooded snake, he doesn't need the name to announce him. I'd know it even if I never knew his name. He's not the same man who grabbed me in the dark parking lot behind the diner I worked at. I don't know that man's name and I don't want to know it. I hardly know my own name anymore.
Lynn! It's Lynn!
But maybe it's better to forget. Because I'm never getting my life back. All that I was is already gone, and I will die in this room. I'm still holding on, but barely, and it grows harder and harder to do. I no longer feel anything when they grope me, rape me, hit me and choke me. Hear nothing when they speak to me.
Just nothing.
Maybe it's time I forgot my own name too. There's nothing left to hold onto anyway.
I can hear yelling and crashing through the door of the room I'm in. They're coming to me and they're loud. In the beginning, I used to cry and scream when they came. Now I don't make a sound. Because I feel nothing at all. Even the pins and needles in my arms from being tied to the bed for hours and hours and days are gone.
Sometimes they untie me. It's not mercy, just a practicality. If you keep a person in the same position for days and weeks on end they get bedsores and other problems. I know, because my great-grandmother spent most of my childhood lying in bed. She had to be turned. Had to be talked to. But she never spoke. Just like I don't. She was ninety-four when she died, I'm twenty-one. But what does it matter? Years have no meaning when you can't count the hours. I'm ready to die. But I don't even wish for that anymore. I don’t wish for anything.
Thudding footsteps are growing louder in the hall. I can hear the sound of boots kicking against doors, wood crashing against concrete walls.
"Lynn! Lynn, are you here?" It's been a long time since I heard my name.
The man who took me doesn't use it. He calls me Lollipop. I don't answer to that name. I don't answer to anything.
There's more crashing in the hall. It's getting louder, closer, more urgent.
"Lynn! Where are you?"
I recognize this man's voice. Barely. It belongs to the guy who always hung around the diner during my shifts. Except on that night when I was taken. He wasn’t there then. For awhile I feared he was one of the men raping me while I was blindfolded.
But, no. None of them were him.
Sure, he was a rough and rugged biker, but he was different. He almost asked me out a few times, but couldn't quite get the words together. But I would've said yes. Despite the scar that covered half his face and was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen when he first walked in. I would've said yes, because he had kind eyes and a soft voice, and he made me feel safe and wanted and seen the way no other guy who came into the diner to gawk at me and flirt with me ever had. The way no other man ever had. I liked spending time with him and I wanted to spend a whole lot more time with him. But he never asked me out, so I never could say yes.
