Chained Read Online Free Page B

back!”  But Travis didn't look back, walking steadily down a hallway and through another door at the end. 
     
    I felt like I couldn't breathe.  I think I screamed, beating my fists on the door until my knuckles were raw.  I might have screamed his name, or maybe I screamed nothing at all.  The light clicked off and I sank to my knees, pounding on the door with my hands that quickly became slippery with blood.  Even as I screamed and begged and cried burning tears, I felt as if I were watching the whole scene as an outsider.  I felt nothing but an all-consuming coldness in the pit of my stomach.  I watched myself beat on the door until my arms would no longer lift, until my knees trembled so badly that I fell prone on the floor where I lay sobbing, begging Travis to come back.  I cried until my throat was as raw as my hands.  I had no idea how long I cried before the blessed nothingness of sleep claimed me.
     
    ***
     
    When I woke again, my first thought was that I was waking from a nightmare.  It must have been something in the Chinese food...maybe a strange form of food poisoning.  I was safe in my bed, my mom just a text away.
     
    This idea was banished as soon as I opened my eyes.  At some point I had moved—or been moved to—the cot, and covered with one of the blankets.  Light was coming through the window, partially shaded by the bush just visible through the glass.  The puddle of my vomit had been cleaned, leaving behind the faint scent of bleach. 
     
    I sat up in the bed and pulled the blanket around my shoulders, shivering in the never-ending cold.  My bladder and the cotton-dryness of my mouth overwhelmed my desire to sit still and I stumbled to the bathroom, pulling the chain that flicked the plain bulb into life.  In the bathroom was an ancient, rusting claw tub with no shower or curtain, a similarly worn-down toilet and a pedestal sink that looked shockingly white and new compared to the other two appliances.  The walls and floor were the same featureless concrete as the other room...prison cell...whatever it was.
     
    With the most immediate business dealt with, I stood in front of the sink and stared at my reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink.  My eyes, wide and blue and bloodshot, stared back at me from amid my wild and unruly hair.  I was still wearing my dress from the date. There were shadows under my eyes and streaks of blood on my cheeks.  I looked down at my hands and gasped at the sight of my knuckles crusted in blood.  As if the sight restored my nerves, the pain of my injuries flooded me all at once, nearly knocking me to my knees as I clung to the sink for support.  Desperately I turned the water on full blast, hot and cold, and scrubbed at my hands until all of the smeared blood was gone and fresh redness welled from the raw skin.  I washed my face and drank hand-fulls of the water to try and ease the dryness in my mouth and the ache of hunger in my belly.  I finger-combed my hair and smoothed it down until I looked a little less like some sort of monster. 
     
    I stood in front of the mirror and stared at my reflection until the steam rising from the basin obscured the glass.  Finally there was no choice but to face what I had been avoiding.  I turned the water off and turned to look at my room. 
     
    Have to think.  Have to plan, have to escape.  But no matter how hard I pushed my brain, I felt like I couldn't form a single coherent thought.  On the desk there was a tray that hadn't been there last night.  I didn't realize I had started walking until I was lowering myself into the chair, the metal a shocking cold against my legs. 
     
    The tray held a bowl of dry cereal and a glass of orange juice.  My stomach growled fiercely at the sight of the food.  Next to the bowl were three little bottles...hotel bottles of shampoo, conditioner and lotion.  The sight was so bizarrely normal that I almost laughed. There was a hairbrush, a toothbrush, a