We don’t get to take no real bath in this place. But every now and again a bucket of soapy cold water arrives and we’re expected to strip down naked, to use our hands to scrub ourselves clean, to stand there cold and wet while we air-dry.
It’s damp down here where they keep us, a cold, sticky wet like sweat, the kind that don’t ever go away. The water oozes through the walls and trickles down sometimes, when it’s raining hard outside. The rainwater pools on the floor beside me, making puddles. I walk in them puddles with my bare feet.
In the dark, I hear something else splashing in them puddles sometimes. I hear something scratching its tiny claws on the floor and walls. I know that something is there, something I can’t see. I got ideas, but I don’t know for sure what it is.
I do know for sure that there are spiders and silverfish down here. I don’t ever see them, either, but sometimes, when I try and sleep, I feel their stealth legs slink across my skin. I could scream, but it wouldn’t do any good. I leave them be. I’m sure they don’t want to be here any more than me.
I’m not alone down here, not since Gus came. It makes it better, knowing I’m not ever alone and that someone is here to bear witness to all the things the lady does to me. It’s usually the lady doing the hurting, ’cause she don’t got an ounce of goodness in her. The man has maybe an ounce ’cause sometimes when the lady ain’t home he’ll bring down a special treat, like a hard candy or something. Gus and I are always grateful, but in the back of my mind I can’t help but wonder why he’s being kind.
I don’t know how old I am. I don’t know how long they’ve been keeping me here.
All the time I’m cold. But the lady upstairs couldn’t give two hoots about that. I told her once that I was cold and she got angry, called me things like ornery and ingrate, words that I didn’t know what they mean.
She calls me many things. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think my name was just as easily Retard or Dipshit as it is Delilah.
Come get your dinner, Dipshit.
Stop your whining, you little retard.
The man went and brought me a blanket. He let me sleep with it one night but then he went and took it away again so that the lady didn’t find out what he’d done.
I don’t know the difference between daytime and nighttime anymore. Long ago, light meant day and dark meant night, but not down here it don’t. Now it’s just all dark all the time. I sleep as much as I can because what else is there to do with my time than talk to Gus and play chicken with the walls? Sometimes I can’t even talk to Gus ’cause that lady gets mad at us. She screams down the stairs at me to stop my yammering before she shuts me up for good. Gus only ever whispers ’cause he’s scared of getting in trouble. Gus is a fraidy-cat, not that I can blame him. Gus is the good one. I’m the one who’s bad. I’m the one always getting into trouble.
I tried to keep track of how many days I’d been down here. But there was no way of doing that seeing as I couldn’t tell my daytimes from my nights. I gave that up long ago.
The sounds upstairs are my best measure of time. The man and the lady are loud now, trash talk mostly ’cause they ain’t ever nice to each other. I like it better when they’re loud, ’cause when they’re quarreling with each other, then nobody’s paying any attention to Gus and me. It’s when they’re quiet that I’m scared most of all.
I set the dog bowl aside. I did the best that I could. If I try and eat any more I will vomit. I offer some more to Gus but he says no. I’m not sure how Gus has made it this long on account of how little he eats. I never get a good look at him in the darkness, but I imagine he’s all skin and bones. I’ve caught glimpses of him when the door opens upstairs and we get a quick scrap of light. He’s got brown hair. He’s taller than me. I think he’d have a nice smile but Gus probably don’t ever smile. Neither do I.
The spoon chimes against the bowl. I reach down and take ahold of it in my hand. For whatever reason, I get to thinking of the way that lady comes downstairs sometimes. I don’t like that none. She only comes when she’s hopping mad and looking for someone to take her anger out on.
Gus must hear the jingle of the spoon. He asks what I’m doing with it. Sometimes I think Gus can read my mind.
“I’m keeping it,” I say.
Gus tells me that a round spoon isn’t going to do nothing to hurt no one, if that’s what I’ve got my mind set on, which it is.
“You’re just gonna get yourself in trouble for not giving the lady back her spoon,” he says. I can’t ever see the expression on his face, but I imagine he’s worrying about what I’m gonna do. Gus always worries.
I tell him, “If I can figure out a way to make it sharp, it’ll hurt.”
I’m banking on that lady being so soft in the head she’ll forget all about the spoon when she comes to get her bowl. I put the rest of the mush down the toilet so she don’t get angry and call us names for not finishing her food that she made. I put the empty bowl at the top of them steps and start thinking on how I’m going to make this round spoon sharp as a spear.
* * *
There ain’t much to work with in this place where they’ve got us kept. The man and the lady don’t give Gus and me no stuff. We’ve got no clothes other than the ones we’re wearing, no blankets, no pillows, no nothing. The only thing we have aside from the floor and the walls is each other and that icky toilet on the other end of the pitch-black room.
It’s only after I try to sharpen my spoon on the walls and the floor that I decide to give the toilet a go.
I don’t know a thing about toilets other than that’s where I do my business and that ours has never once been cleaned. The darkness is a blessing when it comes down to the toilet ’cause I don’t want to see the inside of it, not after all this time that we’ve been crapping in there and no one’s been cleaning it. The foul smell alone is enough to make me gag.
“Where you going?” Gus asks as I take my spoon to the toilet. Gus and I have a way of knowing what the other is doing without ever really seeing what the other is doing. That comes from living down here long enough and getting to know each other’s habits.
“You’ll see,” I tell him. Gus and I speak in whispers. I’m pretty sure the man and the lady who live upstairs aren’t home right now ’cause I heard the doors opening and closing not too long ago. I heard their loud footsteps go suddenly quiet. There’s no one up there talking now, no one screaming, no noise from the TV.
But I can’t be sure. ’Cause if they are here, I don’t want them listening in on Gus and me and knowing what I’m doing with my filched spoon. I’d get a whipping if they did—or worse. I ain’t ever tried to run away before or make myself a weapon, but common sense says that’s gotta be a worse punishment than not finishing the lady’s nasty dinner or telling her I’m cold.