3,600

Four minutes. With a silent nod of his head, the young boy--eyes shut softly, hot breath bouncing back into his red splotchy face--counts each remaining second: 3,361, 3,362, 3,363…

It’s remarkable: the silence. A couple of years ago, this small, lively boy of six--not even on the precipice of puberty--heard his mother in soft desperation ask, “just for five minutes, just five, can we have some silence.” He was long past six years old now, and he wished he could go back and give her thousands. 3,391.

It was true. This seemingly calm, abashed boy was once a nuisance--or so the boy thought--to his hard-working mother. She had once been known for her patience. But after years of handling the boisterous, joyful, yet mischievous young boy’s escapades on her own, she had grown weary. It was her the boy thought of now as he counted. 3,422.

He had been gone so long now he had a hard time remembering what she looked like. He desperately wanted to remember what the color of her eyes were.

The air he breathed was stuffy now, so hot that sweat was beading down his forehead and streaming into the crevices of his left eye. He didn’t attempt to wipe it--it wasn’t worth it. He kept his eyes shut, body calm and still, his arms curled around his knees, and continued counting. 3,486, 3487.

Would his mother even recognize this still, gaunt boy as her own? He was nearly a foot taller now, with dry, cracked lips and brunette hair instead of dirty blonde. The rambunctious, never still and never quite boy had lost his vibrant glow and buzzing energy. Looking at him now, laying in this small dark place, not a movement or a sound, you’d think he was an entirely different boy.

And maybe he was.

He had been laying there, scrunched in a ball, for nearly an hour now. Much of his thoughts these days were spent wistfully thinking of rescue plans he’d long lost hope in. But today, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Did she miss the sound of his voice as much as he did hers? What was she doing now? Was her life better now that he wasn’t there? That’s what he told him anyway. All the same things on repeat. It rattled constantly, like a whisper in his brain. She doesn’t want you back. She’s not looking for you. Why would she want you? You’re nothing...nothing.

He used to not believe him. His mother loved him, surely. So...he waited. The small, helpless six-year-old boy learned to do exactly what he was told. He made some mistakes--especially at the beginning--and endured the consequences. Boy did he endure the consequences. He cried deep, despondent tears every time the malicious man left. But still, he waited. He waited, and waited, and waited. Until…

He didn’t wait anymore.

A startling vroooom in the distance yanks the boy from his pensive thoughts and he shifts too quickly. The rust, rough against his skin, makes an achingly slow sshhree that echoes into the cold metal room beyond his enclosure. He freezes at a sharp stabbing pain in his right thigh and red blood begins trickling down his leg. He stifles a cry and closes his eyes tighter--his face contorting in pain. In a hauntingly practiced composure, the boy takes deep, even breaths and returns to his task. 3,508, 3,509, 3,510. He listens closely, painfully aware of the consequences if he doesn’t endure these last few minutes of confinement in silence. 3,518.

I will survive. There is no other option.

He takes a deep breath. His already warm, clammy body becomes stickier as the blood continues to flow. Despite his eerie calm, tears trickle faster and faster. I will survive. Think. Think happy thoughts. But everything seems so blurry now, like a dream you can’t quite recall. A faded soccer ball on freshly mowed green grass. Tag at recess. Building forts in his living room...Then, like a whisper in his utter silence, he remembers rockets. Mentos and coke. His eyebrows pull together as a vision of chocolate cake and sticky coke-splattered tile flashes like a living reel of the past.

A blur of images begin flashing before him. Her standing in the kitchen, standing on the lawn of the open window, her favorite glass platter, and a large...

A wave of sharp, shooting pain runs up the boy's body so quickly, he covers his mouth with not a second to spare. A muffled yelp escapes and he hopes against hope that he didn’t hear. The last time he sneezed he was stuck in here for more seconds than he could count.

Attempting to stop his trembling, Nathaniel, although nameless in his new world, clenches his entire body and focuses on the memory: She had made a cake for his grandfather's birthday--his favorite kind, chocolate. It was dripping with frosting and on his mother’s favorite glass platter.

There was rummaging outside. Where was he at? 3540. Every inch of the boy's body seems to curve inward--fists clenching, eyes scrunching, legs slipping against the streaming blood as his knees press so close to his chest he can barely breathe. He doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t need to breathe. He just needs to last one more minute. Sixty more seconds.

He had just been trying to scare her, but when he threw the soda-and-mento-filled container down, it shot straight through the kitchen window and exploded all over the scrumptious chocolate cake.

Nauseating pain strums down Nathaniel’s body and he takes his right fist, now white with the effort of his stillness, and slowly--careful to avoid the walls of his confinement-- stuffs it into his mouth to stifle any latent sound.

That’s when he hears the inevitable. His saving grace and his worst nightmare. 3,600

Beep, beep, beep, beep.

Click.

The old hinge creaks loudly as it’s lifted and the still darkness is traded for harsh artificial light. Not daring to release the fist from his mouth just yet, the young boy--now ten years old--waits as his captor with the brown, ugly eyes smiles down. Smiles down at his prisoner, crammed into a rusted metal chest, one of its many metal spikes thrust deep into the boy's leg and laughs. Laughs. This was an evil sort of laugher, but with it comes the last bit of memory the boy needed. Warm, bubbling laughter. The eyes he so longed to remember were a bright, shining green. The kind of green that lit with the same mischievousness and joy he used to possess. He had ruined the chocolate cake and cracked his mother’s favorite platter, but his mother wasn’t mad. She didn’t hate him. He wasn’t nothing. They had eaten chocolate cake on the sticky, coke-covered kitchen floor, and laughed.

“Mom.”

With a rough laugh, the brown eyes sputtered, “She doesn’t want you back. You think she wants you? You’re nothing.”

But Nathanial knew differently.