Caged Bird | ✔

Chapter Twenty Three

Blinking my eyes open, both my top lids and bottom drawing back so that my irises and pupils are exposed in order to take in my surroundings

I am in my bedroom

I see my small butter yellow alarm clock that sits on my dresser next to my bed, the face of the clock facing me. The clock that had not worked for many years now but I did not have the heart to throw it out as it was gifted to me by Charley, - so now it just sat there, the only purpose it served now was; décor.

Yet today the arm that ticked every time a second passed, moved

I thought maybe I had imagined it, that I had wished it to work so badly that my brain had tricked me into thinking that It did work

Then the arm moved again, and again, and again, - this was a genuine surprise to me

Since when had it begun to work?

I move from my position of my body facing the dresser, to lie back onto my back, moving my head to glance up at the ceiling with the sticky adhesive stained marks on the ceiling due to my glow in the dark stars that had been on the ceiling for years. The stars that helped me fall asleep, which I never physically took off, they just started slowly falling off one by one, the glue, leaving behind these grease-like looking marks on the white ceiling.

Yet there's no glue grease stains on the ceiling

Something so insignificant as glue stains, my brain has seemed to remember. Glue stains I had not consciously thought about until now, now that I am faced with the absence of them

Like I had just expected it to be there

Similar to how I had expected Damien to be there every day

I sigh, and lift my hand to move the hair out of my face; - my hand makes a jerking movement, indicating that it is incapable of executing the simple task that I want it to

Annoyed; I look up to look where my hand is

The sight surprises me; my wrist is restrained to the headboard by a black cable tie. The sight triggers this erratic fear in me

In a panic, I yank at my arm knowing full well that my hand won't be released easily, I tug at it anyway, my heart suddenly thrumming in my ribcage

What the fuck is going on?

I pull at my arm repeatedly, each tug more violent than the last, as my brain scrambles to recall what has happened that could have led me here to my bedroom restrained by a piece of black plastic

Truthfully, after being handcuffed in a cell, I did not think that I would ever have had a repeat of being restrained in any place other than the police department

Until now

What had I been doing? The last thing I remember – my brain churns trying to produce sound explanations as to how I have landed up here in this specific predicament

I was with Cassie at the train station, before -

And just like that, my heartbeats go haywire

Did I pass out? –

Did Cassie bring me back? Did she cancel our trip, why on earth am I tied up?

The more I pull at my wrist the more it hurts, the plastic is fastened so tightly around my wrist that there is barely any tug room, and every move causes the skin to bite into my skin