Maldo Fam

Momma's Boy

Shinobia could not understand. She couldn't understand why or what was happening to her a minute after the duo had whisked themselves out of the room the same way they had whisked themselves into it. She still didn't understand an hour later or two hours, and nothing was made any clearer a full twenty-four hours after, despite the fitful sleep and hours spent thinking.

No answers came to her when the men burst into the room carrying an expensive, fancy-looking dog kennel fit for a well-pampered pooch. There had been no time for understanding when most of that whirlwind was spent fighting and screaming before eventually she was forced inside that fancy dog kennel. A sore body and mind are her reward instead of clarity.

Then she was left alone. She had been left alone with her thoughts, which had been a comfort at first. She thought about ways to escape – kicking didn't work this time, and neither had scratching, clawing, or pulling. The new cage was clearly made of better materials, ones strong enough to even keep a desperate human contained.

She thought about how she had ended up where she had ended it. She quickly put a stop to those thoughts because it didn't matter. She ended up where she had, it didn't matter how. Getting out was all that mattered.

She thought about the two who were clearly responsible for her predicament and what they had said. She thought and thought about the words of that crazy woman and what she apparently wanted from her.

She couldn't reasonably comprehend. How could she reasonably comprehend the thoughts of a mad woman?

The only thing Shinobia could understand completely was that she was in danger. She was in trouble.

Her thoughts turned dark. They turned against her because of genuine and well-deserved fear. She lost count of the number of panic attacks she had curled up in the bottom of that cage waiting for something to happen.

She hadn't ever felt fear so intensely as she had the days she spent locked in that cage waiting and alone with her thoughts.

Then there was hunger. She hadn't noticed it at first, of course. But by day three, when the panic had settled into an odd numbness, the hunger punched and twisted at her gut. Thirst followed close behind, and the once successfully ignored need to relieve herself also decided to make itself known.

She lost the battle with her bladder on day four. It added shame and disgust to the emotions she already felt. It also added an extra level of discomfort to go along with the ache in her body because of the limited positions her body was forced into.

By day five, Shinobia was ready to do anything to be out of her cage.

It was as if the wicked people who had kidnapped her could read her mind.

They showed up in the early afternoon of the fifth day. She knew it to be so because that time of day had become her favorite. Because of the positioning of the house (she assumed she was being kept in a house) the early afternoons meant the room she was kept in was bathed in light. The sun hit the kennel in just a way that made it warm in an otherwise unusually chilly room. It was much better than the darkness of the nights and mornings which made her paranoid and on edge. She knew she was alone in the room, but the darkness of those times sometimes tricked her into thinking otherwise.

She had been laying on her back as she usually did, soaking in the sun leaking through the bars of the wooden door of the cage. The sun hitting her face made it easier to daydream and pretend to be somewhere else like the nook in her old bedroom back at her mother's house, where she would take naps while the sun hit her in a similar way.

At those times she was back there, in her old bedroom, not locked in some dog cage, starving, smelling of piss, and fearing for her own safety.

Fear had her on high alert, even in her more 'relaxed' state. So she did not miss the jingle of keys or the door to the bedroom opening. She had sprung upwards, the cage being tall enough to make that a possibility without injury.