Blues

Chapter Three

"I have to go to work," Dallas says, not undoing his seatbelt. "Get your stuff out of the trunk. I'm going to watch you until you're inside."

I've woken up some hours later, not speaking a word to the man driving the car. I don't ask questions or complain. I just look out the window and avoid eye contact.

"How will I unlock the door?"

He pulls out his cell phone, opens a screen I can't read, and begins to type in some type of security code. "It's open," he says.

I don't understand technology and it's times like these when I feel as though I never will.

"What do I do once I'm in there?"

"Someone inside will show you your room."

Someone inside, I think. Who else is there? I wonder what kind of a show Dallas is running here, but I don't ask. I don't say anything as I open the car door. I am still hazy from whatever drugs he gave me and I feel myself walking in a less than straight line as I go around to the trunk to retrieve my one bag.

Dallas doesn't say anything either as I exit. I know from our very limited interactions that, however long I end up staying with him, we will never be friends. Regardless, I don't intend to stay very long if I have anything to do about it.

I don't look back at the car once as I walk down the driveway and up the steps to Dallas's home. I feel like I should be ringing the bell, but he's told me to walk right in and so I do. There are lights on inside, but no sounds greet me. No signs of life, no conversation, no barking dogs. No music playing, no shower running. Still holding my heavy bag over my shoulder, I step further in. The door shuts behind me, mechanically. I wonder if he has shut it the way he locked it, using that device. Out of curiosity, an escape plan already beginning in my mind, I attempt to open it again. It won't budge. Dallas has locked it from the outside.

Not that I would've known the first thing to do if I managed to escape. I wouldn't know where to go, who to talk to. I don't even know where I am. Dallas, as strange as it seems, may be my best chance at survival out here. I hear him pull away, feeling that I am all alone but trusting that I am not.

I stand with uncertainty in the middle of the living room for a good thirty seconds before I grow bored and restless and decide to give myself a tour. The decor of the place is very contemporary and very American, with dark laminate floors and an abundance of chrome. There can be no mistaking that this is Dallas's home. It is new like his fancy cell phone, shiny like his Bulova watch, and tidy like his eyebrows and his designer suit. There is a stone fireplace and a spiral staircase. It is clear that, whatever he actually does - I am unimpressed by the term 'entrepreneur' - he makes good money. I almost catch myself feeling relieved to at least have been relegated to such a nice place, but I recognize that feeling early and destroy it to the best of my ability. The feeling is undeserved, selfish and wrong and dangerous.

From here on out, resistance is my only tool, and if I ever want to get out, find Jack, exact my revenge on everyone that has sent me down this path, I'd better use it wisely. I can't fall into the traps he sets. Both of our lives depend on my vigilance.

I wander a little further into the house, but I don't make it very far before I want to stop and look. In the very back of the first floor, there is a doorway to what appears to be a very large and intricate office. There is a long desk, an easy chair, and rows and rows and rows  of books. Books line the walls from the floor to the ceiling. Books are the curtains, the wallpaper, and the insulation. They are hard and soft, leather and paper bound, and I am all of a sudden mesmerized and stunned.

Whoever has read this many books would likely be disgusted to know I've never so much as held one.

Literature, excluding that which is written to be performed, has been banned from the Plain since before I was born. The stated reason is that books tend to promote immoral behavior that would run counter to basic Hereli values of God-fearing decency. The real reason that many suspect, myself among them, is that without fiction books, citizens will funnel more money into the theater and the cinema and stimulate the country's most important industry. And without non-fiction books, we will not learn about the world around us, and therefore not question the secluded one we live in.