We played card games in relative silence. We flitted mostly between go-fish, war, and pinochle—the only multi-person card games we knew how to play. I told myself this was his way of apologizing for making me ingest toxic substances two days in a row. I kept waiting for my stomach to drop, to run to the bathroom and throw up again. I couldn’t keep telling myself to go along with what he wanted, I was going to get myself killed if he continued to force feed me toxicity.

He would know my every movement with the boots on, but I wasn’t keen on running around the woods in frigid weather in wool socks. The handcuffs might get in the way; without the key I was stuck like this. The only logical solution I could come up with through my muddled thoughts was to choke him unconscious. Steal the key while he was lying there and make a break for it. That was only if I could jump him. He knew how to use a gun, or at least pretended to, there was no way of me knowing if he knew any martial arts. My plan was falling apart before I could even solidify it.

After a round of war, he stood, taking the empty mug with him. Without him in the living room with me, I had every opportunity to run. I stared at the front door, trying to find the courage to get up and make a break for it. I dug down deep, listing every reason I thought of to run. Every reason was shot down with a simple “What would he do if I failed?” that rooted me to the wooden floor. Every step he took, getting closer and closer, was another nail in the coffin that was my escape plan. I counted his steps, thinking that would help me to stand, to help me to run.

Then he was back. He put two fingers by the tape of the gauze. I jumped, scooting away from him. I stared up at him, watching his every movement as he had watched mine. One of his hands was halfway between us, palm-faced down. It reminded me of how one acts towards a scared, cornered animal. He set down the first aid kit on the coffee table, moved that hand into the same position. I half-thought he would pull out dog treats from his back pocket and lower himself close to floor, holding them out in his palm to see if I would take the bait. But he did lower himself, squatting in a lunge-like position.

He seemed to soften his expression, said in a soothing tone of voice that he just wanted to check the cut on my temple. I shook my head, wanting to see how far he would go. He slid forward a step, and I scooted back two. He started saying everything was okay, that he wasn’t going to hurt me. There was no right for me to believe him anymore. He came forward a few inches. I went back more. We danced in this fashion until I felt the wall against my back. I had a few options: let him get near me, go left towards the wall, or right towards the painting, towards open space.

He was larger, bigger, probably faster than me. I didn’t want to stay against the wall. I still felt his grip on my skin, how terrified I was. Tears pricked my eyes once more, and I willed myself to not let them spill. I slid up the wall, ever so slowly. I eyed my escape route. Right, past the coffee table, to the door, and I would run as fast as I could back to a main road. Back to a phone.

I took a step to the right. He turned his body to the right. I took more and more, only for him to reorient himself. I wondered if this was his idea of a game. I was in the middle of the fireplace and all he did was tell me everything was fine, that he wasn’t going to hurt me again. And the tears started to fall as I remembered he had a gun on his hip, and that at any moment he could shoot me. I soldiered on as he added shushing to the list of things to say. I hung to the wall as I side-stepped towards the door. I was almost there when he moved in line with me. I started to walk faster, he dropped down to a knee.

I took my eyes off of him once I reached the door. I looked back at him, my hands hovering awkwardly over the doorknob. His gun was trained on me. “Step away from the door, Soren,” he commanded. Instead, I grabbed the doorknob. “You make everything so damn hard.” I heard it, heard him, before I felt it. Shock, I was in shock as I slid down the door, his boots echoing in my head. “Why do you have to keep bleeding everywhere?”

My mouth hung open, forgetting how to form words, form sounds. My brain was preoccupied with registering the pain in my right thigh. There was a hole near my knee, towards the outer part of my thigh. It stung from the air hitting things not normally exposed and shouldn’t ever be exposed. It burned from the metal stuck in it. I grabbed around the wound as if on instinct, a cry of pain finally leaving my body.

As if on instinct, he picked me up like I weighed nothing. I clutched onto the back of his shirt while he started moving. Opened a door, then closed it. Opened a door, then deposited me on the floor in the bedroom, my legs overtop of a towel stained with dark brown spots. I put my hands back around the wound, blood leaking onto my hands. He walked around me, pulled a red bag out from under the bed.

He crouched, untied my shoes, slid them off. “Pants’re gonna have to come off,” he said. I was afraid to move my hands, afraid to do anything that may cause the bleeding to escalate. But I was also afraid of what he’d do if I continued to defy his orders. The pants came off. “Move your hands.”

“Ho-hos-hospital?” I managed through the pain.

He moved to his knees by my right thigh, started unzipping the red bag. “Closest one’s across the border, and any wounds involving guns have to be reported to the police.” He snapped on latex gloves. “Don’t worry, I didn’t nick your artery or any major veins.” He pulled out metal tongs that looked like some sort of torture device, gave me a smile. “You’re in good hands. I know what I’m doing. Don’t scream.”

I bit my tongue until I tasted blood. Fearing I was going to bite it off, I switched to biting my lip, reopening the wound that had begun to heal. He used the metal tongs to spread the bullet hole wider. He shone a flashlight at different angles until he was satisfied and held it in place with his teeth. He dug around the wound with a different pair of metal tongs. Eventually the burning from the metal in my thigh, from where I bit wounds into my mouth numbed me to any sort of pain. In a slow, but swift movement, he pulled out the metal tongs he was holding, the bullet held securely between the prongs. He placed the bloodied bullet in my hands, took the flashlight from his mouth, and the other tongs from my thigh.

He told me to tilt my head forward, keep my mouth open, and not to swallow any of the blood with a large sigh. It was too late for me not to swallow any blood. I swallowed the blood almost as soon as it filled my mouth before he said anything. The blood dripped down my chin while he stabbed my skin with a needle. I watched him sew me back together, place gauze pads and wrap strips around my thigh until he was satisfied.

Mathias wiped the blood from my chin, stuffed my mouth full of gauze pads before taking the bullet from my hands and snapping his gloves off. “You want to keep the bullet?” I tried my best to say no through the gauze, to ask why I would ever want to keep a bullet. I was surprised he understood me with gauze in my mouth. “First bullet you’ve been shot with. Memento. You sure you don’t want it?” I shook my head. He stood, walked down the hall with the gloves and bullet in hand.

With him gone, I tried to stand, but orientating myself to my knees gave me a shot of pain through my thigh. I stayed seated with my legs out in front of me and waited for Mathias to come back. He did, fairly quickly, carrying a tub of sugar with a spoon on top of it in his hands. He knelt back down next to me, sat the sugar on the floor. The gauze was soaked in my blood in my spit when he gingerly removed it, threw the stuck together mass on the towel. He shoveled spoonful after spoonful of sugar into my mouth to help stop the bleeding.

After he cleaned everything up, which included wiping any remaining blood from me, making sure the new wounds in my mouth had stopped bleeding, he had me change into looser pants and an unbloodied shirt. I was picked up once more, placed on the bed. He handcuffed me to the headboard, then got to work on mending the hole in the jeans in silence. I watched him in a strange silence, trying to bring myself to focus on anything but the pain in my thigh and mouth. It was weird seeing him so…domesticated. Playing the role of both a father and mother. I watched him tie off the string, cut it with his teeth. Even the most delicate of practices became crude in his hands.

He threw the now mended jeans with the rest of the dirty laundry on the floor. Put away his sewing kit, left the room once more. Upon reentry, the first aid kit that was left as an afterthought on the coffee table was now back in his hands. There was no where I could go, not with one hand stuck to the headboard, and the pain throbbing in my thigh. I took a breath, trying to calm myself down from the thing that started all of this.

The gauze on my temple was peeled back. Ointment was dabbed on the cut. A new square of gauze and tape took the old’s place. “I told you,” he said, packing the first aid kit up again, “I wasn’t gonna hurt you. This is all on you.”

I hung my head. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You should be,” he responded. “’Cause I warned you. Twice.” He patted my thigh over my bullet wound, I could think on purpose. “Get some rest, ‘cause your gonna want some.” He smiled another cruel smile. “The withdrawal symptoms are gonna start and get worse, and the pain’s gonna get worse. And my anger…my punishments are gonna make your life a living hell.” He slammed the door on his way out.

I tried, really tried, to get some rest. But I was scared, and in throbbing, burning pain. It was hard to lie on my left side because of my right hand being cuffed to the headboard. It was impossible to lie on my right side from the wound. It was uncomfortable to lie on my back, however it was the only position that I felt some comfort in. I closed my eyes, at least giving the illusion that I was asleep if he were to check on me. At some point, the pain faded away, the fear faded away, and the adrenaline seeped out of me. The sleep, the dreams that followed, may have been scarier than anything Mathias could have done to me.