Light filtered in from somewhere, hitting my closed eyes. At first, I thought I was still lying on the couch, but the thing my hand hit wasn’t the back of the couch, and the light didn’t seem bright enough to be from the sun. I opened my eyes, first seeing that Mathias was in the process of moving my hand from his lap. The light came from a laptop screen. From how I had angled my head, I could make out Jeanne’s face, purple headphones on her head. She was playing one of those games she was good at, speaking without any sound. Text appeared every once in a while on the screen, it was this text that Mathias seemed to be spending the most time scrutinizing.

He typed something using one finger on each hand, then wrote something down on the nightstand. I rolled more onto my left side, digging half of my head into my arm. The text became a little clearer to me, she became a little clearer to me. She was in her pajamas, one pink-clothed knee in frame to give her chin a rest. She took a break to drink from a mug, then spoke something fascinating enough that he had to write it down. I didn’t like how he watched my sister with such intent set on his face. He analyzed her just as he had done me, but it looked different. There was something missing from the way he stared at the screen, the way he set his jaw.

He wrote one more thing down, closed the laptop, took it with him as he left the room. I glanced back to the window to try and get some sort of sense on the time. It was pitch black out. It was either late at night or early in the morning. I buried my head back in my arm heaving a breath. I felt exhausted and heavy. I wasn’t too sure if it was from my crying most of today—last night—that I was running a fever, or a combination of the two. I didn’t permit myself to close my eyes, I instead lived in that dizzying zone between awake and sleep. I tried to make out whatever it was he was writing on in the dark. If he left the cellphone on the nightstand again. That would be my only chance to call for help, to warn my sisters he was coming after them to find me. I crawled closer to the nightstand, seeing the paper and a pen, with words blending into the dark. I felt around the top of the nightstand, hoping, wishing, the phone was there. My resolve left me when I only felt the paper and pen.

I flopped on my back, taking up both sides of the bed. The phone, that’s all I had as my escape plan. I cursed the fact that he was smart enough to not leave me alone, uncuffed, where I could get to a phone. I closed my eyes in part anger, part my body winning out. What would he do if he found me calling emergency services on the phone? He expressly told me not to use any electronics lying about. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be any worse than shooting me in the leg…could it?

The door opened, closed. I forced my breathing to even out as I couldn’t tell where he was moving. I prayed, my heart beating furiously, that he would fall for my ruse. He tsked above me. I let my vision swim in the dark behind my eyelids, opened my mouth slightly. I was contemplating on snoring to sell it even further. I decided against it when he dragged me to the other side of the bed. He pulled the quilt up to my neck; exhaustion winning against my anger as the bed creaked with him settling in it.

There was a time when I was overly protective of my sisters. Those memories flooded me in my sleep after seeing Jeanne. It started when Anne entered high school the year after me. I made it known to every boy in the school that if they wanted to get to her, they’d have to go through me first. I wasn’t particularly threatening, but saying it enough times, the message got through. That, or it was because of the gang I hung out with after hours. We had a reputation for getting into trouble, and one of my friends caught Anne’s eye. I was wholeheartedly against her hanging out with us, with him, but she did so anyway. She gained her own reputation as someone not to be messed with after she had her heart broken by him.

It was Anne and I against the world after that. We made a side hustle selling liquor and cigarettes to students. We’d take a swig of every bottle of liquor we’d sell, and a cigarette from each pack just to spite them. If we got caught by the school, by our father, we wouldn’t get off with only a grounding. We didn’t know what to do with the cigarettes we took at first. I commented on how I’ve always wondered what they tasted like, and Anne shared my sentiment. I got my sister, myself, hooked on them. We’d shake the smell from our hair and clothes as best as we could before going home. It helped cover any suspicion that our father smoked in the house.

It only got worse from there the next year when Margot started high school. She attracted all the boys’ attention. I didn’t want her heart to get broken like Anne’s had been. I forced her to hang out with me, and she pushed me away the hardest. She never finished her schooling, running off to become a model. By the time Jeanne moved to the high school, I had graduated. I made a living selling fake IDs at exorbitant prices until I met a man who claimed he was a friend of my father’s.

I was startled out of my sleep, of my memories that overcame my dreams, by pain in my wrist. I tried to sit up, only to find I was on my stomach. I pushed myself up with help from my left arm and looked to my right where Mathias was gripping my wrist as if to break it. My mouth went dry, my heart hammering as I tried to figure out what I had done in my sleep. I noticed how close I was to him, our hips almost touching. It dawned on me what had happened.

He glared at me, squeezing my wrist even harder. His words didn’t come as a big surprise now that I began to piece things together. “Why were you petting me?” He growled. I pushed my face into the mattress to stifle my laughter and quell my embarrassment. It was a ridiculous thing to say while angry. I didn’t think my sanity had diminished enough to bark at him as my answer. I really didn’t want to answer him, but it seemed like he was tired of my silent act. Another sharp pang of pain went through my arm and leg as I felt him sit on top of me, twisting my arm into an unnatural position. “I will break it,” he warned.

“Jaime,” I whined through the pain. He loosened his grip on my arm a touch. “She’d…She’d sleep next…to me…” I whimpered. He let go of my arm, rolled off me. I tucked my tail and made my way as far away from him as I could on the bed. I held my right arm at the elbow, trying to get feeling back into it. I squeezed at my elbow, halfway up my arm, and my shoulder, just to make sure everything was in the places it should be. I watched him in the dark, sitting up against the headboard, arms crossed, eyes closed. I stared up at the ceiling, cradling my arm.

Onufrin, that man made me into who I was. The three of us, him, my father, and I, stood in my father’s study. Two of us smoking, the other cleaning his glasses. It was weird to think how alike my father and I were. As I walked through the door, I was already in the process of lighting a smoke, only to find my father doing the same. I always thought my father was a large man, that was until Onufrin was in the same room as him. He seemed to tower over him, and it unnerved my father each time he had to look up to talk to him.

Onufrin had a scar on his cheek he tried to hide by growing a beard. That was the thing I remembered about him the most, that and his angular face behind his glasses. He explained, heavily accented, that he could give me a better purpose than selling fakes. It’d be a favor to his father for what he did for him during one of the wars he served in. Unbeknownst to my father, Onufrin had skills that were useful in vanishing people. I was excited by what he could teach me. My father was skeptical that it would give him what he needed. Whatever Onufrin taught me, my father followed it with how to not get caught.

If I could find the file, I would know how much about me, and my family, they really knew. If I could find the cellphone, the laptop, I could get a message out to my sisters, a message out to help. He said he was a light sleeper, but that may have been another one of his lies. I had this chance; I didn’t know when I’d get another one. I sat up as quietly as I could, the bed still creaking in defiance. I looked over at him, holding my breath. He didn’t move, his chest falling and rising in an even rhythm.

I stood, putting my weight on my left leg. My socks against the wood allowed me to slide and shuffle my feet with ease. It calmed my mind of the possibility of a squeaky floorboard messing this up for me. When I got to the door, I turned the knob slowly, looking back at him in case the door squeaked and got me caught. I opened it just enough I could slip through into the dark hallway and shut it just as quietly. I heaved a sigh of relief, my heart calming down. The cold of the house finally started to seep into my bones.

There were two places my valued items might be, both being upstairs. I had no flashlight, so I relied on my memory to get me to the stairs. I stood at the bottom of them, looking up at the dark, wondering how I’d walk up them with a bad leg. Taking them one step at time, was the best option, with crawling being the runner up. I steeled myself, that whatever I felt, I mustn’t scream out in pain. I grabbed the railing with both hands, my left foot leading. I leaned on the railing as much as I could as I moved my left foot from one step to the other. I got through three steps before the pain was too much and I took to crawling.

The desire to lay down at the landing and catch my breath almost overtook my initial plans. I forced myself to my feet at the top of the stairs, hugging the wall. I decided to check the study first, hoping at the very least I’d find something I’d be able to use for light. Its door was open, leading into pitch black. I seethed in pain as I hobbled in, praying, wishing, my eyes to adjust to the deeper darkness.

There was a desk in the center of the room, I recalled. I limped towards it, leaning against it when my hands touched it. A chair, there had to be a chair I could sit in to take a break from standing. I made my way to the other side of the desk, putting my hand to feel for a chair. I would’ve laughed when I felt it, if I wasn’t paranoid Mathias would hear the sound in his sleep. I lowered myself into it as silently as I could. I felt around the top of the desk at first, feeling things that felt like pens and pencils. I didn’t find the items I was looking for, however.

I took to the drawers, sliding them out slowly in hopes they wouldn’t make too much noise. My eyes had adjusted enough that I could make out the shapes of what lied in the drawers. There was something that took the shape of a cartridge of bullets next to a bore brush. In the next drawer down was paper, both lined and unlined, and note cards. The largest drawer held a bunch of trinkets that I wasn’t sure what to make of.

The other side of the desk drawers had more promise to them. In the first drawer I found a key, to what, I wasn’t sure of. The second drawer held a pen light. I wrapped my fingers around it as it became my saving grace. I clicked it on, determined to go through the entirety of this room until I was satisfied. I went through the rest of the desk, now seeing it in the light. I took another look at the top just to make sure I hadn’t missed something. I noticed something that I didn’t feel before. I swallowed as I followed the fingers, arms, up to the person they belonged to.

“Boo!” Mathias said, grabbing my arms. I screamed, as I didn’t know what else to do.