Danielle glares at the lightbulb in the center of the room. She smacks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and tunes into the exhaustion in her muscles. This all feels so surreal. Not only was she drugged, kidnapped, and now being held captive; her captor might just be the most notorious serial killer in the area. A serial killer that always kills his victims after seven days.

How long has it been?

Her mouth is just about the driest it can be and her stomach could just about eat its way through itself. She took a nap earlier, but whether the exhaustion is from stress or her natural circadian rhythm, she can’t be sure. What she does know is that when she awoke she heard one chime from the clock upstairs not too long after. But whether it’s AM or PM she has yet to figure out.

Danielle moves from the corner that lets her hear the TV and walks over to the boarded-up window. She’s realized in the time since she arrived that the window behind is probably too narrow for her to squeeze through, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be useful for other things. She plasters her face against the wall and tries to see if there is any sunlight peeking through. Caulk laughs back at her, sealing out any rain and any sun.

Danielle tries the other side, but it too is sealed. The only other angle she can try is underneath. Danielle bends down on her knee, squishes her cheek to the wall, and peers up. Again, nothing. Maybe if the damn lightbulb was off, she could see something.

Danielle straightens up and takes a seat. Her cheek remains cool unlike her first two attempts to peer behind the wood. Danielle rubs her cheek, and to her surprise, she finds it wet.

~

Victim 3: Alesha

Alesha rubs her hand along the wall to find it comes back just as damp as her cheek. A grin springs onto her face.

She reaches up into her shirt and rummages around her bra. When she finds one of the slits in the side, she reaches in and pulls out the cup.

Alesha tests the sponginess between her fingers only once before slamming it into the wall. She presses the pad into the concrete for a whole minute before picking a new patch and rotating the fabric for a new angle. Alesha keeps at it until she can feel the dampness through the cup onto her fingertips. It’s a decent start.

She sits back and leans on the perpendicular wall so none of the moisture soaks into her shirt. Pressing the bra cup between her cracking lips, Alesha begins to suck out the moisture. A survivalist’s greatest danger is dehydration. That’s what she’ll have to fight against until rescue arrives.

Alesha manages to get about half of what she feels she can suck out from the fabric before she hears a click across the room and the hatch creak.

~

Danielle shoves the bra pad back down her shirt. The man’s head lowers down from the ceiling but stays hovering. He makes eye contact with Danielle and drops a bucket to the floor.

“Here’s your bathroom.”

Without averting his eyes, the man then reaches forward and clicks the small tab next to the lightbulb, sending the room into darkness. Before Danielle can say a word, the man disappears and slams the hatch closed behind him.

Relief sweeps through Danielle’s bones. She’s not ready to interact with the man again, not yet. She needs a better grip of her situation, a plan would be best.

Three chimes ring above the concrete ceiling.

Danielle rushes along the wall back over to the TV corner and strains on her tippy toes. The TV indeed turns on and the announcers begin speaking. Unless this man has some sort of 24-hour news channel, this is the evening news, meaning it’s been a full day since she was brough here.

The news-flash jingle plays and the same flat-toned masculine voice from yesterday begins to speak.

“In an update from the Silverbrook Police Department, they have confirmed the delivery of a letter addressing the disappearance of Danielle Ortega. DNA has confirmed that the saliva used in the closing of the letter matches that of the other letters sent by the Minoan Murderer. As with all his other letters, contained within is a cypher that police believed to give the address of the kidnapped woman. Police are posting copies of this letter to their social media and ask that all cryptographers, from novice to expert, help them attempt to defuse this ticking-time bomb.”

Danielle sinks down to the floor. The man upstairs is actually the Minoan Murderer. This also means she knows her time limit, and it’s already one day shorter.

Tears stream down her cheeks and her breaths come in sobs. She pulls the lose bra pad from her shirt and stifles the sound with it and soaks up the precious drops of water. She needs to be smart about this. She needs to calculate her every move, her every minute. She has six days to run, fight, or be rescued. If she fails, she’ll be dead.