Dots

He never says anything when he's facing the sink.

The first time he faced the sink, I asked what he was doing. But he didn't answer me, just stood there with his body between me and what he was looking at. He hadn't changed his t-shirt for a few days. I distinctly remember the way the wrinkled fabric pooled between his shoulder blades. I recall catching a hint of sweat and musky cologne radiating off of his lanky body.

There are no mirrors in the room with the sink. It is a white room, with scrubbed white tile on the floor and the walls; there is always the sharp scent of bleach. In the middle of the ceiling is one light fixture that bathes the room in scathingly white light. The first time I entered the room, I felt like I was in some sort of doctor's office.

Only there was no doctor's table. There was only the shallow sink with the steel faucet and the narrow lip surrounding the sink. He'd walked up to that sink and hadn't answered me until at last he turned around and spoke to me.

"There are some things you must learn." he'd said. " Now, you must listen to me."

And I had listened to him. I had been too afraid to do anything else. In his voice, which was somehow as blank and emotionless as the room, he'd continued.

"There are three things you must know. The first is that you must never make a sound unless I ask you to."

I'd suppressed a whimper.

"The second is that you must always do precisely what I say."

The whimper was coming up again; I forced it back down my throat.

"And the third is that you must never think that you will get out of here. Because I will know if you are thinking that. Do you understand me?"

He'd stepped towards me. It had only been a small movement, but it'd demonstrated his point. I had barely been able to manage a nod in response to his question. He wasn't especially muscular and he'd moved slowly, but the way he'd moved was sharp, rimmed with slivers of glass.

"Very good."

The first day seems like eternities ago in some ways, yet in others it only feels like yesterday. In the white room that has become my world, everything blends together. He hasn't given me a picture or a book or anything that could remind me of the outside world; I have never asked him. But I know what the answer would be if I did come up with the courage to ask. He would bring his face close to mine, and calmly question if I was thinking about the outside world. The one I will never see again.

Without evidence of a day passing, without being able to watch the sun rise or stars blink into existence in the evenings, there is no time. There is no color. There is only the room with the sink.

There is also no clock. But he always arrives, and I can usually guess by the smell of liquor and cigarette smoke lingering on his body that he's been out drinking. So I suppose it's night when he comes in. But it doesn't really matter, because no matter what time it is outside he always follows the same routine. He walks right past me on to the sink and stands there. He removes things from his pockets and puts them on the lip of the sink, and after he's stood there for a few moments, he speaks. And I always do precisely what he says to do, which is always the same thing.

"Give me your wrists," he says. So, I do.

This time, when he walks in, he's no different. His face is the same scrubbed blankness as the room. His flat grey eyes go directly to the sink; he walks straight to it without even stopping to notice if I'm still alive. He slips across the room, his long legs hitching smoothly with each stride. His walk isn't bumpy like a mule, but instead stealthy, as if he's a panther who's about to ambush its prey.

I'm crumpled in the corner, wearing my long white t-shirt. It's a man's size XXXL, and it hangs shapelessly over my body and nearly down to my knees. I'm small and frail from my imprisonment, but even before I came here I was a fragile young woman. Back then, I'd loved to eat. My friends had hated me because of my overactive metabolism. They'd said I was like Shaggy from the old Scooby-Doo cartoons. No matter what I ate, I never gained a pound.

It's the same here. Except now, I don't gain any weight because I'm barely eating enough to survive. There are two reasons for this. One, all he gives me is watered-down condensed soup. Two, I've lost my appetite.

Waiting in my corner, I know what is coming. Still, I don't move until he says to. There are many unspoken rules other than the three he listed for me on that distant first day. He turns. He says the four words that make my stomach knot up.

"Give me your wrists."

So I pad over to him, the tile floor pale against the soles of my feet. Without hesitation, I offer him both of them. He takes the left one. His hands are damp and uncalloused. Before I was brought here, my hands were tanned and almost leathery. Now, without the sun's radiation to darken them and no work to toughen them up, they are slowly changing to resemble his. He meticulously takes my left hand with his manicured ones, turns it over, and presses the back against the sink.

He removes a syringe from the lip of the sink. The long silver needle glints as he moves it towards my wrist. The first time he did this, I tried to scream, but he'd slammed me into the wall with sickening strength before I could make a sound. I'd nearly passed out in fear; I'd felt like spiders with electric legs were crawling over my chest and down my legs and into my mouth. He'd said:

"I didn't tell you to do that, did I?" Shaking and trying not to choke on my whines, I'd nodded. His cold hands were buried into my stomach. He let me go as soon as I nodded. I never tried to fight him again. Already wherever he touched me felt filthy and clammy and poisoned. If fighting meant him touching me on anywhere than my forearms, I would not fight.

The needle is drifting towards my wrist. I wish he would just go quickly and get it over with, but he never does. When the needle burrows into my wrist, there's a faint shard of pain. He pulls up on the plunger, and my blood fills the barrel of the syringe. I watch the entire process, my eyes open and staring in the direction of my wrist, but I'm not really seeing. My mind is far away from the white room, remembering a summer afternoon I spent with my friends not too long before a man ran up behind me on the sidewalk and pressed a rag smelling of chemicals over my mouth.

He removes the needle. I release a weak sigh. Now, he does something that bewildered me the first time he did it. He takes the syringe and empties it into the sink. He presses down on the plunger and squirts the blood, my blood, into the sink. It collects near the drain. When he washes the last traces of it away by turning on the faucet, I'm inwardly relieved. It's over. He turns and leaves the room, taking his syringe with him. The locks on the door click behind him. I return to my corner and sink into the angle where the two walls meet.

The first time he did that, I was horrified and confused. But after a few more nights, I realized what he was doing. He was sucking my blood out of me, invading me with the needle and removing what kept me alive without my permission. On top of that, he was dribbling it down the drain, showing me how worthless I was. Showing me how easy it would be to terminate what pitiful existence I was carrying on.

My wrists are covered with dots. In reality, they're miniscule bruises left by the entry of the needle, but they look much more like someone took a purple fine-tip marker and speckled my wrists with it. There is one especially nasty-looking scar on my left wrist. That one is from when he was horribly drunk. He'd pushed the needle all the way down until it'd collided with bone, but I hadn't made a sound. My stomach muscles had tightened; I had almost screeched because white-hot pain was ravaging my arm. Still, I hadn't made a sound because that would be breaking a rule.

Sometimes I can hear the outside world. I hear train whistles echoing. On one hopeful occasion, I'd heard sirens and prayed for the door to come bursting open and see someone with a badge walk in. But the sirens faded out just like the train whistles. There is no point to trying to break out of here. If he catches me making a sound, he will not be satisfied by sticking needles in my wrist.

So I sit down in my corner, my body small in my t-shirt, cradling my wrists in my lap and counting the dots. There are fourty-three. I don't see how many more he can make before he runs out of space on my skin. Perhaps he will move on to other areas of my body. Perhaps he will give up the practice entirely and, in addition, cease keeping me alive with bowls of watery food.

I just want to feel the sun again. I just want to hear my little sister's voice asking me where I've been. My hope is vanishing just like the sirens and the train whistles. Sometimes I close my eyes and wish myself out of the white room, even if it means death.

But all I ever see is dots.