Midwestern Values
By
Asukafan2001
Chapter Two
When you think of Christmas Eve morning, you usually think of getting ready to spend the day with your family. Well for the Keys household things were very different this Christmas Eve morning. The police had stopped by Roger and Tina’s house early to ask questions about what had happened the night before. After spending the better part of an hour spilling out everything they knew the police left just as puzzled as Roger and Tina.
There were so many unanswered questions floating around everyone’s head that just did not add up. There was no sign of intrusion, and no sign of struggle anywhere. However, Emily Craft is gone and no one believes she would just leave her children. She has been too good of a mother for too long for that. The police as well as Tiny and Roger were completely baffled, but Tina and Roger knew the show must go on. They had to try to make a great Christmas happen for Sarah and Michael.
Emily on the other hand awoke to a surreal scene. It was almost something you would expect to happen in a dream. She found herself lying on a bed that had been made out of a piece of foam. The bed frame was made of a plastic that was sculpted to look like wood. The headboard was made of the same plastic wood like material only there was a square in the middle of the headboard that was smooth brown plastic that had a gigantic Fisher Price logo engraved into it.
Emily slowly turned her head taking in the gravity of the situation. Everything since last night was so in comprehendible. You wake up one morning and you’re going to work, shopping for Christmas presents then later that day you find yourself becoming the incredible shrinking woman. Emily didn’t want to believe that this was reality. She kept lying on her foam mattress thinking that any minute she would wake up and this would be over. She would have her life back, her kids, and her family all around her as they butcher classic Christmas carols.
The reality of the situation was; her family and her kids weren’t coming and as the minutes ticked by Emily began to realize this too. Slowly she sat up in her bed and once again looked about the room. The floor was plastic coca cola red. As Emily swung her legs over the side of the bed and stepped down onto the plastic floor she immediately pulled her feet up. The floor was freezing, and the room was cold. Emily shivered as she stepped out into the middle of the room. She spun around on her heels taking in the sights of her surrounds. That is when it her.
“I’m in a cage. I’m in some cage like some animal.” Sobbed Emily. The words struck something inside of her, something primal. Emily ran towards the cage bars and grasped the cold metal bars. She pushed and pulled at them trying with all her might to bend them but they weren’t moving. As Emily shook the bars tears started to well in her eyes as she continued to shake the bars desperately trying to gain back the freedom she so cruelly lost. Emily finally slunk down from the cage bars and fell to the floor with no energy left and placed her head on her knees as she continued to sob unable to believe that this was actually happening.
This was the reality for Emily. She was trapped in a simple cage. The kind of cage you would see in countless homes across America. The kind of cage you can find at any pet store, walmart, or similar store. It was a cage you’d put in some kind of small rodent whether it be a hamster, mouse, or gerbil. The bed was a simple dolls bed that Alex and had placed a small layer soft foam onto before placing Emily onto it.
It took quite awhile for Emily to regain her composure; she could barely process the reality of this situation. Emily looked out from behind the bars of her cage at a gigantic bedroom. The bedroom was on a scale of unlike anything she has ever seen in her life. Posters the size of large apartment buildings, chairs the size of skyscrapers. Even the structure that this cage was on was nothing more than a dresser but it’s a dresser that seems to be rise hundreds of feet into the air. The images of all the gigantic everyday structures were overloading Emily’s brain.
However what astonished and scared her most was what was on the bed. It was the image of Alex curled up under the warm blankets and comforter of her bed while Emily shivered naked and without blankets in the freezing cold cage. The metal bars of the cage seemed to hold in the coldness of the room and block out the heat.
Emily shivered and stared at her captor wondering how she could do this, what kind of monster was she? This girl who Emily had seen grow from a young child into a responsible teenager. Emily desperately sought reasoning behind how Alex could keep her locked in a cage like some animal? This is inhuman. Emily thought as tears streaked down her face, her mind struggling for some rational reasoning behind why this could be happening.
“Alex! ALEX!” Emily screamed her with her hoarse voice and her eyes puffy from crying. She desperately prayed for Alex to awake and give some answer or reasoning Emily hadn’t thought of. As she cried her Emily’s gaze would bore into the lump on the bed which was Alex. She was hoping for some kind of movement, some sign of life but nothing happened.
“Alex, Please!” Emily yelled almost beside herself as she shook the bars with all her strength. Emily could feel hope flittering from her body when she heard the bed springs groan slightly. This immediately perked Emily up, she had done it. She thought as she watched Alex turn over onto her back, a slight snort filled the room followed by a light snore.
Emily fell forward, her head banged against the metal bars and then slid downward as Emily fell to her knees sobbing. Tears pelted Emily’s knees, than fell to the red plastic floor as hopelessness filled her heart and soul. She was only left wondering what her kids were doing, if they were happy or sad. She hoped they didn’t think there mother had run out on them. She desperately hoped they didn’t think that. That would kill her right now; it would be the fatal blow. Emily collapsed emotionally exhausted and sprawled out on the plastic floor.
Emily drifted in and out of consciousness, her mind focusing on nothing, barely aware of what was around her. The cold red floor caused her body to shiver in a desperate attempt to keep warm. Time passed with Emily in this near catatonic state, it wasn’t until the sunlight was shining directly through a small opening in Alex’s otherwise tightly shut drapes that she awoke. Emily rolled over at first forgetting the reality of her situation. She pulled her stiff body up to her feet and looked straight through the metal bars. Emily’s hand covered her mouth in shock.
“It wasn’t a dream, oh god, it wasn’t a dream” Emily sobbed.
“Would you quit the damn cryin’?” Alex coldly said as she rolled out of bed.
The groaning of the bed springs compressing and decompressing rang loudly which caused Emily to cover her ears as she winced in pain. She ran towards the bars and looked out at the titanic form of her neighbor’s daughter. It was an unreal sight to behold which shook Emily to the core. She watched fearfully as Alex rose from her bed.
Alex’s hair was messy from her nights slumber; she was wearing a simple white t-shirt along with baggy grey sweatpants. Alex yawned while stretching her arms, and then walked over the window and pushed the slightly ajar curtains all the way open which let the near afternoon sunlight in. Snow drifted up along the corners of the window with a frosty haze covering the rest.
“A, Al, Alex, what’s going on? Get me out of here!” Emily said in her now squeaky voice which came out gruff from crying and shouting throughout the morning. The request caused Alex to turn and Emily to bite her lower lip nervously as Alex’s gaze met hers. Emily felt a twinge of nervousness as Alex neared the cage; the expression spread across Alex’s face had an air of superiority to it.
“Hello, Mrs. Craft. I hope you are enjoying your accommodations.” Alex said as she leaned towards the cage. As Alex spoke waves of morning breath washed over Emily causing her nose wrinkle up and turn away slightly.
“What’s wrong? Don’t like my breath?” Alex laughed as she puckered her lips and blew her warm raunchy breath onto Emily which caused her tumble onto her bottom.
“Why, why are you doing this to me?” Emily fumbled to get out as she looked up at the large face of Alex mere inches from her. She couldn’t believe how different Alex looked from this vantage point. Her face was much wider and taller; Emily could see all the pores on Alex’s face, along with minute hairs. The face Emily found herself looking at hardly resembles the young, vibrant, and youthful face she was use to seeing.
“Because you’re a bitch, your cheap and unappreciative, I worked for you for three years and never once did you raise my pay. Then, because anytime one of my dogs would go to your yard you would call my folks actin’ like them sniffing around your yard was going to hurt something? Most of all because as much as you love your children you treat everyone else like shit. I don’t know how you got like that, but when I saw you, it was like fate intervening.”
“Ya, ya, you can’t be serious? Alex, I’m a grown woman. I can’t stay like this!” shouts Emily in her squeaky voice as tears drip down her face.
“I have children, a job, responsibilities you can’t just keep me like this.” Emily added
“Keep on whinin’ bitch” Alex said as she yawned again, and then headed out of the room while stating that she was hungry.
The silence was deafening, Emily could hear the sounds from beyond Alex’s room, the sounds of life going on, the sounds of a family happily getting ready to spend the Christmas Eve together, a family mostly completely unaware of the torment, and entrapment going on around them. Emily screamed as best she could praying for someone to open the door and save her, however as the seconds turned to minutes, and Emily’s voice begun to wear down the hopelessness of everything came rushing to her mind. She was trapped, imprisoned by the most unlikely source.
“How is anyone ever going to find me? Who would ever think to look for me here?” Emily said to herself as she looked around at her new surroundings hoping that she would never think of this as her home.
The door burst open, and Emily’s thoughts were interrupted by her captor walking back into the room. The smell of bacon and eggs wafted into the room causing Emily’s stomach to groan in hunger. She never realized how hungry she was until the smell of food entered the picture, now it’s all Emily could think about. Her mouth salivated as the images of scrambled eggs, and perfectly marbled bacon danced through her mind.
“You never can underestimate the value of a good breakfast you know? It’s hard to beat mom’s bacon and eggs.” Alex said as she bent down to look into the cage while smiling ear to ear.
Emily crawled backwards as she found it terrifying to see a face so large, so close in scale. It really hit home on how much larger Alex really was now as she eyed her captor with fear clearly spelled across her face. A part of her wondered what was about to happen, while the other part didn’t want to know.
“Alex, please let me out. You’ve had your fun! Now just let me go to family, please!” Emily pleaded. A moment later Emily felt all the air being shoved out of her, she never even had time to react. Emily slumped forward slightly staring at the eraser end of a pencil shoved into her stomach. Instinctively Emily grasped the pencil and attempted to push it away but it didn’t even budge, not even slightly. It wasn’t until a long couple of minutes passed the Emily felt the pencil retreat and started to slump over but was met with another stab of the pencil. All the life seemed to flow out of her. Emily looked up the length of the pencil and saw Alex grasping it, forcing the rubber eraser further and further into her stomach.
“Well, now that I have your attention, I hope you understand who’s in charge and just what happens when you start whining Mrs. Craft. Face it, you are home now.”
“I have a family, a home, and…” Emily sputtered out
“You don’t have shit, I own you now. You are a possession, a thing, something I own. You are incapable of owning anything. There is no difference between you and my dogs; well there is one difference between you and dogs. I actually love them. You on the other hand haven’t earned my care or respect.” What happened next Emily couldn’t believe, she watched Alex’s lips suck in slightly and then a ball of phlegm came hurdling out before she could even react. The warm saliva splattered on Emily and covered her instantly.
“Merry Christmas” Alex said as she pulled away and ignored Emily.