Trapped

By Amethyst Turner

You can stare at the exit

You can walk toward the door

You can ignore the present

You can burrow into the floor

But that doesn't stop

That fact that this is not

A dream as it seems

But reality

And you can never leave

XXX

"Hey, did you hear about that girl in the news?"

Libby looked up, confused. Was he talking to her? Richard knew she didn't read the news. "Um, no."

He climbed under the covers, still talking. "Amanda something-or-other. She killed herself yesterday." Then he turned off the lamp and promptly fell silent.

She narrowed her eyes in the dark. So what? People killed themselves all the time. Yeah sure, it was sad, but why was he talking about it? Libby watched his chest rise and fall, wondering if he'd fallen asleep already. She asked, "Did you know her or something?"

"Not really," Richard mumbled. "I recognized her, though. Used to work at Hallmark."

Libby growled to herself. Did they have the money to be going to Hallmark? It was early March. What in hell's name was the point of going to Hallmark in March? "When?"

"Last Valentine's Day."

Well, okay. Fair enough, she supposed. If he wanted to waste his money on twelve dollar greeting cards, then more power to him and his stupid drunk brain. Why were they talking about this again? "Why do you care?" She asked bluntly, laying back down.

Richard turned to look at her. His eyes were not resentful or drunk as they usually were. Tonight, he just looked tired and sad. He looked at her in a way that a married men usually looked at their wives; with a certain amount of trust and maybe even a sliver of affection. "Can you imagine what that was like for her friends and family?"

She could, in face. Libby remembered her freshman year of highschool, being haunted by the ghost of her best friend Molly who'd killed herself in eighth grade. Shaking the thought out of her head, she replied, "Probably sucked for them."

"Yeah." He reached over and brushed a piece of hair out of her face, a simple gesture that made her blood rush hot through her body, her muscles tensing in surprise. In three years of marriage to him, she had never known Richard to be as gentle as he was being right now. His hand resting on the side of her face, he said, "I don't want the same thing to happen to you."

XXX

Amethyst had taken to hiding under her blanket in the box whenever her mother came downstairs. If she didn't she was sure to upset her.

Mommy only came down to eat, or grab something from the downstairs bathroom. If Amethyst bothered her, or even just crossed her path, she would yell or shut her into the cupboard.

She wished for summer so hard that sometimes she could convince herself that the chilly march breeze blowing in through the drafty windows was only a cool June zephyr. That she was in Virginia, waking up on a down mattress with Toto beside her and Mama in the kitchen making waffles.

Sometimes, the thought that Mama didn't want her anymore slipped into her mind, but she never entertained it for more than a few seconds. Sure, she'd left before, but that was forever ago. She'd still take Aimee back, wouldn't she?

Amethyst decided that she would ask Daddy. He would know.

Maybe she'd ask him for a dog, too. A little one that was soft and warm like Toto. She picked up her new stuffed animal, which she had named after her grandmother's dog. This puppy looked nothing like Toto, but she liked to think that they were related. Toto Jr. was squishy and pink with red splotches in the shape of hearts.

The other stuffed animal, the one Daddy had seemed surprised by when she'd pulled it out of the bag, was her favorite. It too was a dog; two dogs, actually. They had floppy ears and sparkly eyes. One was bigger and pink, the other was small and red. Their names were Alice and Peter. Alice, the Mommy dog, had velcro on her hands so that her arms wrapped around Peter's waist and she could hold her puppy

If she had a dog, she would name it Hatter. She giggled. Have I gone mad? 

XXX

"Daddy?"

Richard looked up from the bottle to see his daughter standing in front of him, wearing that ratty old t shirt she used as pajamas. Her blonde hair floated in a tangle around her face. He made a hazy mental note to brush it later. "Go to sleep," he muttered, taking another swig.

Setting her lips in a little pout, she said, "Will you read me a story?"

He sighed. What time was it? Ten thirty? What was she doing awake? Realizing that his beer was empty, Richard stood to get another one. "Not tonight."

She didn't leave. Richard sat back down, cracking open the beer.

"Do you love me?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Does Mommy love me?"

He paused for a second. A good parent would fib; yes, of course Mommy loves you. She's just not good at showing it. But a combination of honesty and alcohol-induced tactlessness led him to answer, "Don't worry. She doesn't love me either." Then he laughed.

Furrowing her thin eyebrows, Aimee frowned at him. "Then why did she marry you?"

"Needed money."

She seemed upset by this information, but Richard couldn't really see why. It was true, wasn't it? She had to have known that her parents weren't madly in love or anything.

"Does she still?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. I guess sometimes you just get pigeonholed into a certain life, and no matter how horrible it is, you can't really leave." Chugging the rest of the beer, he smirked and said, "Hotel California, baby."

"You think this is horrible?"

"Yep."

"You want to leave?"

"Yeah." He realized his mistake a moment later when he tossed the beer bottle into the sink and saw that her face was crumpled with suppressed tears. "I would take you with me," he assured her. "We could go to California and get a house near the water. You could have a pet dolphin."

Aimee wasn't amused. She continued to sniffle, hiding her face in her hands so that he couldn't see if she was actually crying or not. Richard popped open his third beer.

"You're tired, babe," he sighed, swallowing down a fourth of the bottle in one drag. "Go to sleep. You'll feel better in the morning."

She didn't say anything else before running back to her little box in the living room.

XXX

Amethyst avoided her father for the next week or so.

When he came home, she'd crawl under her afghan blanket and pretend to be asleep. In the mornings, she'd watch his boots disappear out the door from behind Scrubbles' head, shutting her eyes tight if he looked her way.

It wasn't that she was mad at him. She just didn't want to talk to him.

But if she wasn't talking to Daddy, there was no one to talk to. After he left for work, she'd clutch Brandon to her chest and cry into his pinkish fur, Wishing and wishing for summer.

But after a week or two of this, she was drained. Drained by loneliness, by sadness. By boredom. And instead of crying when Daddy closed the door behind him, she followed.

She took Scrubbles with her. He helped to unlock the top bolt on the door, since Amethyst couldn't reach it. When they pushed the door open -- slowly, so that Daddy wouldn't see -- they were met by a delicious gust of fresh air. The sky was still tinted gray, but even the street lamps seemed to blind her. Outside was a whole other planet, one that everyone else got to visit whenever they wanted, but Aimee had to savor in the short time she had.

Daddy was opening his car door. Aimee scrambled down the concrete steps, her heart pounding as the asphalt scuffed her palms. He slammed the door shut. Started the car. Aimee crawled into the driveway, ignoring blood dripping from her knees as she did. With her stuffed bear tucked under her left arm, Amethyst reached up and grabbed the back door handle, pulling it hard. Just as the car began to move, it opened, swinging her backward. Amethyst hoisted herself into the backseat, holding her breath.

She couldn't close the door. The handle was too far away for her short arm to reach. Wrapping her arms around Scrubbles, she held the bear for dear life. The wind rushed by her whipping her hair into her face.

They were only about thirty seconds down the road when Daddy noticed the door. Mumbling something about a 'damn hangover', he stopped the car.

Realizing that he was coming back there, AImee did the first thing she could think of to do: she pitched herself into the trunk, over the back seat.

And it worked. Biting her lip, she burrowed into the corner of the dark trunk, trying not to think about how similar it was to the cupboard. The back door closed, then the front one. The car started again, and panic began to set in. She couldn't get out, now, even if she wanted to. She was trapped.

Taking a deep breath, she hugged Scrubbles to her chest. The trunk seemed to be running out of air. Aimee devoted her energy to trying not to cry.

What seemed like forever later, the car stopped again. By this time, tears coated Amethyst's cheeks and blood covered her lip from biting it. She listened to her father's boots crunch onto the ground, to his door slam shut. Nothing moved. It took her a few more minutes to realize that he had left. There was no way out, was there?

I guess sometimes you just get pigeonholed into a certain life, and no matter how horrible it is, you can't really leave. Hotel California, baby. 

XXX

Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"
And in the master's chambers,
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! "

-Hotel California, Eagles