Nothing
by Kristin Geiger
At seven o'clock, Mr. N. David, big and important as he was, barreled into his home after being confined by work all day. Behind him was fellow executive captive Mr. Jung, an everyday visitor to the David home, both dressed importantly with $60 illustrious JC Penny ties in front of $600 Ferragamo printed dress shirts with $6,000 suits (closely resembling ensembles from the Hugo Boss collection) holding the pieces together. Mr. N. David greeted his wife with a grunt, but other than that indifferent sound, neither spoke a word to anyone before disappearing into an office down the hall.
A blond, sad, little pup stood in the corner away from anything else that breathed. She was a 5-year-old little girl from Chicago who was also purchased dirtily by Mr. N. David. Her princess pink skirt had lost most of its glitter, probably from the compulsive wringing she did with her hands to the skirt. Ruth paid her a lot of attention most of the time. Somewhere a mother had lost her blonde, sad, little pup and that gave Ruth the strong feel of obligation and duty.
“My husband, I bet, is going to make Mr. Jung an offer of you,” Mrs. Esther David whispered, tearing Ruth's gaze from the girl. Esther was most likely letting Ruth in on this in secret after the men had left, to spare her humiliation in front of a potential client. Ruth had met Mr. Jung a couple of times before seeing him now, but that wasn't why she was aghast by the business proposition she'd just heard. Three years ago, she had lost her person when she was purchased by Mr. N. David at an auction. At the time, the fear was new to her and had complete control over every nerve in her body, but that had all gone away with time, and with the fact that Mr. N. David had never abused her sexually nor used her as a commodity. At this exact moment, she remembered what the fear felt like, down to the tips of her toes.
As she lay in bed that night, her mind was kept awake by thoughts about strangers touching her in places she did not want to be touched. Would Mr. N. David really go through with such a transaction that involved selling her body? What did it matter, really, when she had grieved, then accepted the loss of her spiritual body and soul three years ago? Her body now was only physical, easily separated from her mind. She was grateful, at least, for being able to keep her name; it was the only thing left of her individualism. That and the small part of her (the only part not void of feeling) that held affection for her captors.
It was this affection, honestly, that held her back from making an escape. “One day,” she would comment to herself, she would finally be free. “One day. Tomorrow,” and she would hold that promise for the whole day, convincing herself that the next day, she really would attempt an escape. By now, it would be an easy plan to carry out because her captors had come to trust her. They left her alone, some days all day, and any one of those days nothing would be easier than just walking out the front door. She never did, she knew she could, but “tomorrow” often turned into, “One day, this weekend.” Esther insisted on lavish nights out with her husband that kept them away until early hours of the morning. How easy it would be to walk out the front door, except that they left Malachi, the toddler-aged son there, and he was a light sleeper, screaming bloody murder when the door opened or closed. So in fact, it would not be so easy just to walk out to leave him behind. And Helen, Ruth would never leave Helen here alone. She'd never seen anyone so much as touch Helen in the slightest of wrong ways, but Ruth knew it would no doubt be possible in her absence. “One day” would be pushed further into the future. Until now.
Maybe all dignity and pride was lost with her identity three years ago, and maybe she gave up too easily on everything else in life because she was submissive, and maybe she was forgotten by her real family, but fear often becomes especially powerful to fight. “One day,” turned into “this night,” and before she knew it, her body was out of the bed and walking toward the bedroom door.
In the dark hours, after Mr. Jung had left and everyone else was asleep, Ruth came downstairs with little doubt that she would execute her escape, superficial or legitimate confidence driving her forward. Be damned whichever one it actually was, unimportant.
The polished steps were silent under her socked feet. Although her steps made no noise, she stopped dead when she heard something in the story below that sounded like muffled footsteps. She turned around in a heartbeat to slink back upstairs, thinking that she had somehow attracted someone by noise, even though everyone in the house was in bed by that time of night. The door to her room was in sight, but she stopped on a breath when a new noise touched her, like a crying except not from someone as little as Malachi. Caution fled from her and curiosity, as dangerous as it can be, came over her so she traveled back down to hear more.
At the bottom of the stair was the door to the billiard room that connected to Mr. N. David's office. With the stealth she'd used coming down the stair, she opened the door, crept inside the billiard room, and went over to the other door. There was a definite crying sound, but she could hear little more than that. She pressed her ear hard against the wood, straining to make out anything else, but all it did was push the door open with a creak. She leaped back in another heartbeat and scrambled over to a cabinet she'd once used to hide in while playing hide-and-seek with Helen and Malachi. It was empty and could easily fit a person, although it was cramped. She climbed inside.
“I swear by it, I swear,” came the desperate voice of some man she could not distinguish.
“May I suggest a game of billiards?”
Mr. N. David's voice was cool and deep, as it always was because he never raised his voice and had never (even before she knew him well) struck fear in Ruth's chest by voice alone. The men entered the billiard room.
The other man had agreed to a game, “just one game,” and the light came on in the billiard room. Ruth couldn't see a thing, not even that the light was on in the room housing her hiding spot, but she listened intently because nobody sounded scared anymore.
The game was carried out in silence, aside from the clicks of one ball hitting another ball on top the table, but no voice indicated distress like it had before. Then, even that stopped, and after a few moments, Ruth thought the room was cleared out. She pushed the door of the cabinet open just a little and in the very next moment, her virgin eyes saw something her equally virgin mind could not comprehend.
Mr. Jung was bent over the pool table with Mr. N. David positioned, in motion, right behind him. It was inevitable, she could not hold back, she gasped neither softly nor loudly, and shut her eyes to try and erase the scene from her mind. The men, when she forced herself to look at them to make sure they hadn't heard her, had stopped as if they had.
“I heard nothing,” Mr. Jung purred.
And so, assured, they continued and Ruth looked away again.
For an uncertain amount of time, Ruth held herself tight in that cabinet, wanting desperately to sanitize her mind. She accomplished nothing from that effort, but when the room became quiet again after footsteps clearly walked back into the office, she decided to look out once more, hoping she could get away unnoticed.
Mr. N. David was back behind Mr. Jung. From behind, Mr. N. David yanked Mr. Jung's head by his hair until it rested on Mr. N. David's shoulder. The knife in his hand glinted in the dull billiard room light as it sliced open Mr. Jung's exposed throat.
***
A few nights after the incident, the neighbor boy came over to the house. He had an obvious crush on Ruth that Esther frowned upon. Nearly every day she warned Ruth about the neighbor boy because “it was too much of risk.” To the rest of the neighborhood, Ruth was the David's niece and Ruth knew she would never divulge the truth to anyone, especially not the neighbor boy whom she did see in private. He, Malachi, and Helen were her only friends, but the advantage of the neighbor boy was that he was of her own age and he saw her as a person, even after everything was taken from her.
On this particular night when the neighbor boy came to see Ruth, Mr. N. David was home and Ruth, still very shaken from recent memories, refused to see him.
“But, Ruth, I have to tell you something special. A secret. It’s important and I have to tell you before I go back to Israel in the fall.” He insisted, and Ruth found she could not resist any longer. She stole away into the hedges, the neighbor boy pressed almost directly against her, something her once virgin mind now feared, but accepted anyway. “I love you, Ruth. Your Aunt and Uncle...I despise them. Come away with me, Ruth. Come away, to Israel. We can go away, and they'll never know where you went.”
“One day.” The voice in Ruth's head spoke. An opportunity was calling. The neighbor boy kissed her. It should have deterred her, but, instead, she was filled with passion because she'd never been kissed before. She knew on instinct how to kiss him back, and she allowed herself to for a moment before pushing him away gently. He looked at her with pure and true love, but she did not return the look, even though she was about to accept his marvelous offering, but not out of love, out of hope for escape.
A dark cloud billowed over them. When Ruth looked up towards him, the neighbor boy turned around to meet the dark purple face of Mr. N. David.
“Step away from the hedges.” He growled, deep like a lion, the only alteration of his normal voice that Ruth had ever heard. The neighbor boy stepped back, leaving Ruth with a promise in his eyes, before he ran away home to leave her to battle Mr. N. David.
Mr. N. David said nothing. He walked away. And Ruth was alone.
***
Esther never seemed suspicious that Mr. Jung no longer came around the house. Ruth never told. In the next few days, a new face was introduced to the household. His name was Mongo. He was big as a house, dark as a cocoa bean, with warm brown eyes and plump cheeks. When Mr. Jung came over, he barely said a word to anyone but Mr. N. David. This new man didn't fit into the picture very well.
“From now on, Mongo Samson will be my bodyguard,” Mr. N. David told his wife, who reacted with surprise.
“Because of what happened with Mr. Jung?” she asked because to her, the disappearance provoked a nervous feeling about her husband's business dealings.
“That and because every man vital to his company should be in the company of a bodyguard. There are dangerous people out there, honey. I am not about to join the ranks of the successful dead.”
Mr. N. David invited Mongo for dinner and nothing about him seemed untrustworthy to Ruth. Strange. Very strange.
No one knew that someone else had seen the murder of Mr. Jung, Mr. N. David's wife, Esther. Never before had she she found a reason to leave her husband. If she were going to, now would be the best time. Of course she would bring Malachi with her and Helen, because despite material appearances, Esther felt a certain attachment -- maybe love -- to the pint-sized child. She would take Ruth, too, for the same reasons.
Mr. N. David saw his wife's luggage, even as best as she tried to keep it hidden.
That night, Ruth thought about her upcoming escape with the neighbor boy to Israel. It was going to be increasingly more difficult to bear her remaining days here when she'd found hope. As for her previous inhibitions, they were nearly gone with the overwhelming anxiety she now felt concerning the recent murder of Mr. Jung.
On the morning of the escape, Ruth rose early to be on time to meet the neighbor boy in the spot he'd designated for them. Nothing in her room was worth anything to her, so she packed lightly, and on the way downstairs, she had to restrain herself from stopping in to say goodbye to Malachi -- too risky. Silently, she said a prayer over him that he wouldn't be too screwed up when he was an adult.
More than halfway downstairs, she heard something coming from the bedroom above her. All instinct told her not to go investigate. She was almost on her way to being home free; stopping for anything in this house at this point would be chancy. So, she continued just a few more steps until she heard a cry far different from the one she'd heard on the night of Mr. Jung's death. No doubt the cry was from Esther David, and with her being the only motherly figure she could have almost counted on the past few years, Ruth didn't let her intelligence talk her out of turning around and running upstairs to the master bedroom. She swung open the unlocked door and let a cry of her own slip out.
“You're insane!” Esther snarled mid-sob at her husband, while the knife he controlled slowly chopped up her fingers like carrots, blood pouring over the edge of the bed to pool on the floor. Ghost-faced Esther blinked at the enterer just as Mr. N. David looked up from his work.
“I assumed rightly you would be coming in here. Have a seat, watch if you like.” He offered like he wanted her to join him in watching a program about the ethics of marketing on television. Ruth did not stay; she turned and ran into Malachi's room, just to be sure he was OK, never mind that his mother was being tortured to death that very moment. He was OK, but a gun shot rang out from behind her, having her turn around so fast she almost fell over.
The blow had come from the master bedroom. Ruth hoped that it was Esther, fighting back somehow, but she didn't know if she could bare to see the more plausible outcome. An eerie silence fell over the entire house for minutes on end, during which Ruth contemplated her next move. Should she sacrifice freedom (and her life) to see if there was anything else she could do to spare Esther, Helen, and Malachi's lives? Or run fast, so far away, that no one would bother chasing her?
The bedroom door opened. Ruth was facing it, and by now, she probably looked as pale as Esther's bloodless face did. Mongo Samson came out of the bedroom, polishing a pistol. “I killed Nebuchadnezzar David,” he announced. “Ruth Hanae, you're coming with me.”
With no other alternative, Ruth followed, walking stiff as a zombie, feeling nothing in any limb in her body. A slew of burley men clamored up the stairs to clean up Mongo's business.
***
In the kitchen, Ruth perched on a chair, staring out the window into the endless sky.
“I had no choice but to kill the girl's father. The mother was dead before I could reach her. Blood loss.”
Mongo was trying to whisper out of earshot of Ruth, but she could hear. Her eyes were frozen to the outside world, but her ears had not lost hearing.
“They weren't my parents. I don't have any parents,” Ruth said to the men as she moved out of her chair and towards the hallway. The front door couldn't keep her from the outside.
She left, and in the designated meeting spot, the neighbor waited for her to run away with him.
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