Chapter 5 rewrite

Lena opened her eyes slowly. Her body felt like one big muscle ache, and she couldn’t move her arms or legs. She couldn’t see much, either; it was very dark. She could feel that she was lying on a rough, cold floor, probably concrete. There was a mélange of odors that she wasn’t familiar with, or maybe she was, just not together. Her brain felt fuzzy. She realized that she had been drugged. One more reason why she hated taking drugs. She didn’t take aspirin if she could possibly get around it. She tried to look around, but, between the double vision and the limited lighting, she couldn’t tell anything about where she was. There was stuff around her, some shapes that looked like boxes, and some other miscellaneous items, but nothing that she could identify with any real certainty. She tried to get a sense of how she was; as near as she could tell, through the lingering effects of the drug, she wasn’t really hurt. Nothing seemed to be broken. There might be few bruises here and there, but, mostly, there was just the one, big body ache. She tried to remember how she wound up here, but her memory was foggy. The last thing she remembered was getting into the car with him. It had surprised her when he showed up at the park; she had mentioned to him that she liked to eat lunch there, but he had never shown up there before. In fact, he had never even suggested that he would like to meet her for lunch. He had seemed rational at the park, although a little excited. He said that he needed to show her something, but when they got close to the car he just went quietly nuts. It had frightened her, and she tried to pull away, but he grabbed her and shoved her into the car. He had insisted that she try some new kind of energy drink, with no explanation, but she thought maybe it would calm him down if she drank it. The next thing she knew, she was here, wherever here was. As the drugs faded, her body ache abated, but was gradually replaced by a pounding headache. She wondered briefly what he had given her, but knew that she wouldn’t be able to figure it out, with her limited knowledge of the effects of specific drugs. Whatever it was, it left a bad taste in her mouth. She tried to focus on whatever clues there were that he would come to this. Two months ago, he had seemed so romantic, doting on her every want and need. He had taken her to a flower show, and it was clear from his reactions that he wasn’t interested in the flowers. He had gotten her some very nice and thoughtful gifts. Some of those gifts had been somewhat expensive. Lately, though, he had been becoming much more possessive, which caused her to pull away. It had turned into a vicious cycle: he kept trying to push closer, and the more he pushed, the more she pulled away; the more she pulled away, the harder he pushed. It had gotten to be too much; she had been planning to tell him over dinner that she didn’t want to see him any more. Apparently he had figured that out, and decided to take matters into his own hands. She tried to mentally make a list of people that would notice that she was missing. Her boss had offered to give her Friday afternoon off, but she had declined. Of course, when she didn’t come back after lunch, he would probably just assume that she had changed her mind. She hadn’t made dinner plans with anybody, because she had planned on having dinner with Mark, so that she could break it off; none of her friends would notice her missing right away. She didn’t have a roommate, so there was no help there. Her hands and feet were tied securely. Escape seemed unlikely, and a rescue was even less probable. Suddenly she was wracked with hunger pains. Her stomach had just realized that she was awake. She had eaten a small lunch at the park before, but she had no way of knowing how long ago that was, other than the feeling in her belly telling her that it had been yesterday. At the same time, the drugs were giving her a distinct queasy feeling. If she didn’t get something to settle her tummy soon, she was liable to make a big mess, right here on the floor, and she was just going to have to lie in it. She tried not to think about it, but it was like trying not to think about a pink elephant. The more she tried to keep her mind off of it, the more she thought about it. The more she thought about it, the queasier she felt. Finally it occurred to her to try not to think about escaping, and that ended the cycle.Then her bladder woke up, and all she could do was cry.