As soon as the door shuts behind him, you try. You wriggle your wrists, twist your ankles, reach for tools. But he knows how to handcuff someone. He knows how to tie a knot. And he knows to move his tools out of reach from the woman he just tied up in his garden shed.
You need to trust that people will look for you. Your photo will circulate on social media. Your parents and Julie--your throat closes at the thought of the them--will put up posters. They will give interviews, plead for your safe return.
You need to trust that this is temporary, that one day the world will find you.
But there are things you know that he doesn't. Things that will work to his advantage. Anyone who knows you will say that you haven't been yourself. That prior to your disappearance, you became withdrawn. You fell asleep in class. Your grades suffered. You packed your belongings, left the city you loved and the people you knew.
A new story will emerge. Days will go by, weeks, months. People will say it to themselves at first, and then, as they get more comfortable, to one another: Maybe you went missing in purpose. Maybe you drove somewhere and allowed yourself to slip out of existence. You jumped into a ravine, fell into water. Maybe you started over somewhere else. Maybe you are free, finally, of all your demons.
No one will wait for their dead to come back to life.
Eventually, people will stop looking for you. They will stop showing your picture. They will let you fade away. They will stop telling your story, until one day you're the only one left to remember it.
-The Quiet Tenant; Clemence Michallon
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