The scene was surreal and Megan couldn’t get her head around the idea that none of the other people here seemed bothered that they were being held prisoner. They all spoke of how well they had been treated since coming to the farmhouse and how much of a privilege it was for her to have been chosen to come.
The table was laid with a long red tablecloth and fine China dishes were spaced out with polished steel cutlery. Fresh flowers burst from two glass vases and napkins sat in triangles at each place setting. It was more like a fancy restaurant than a basement prison.
Everyone was present and they all sat down to dinner.
As fancy as the setting might be, it was still only takeout food from various places (all reheated in a microwave) that was served up. When everything was set and people started eating, Megan decided it was time to start questioning what was going on.
“So, who here thinks they’re going to get out of here alive one day?” She asked in a completely conversational tone and didn’t look at anyone as she cut up some meat on her plate. Everyone else was silent and they all looked at her.
“I think we should talk about something else,” Eric, the first person Megan had met here, said trying to laugh it off like it was a faux-pas at a sophisticated dinner.
“Something lighter,” a woman called Suzanne said in agreement.
“No, I think we should talk about it,” Megan said, “You guys are going on here like it’s a holiday camp. Do you even know who it is holding you here?”
“We know who he is,” Eric said sourly.
“Do you? Or do you just know his name. Do you know what he’s been doing? He’s been killing people for more than twenty years!”
“Well he hasn't killed us!” Suzanne snapped at Megan, “but talking like yours is a sure good way to change that!”
“Why do you think we are here?” Megan shot back her own anger boiling now. “People we love and being forced to do terrible things so we can stay alive!” Suzanne was about to respond when Eric put a restraining hand on her arm. They looked at one another and Eric shook his head. Suzanne cast one more ferocious look at Megan and then looked back to her food.
“That doesn’t happen anymore,” Eric said to Megan.
“What?” she asked hotly.
“Once you come here, no one is doing anything for you anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“He told us it is a privilege to be here. None of us has had to make a call to our families since we arrived,” Eric said. Megan looked around the faces at the table and each person nodded in agreement with this statement. A feeling of defeat came over her then, but her mind told her she should be happy. Her father was not going to have to do anything more, but what good was that going to be if he was going to be in jail for the rest of his life?
“Are all your loved ones in jail for the things they’ve done?” she asked though with much less force in her voice now.
“Not all, but almost all,” Eric replied. Megan let this sink in a moment, wondering what the ones not arrested had done but deciding not to pursue it right now.
“Has anyone escaped from here?” she asked.
“No, and Suzanne is right, that’s not something we should be talking about,” Eric said his tone more clipped this time.
“Does he listen in?” Megan asked, assuming Spalding did. No one answered but as she looked around another young woman, Ellie nodded once before going back to eating. No one else had seen this so far as Megan knew and right then she felt she’d found the one person who might be of some use to her in this crazy place. Megan decided not to ask any more questions at the dinner table but instead she picked up where she had left off with her plan. She listened and watched everything the others said hoping to piece some clues together about what they all might know.
That night, after washing, they went to bed in one large rom. There were two other rooms with larger beds in them that Megan was told were for privacy if any romance was to bloom down here. The idea sickened her and the fact that this had been told to her without even a hint of humour made it all the worse.
Ellie’s bed was close to Megan’s and their eyes met as they lay down. Ellie made a motion Megan understood to be ‘We will talk later’ and looked around the room at the other's also bedding down for the night. Megan nodded and lay down, knowing it was going to be an interminable wait for all of the others to fall asleep so Ellie would talk to her.
She wasn’t wrong. It was well over an hour before the breathing of all the others indicated they were asleep. Megan herself had been very tired and had almost succumbed more than once. She heard movement and looked up. Ellie was sliding the top half of her body out of the bed and coming across the gap between their beds on her hands on the floor. It looked very odd but Megan leaned over and started in the same fashion towards her. They met in the middle, their faces close enough to feel each other's breath.
“No one has escaped,” Ellie whispered in the softest voice Megan had ever heard but when they met eyes the young woman added seriously, “Yet!” Megan smiled, and at once her mind went to the two of them racing over the farmlands in the dead of night, the wind whipping through their hair and the cold sting of the fresh air of freedom on their skin. She could see it happening now.
“I’ve been watching him for a while,” Megan said so low
