A Familiar Prison

Chapter 10

Gwen opens her eyes in an unfamiliar room. It smells musty. No one is around. She takes the blanket off, gets out of bed, and starts looking for a way out of there. "Where is AJ? I need to find him." She goes out of the room and down the hallway to the next door. She opens it and finds it empty. She closes that door and keeps walking to the next door. Opening it, she sees a bed and a desk, but no one there. She closes that door and heads downstairs quietly. It was hard to be very quiet with a creaky floor, but she was as quiet as she could be. She started heading to what she thought would be the living room, but a door caught her eye. She turned toward it, and tried to open it. "Locked," she thought. She turned to go look for some keys, but Granny was right behind her and hit her over the head with a bat.

Gwen woke up in the same bedroom as before. "What was that about?" She thought. She got out of bed again and looked around. "There's a desk in here too." She checks in the drawers and finds a key inside. The door she saw had four locks. "One down." She puts the key in her pocket and leaves the bedroom again, heading to the second door. She opened it and checked in the desk. "Aha!" She found a second key. She puts it in her pocket along with the first. She then heads downstairs, trying to think of other places where the two final keys would be. She looks around the living room and spots a weird shadow in the lamp. She walks over and grabs the key and puts it in her pocket. When she turns around, Granny is right there again. Granny hits her on the head again, knocking her out.

Waking up for the third time in the same room, Gwen checks her pockets. "Good, they're still there." She sneaks down the stairs again, but heads to the kitchen rather than the door this time. "Maybe I can see what she's doing before she comes up behind me." She looks around the corner and sees Granny in a recliner. Gwen then spots the last key on the table beside Granny. "Now, how do I get it with her right there? I have to cause a distraction." Gwen looks around. "Perfect!"  Gwen grabs the spare keys, walks back near the stairs and tosses them up. She is already back in the kitchen when she hears Granny going up the stairs. She grabs the last key, runs over to the door and starts unlocking the locks. She gets in just in time, and closes the door.

"I'm home? What is going on?" She walked further into her own kitchen. She tries calling out, but can't speak. She turns around to go out to her garage, and hears AJ calling her name. "AJ, where are you?" she thinks. She turns back around and heads through the kitchen towards his desk. It was too tidy. "That's odd. AJ's never had his desk this clean before." She turns and goes through the dining room to her office. Nothing seemed out of place there. She hears AJ apologizing to her. "Baby, you have nothing to apologize for. I'm going to find you." Gwen then heads upstairs to their bedroom. All looked accounted for, but no AJ. She hears AJ tell her to come back to him. "Where? I haven't found you yet!" She goes to open their bedroom door, but hears Grandpa on the other side pass by. "Shudge! That would have been close!" Gwen sneaks behind Grandpa and goes into a spare bedroom. When she closes the door, there's only darkness. No windows, no furniture, only emptiness. She reaches for the handle again, and the door is gone. "Just great! I'm stuck in oblivion." She sits on the floor. "What can I do? I'm trapped here. There's no escape. None. I can't get out. What am I going to do?" She tries calling out again, but still can't. "What is going to happen to me? What will happen to AJ? I can't get out of this room, he's trapped by Granny and Grandpa, and I can't do ANYTHING!" She starts to cry out of frustration and panic.

"It's hopeless. I'm going to be trapped here forever, and I'll never see my love again. I'll never see my family. I'll never see my friends. I'll starve to death, and there's nothing I can do..." Her mind was starting down a dark path. She saw no hope. No matter where she looked, AJ was not there. So she couldn't even save him. "I'm so sorry Baby. I failed you." She got trapped into this room- "If you can call it a room—" and saw only darkness. Literally. "I wish I could just get out of here. But this is real life...Wait. Real life? Doors don't disappear in real life. You don't go to a completely different building by walking through a door in real life. Is this a dream? It has to be! I need to wake up, NOW! I'll wake up back at Katie's. This is just another nightmare with Granny chasing me that I keep having. WAKE UP GWEN! Come on, wake up!" She hears AJ pleading with her to wake up. "See? There's AJ coming to wake me because of this nightmare. Now, WAKE UP GWENDOLYN!"

Gwen's finger twitched in AJ's hand. It jolted him back to reality. Her heart monitor alarm started going off. He looked over at the screen, then to her, and her eyes slowly opened. He pushed her call button.

"Can I help you?" The nurse seemed bored.

"My wife is waking up! Come quick!"