Francine didn’t remember a whole lot of the night that she’d been taken. She awoke for a brief moment to a man in her room. The nightlight in her room made his shadow huge on the wall and backlit him so all she could see was the impression of a coat and a wool hat with a pompom dancing on the top. The cloth he pressed to her face stunk and made her think of the glass cleaner her mom made her use to wipe the mirror in her bathroom with. It burned her throat and stung her eyes and she sucked in a lungful of air to scream and inhaled more of the foul substance and before she could expel that air, darkness dropped over her eyes.

She awoke in another room although she didn’t know that, not right away. Her comforter, the one with Rainbow Dash smiling at her while jumping over clouds lay on her and she thought the man in her room had been one of the worst nightmares she ever had. Francine shivered with the image of the dark man and the stinky cloth. It had been so real. The previous reigning champion of a nightmare involved her brother and a bag of Jolly Rancher’s candy. The candies belonged to her brother and he had caught her stealing them from his room. In the nightmare, her parents decided to make her eat the whole bag as punishment only the bag never emptied. She’d reach, pull out some candy, eat it and when she’d reach in again, it was like the bag was full, as though she had just opened it. Her stomach got bigger and bigger and just before it would burst open and Jolly Ranchers would spill out of the gaping hole and fill the entire house, she’d wake up. Francine was convinced stealing wasn’t for her. Not with nightmares like that as a consequence. But the man in her room with that cloth, well, that one made the Jolly Rancher one feel like a comedy in comparison. Francine sighed and rubbed her eyes. She gazed around her and didn’t recognize where she was. A sinking feeling in her guts made her eyes bulge and her breath hitch in her throat. This wasn’t her room.

The walls in this room were painted sky blue. On one wall, My Little Pony stickers were posted everywhere. On another wall, white puffy clouds were divided by an arcing rainbow. She pushed the comforter off and made to stand and noticed a metal cuff encircling her ankle. The other end of the cuff was affixed to a chain secured to an eyebolt in the floor at the center of the room. There were no windows. The light in the room came from a table lamp beside the bed. She pulled on the chain with her hands, not believing the realness of it, the solidity of the silver loops. The chain rattled with the movement, a tinkling sound. In the corner of the room, affixed to the ceiling was a white plastic circle that held a black, reflective dome. She knew it was a camera. Her brother pointed them out to her before when they were trailing behind their parents in a Wal-Mart. He told Francine it was how they caught thieves. She blushed, remembering the dream and her role as a Jolly Rancher thief, but she studied that camera, curious about what it could see and how it caught thieves. Francine pushed down on the metal cuff, hoping she could slip it off. It hurt when the solid metal scraped against her ankle and tears blurred her vision.

She heard the scratch of a key against a lock. She retracted her legs and pulled her blanket up to her chin. Rainbow Dash’s smiling face was wrinkled in her fists. The door opened and a man was silhouetted in the frame. At least she thought the person to be a man. He filled the door with his bulk, standing there, his breath heavy through the mask he wore to cover his face and head. His hands clenched and unclenched by his side. His shoulders heaved with every inhale.

Francine said, “Who are you?”

His breathing got faster. He put a foot into the room.

Francine closed her eyes and whispered, “I want my mommy. Come get me, mommy, please come and get me, please, please.” Francine pulled her knees to her chest and began rocking back and forth. “Mommy, come and get me, please, please, please.” Tears collected in her eyes and were absorbed by her blanket. It seemed he stood there forever, a terrible dark statue of monolithic menace. From behind him, she heard a TV. She knew it was a TV because she recognized the jingle for a commercial. After the song ended, she heard her name and something about a search. The man’s head turned toward the sound. He closed the door and she heard the sound of the lock engaging. She hadn’t seen him since and wished she would never see him again. She would. But she would also see another man. And the other man would be very angry.

Francine did not know how long she had been in that room. She drank the chocolate milk in a mini-carton and ate the Dunk-a-roo cookies left on the bedside table. She didn’t want to eat them. Her mother would never let her have treats until she ate something healthy. To eat it, she felt she’d be betraying her mother and maybe her mother wouldn’t come and get her because she ate those cookies and milk. Besides, she wanted nothing from the man in the dark. What if he put something in it? Like he had on that cloth that smelled so bad? Francine fought the awful hunger cramps for as long as she could. The hungrier she got, the stronger the scent of the food became. To her hungry self, the food was soon the only thing of interest in the room and her widened eyes studied the offering. Francine reached for the food with a palsying hand and when she grasped the milk, she tore open the top and she sucked it back, tears shining on her cheeks the whole time. When she finished with the milk and cookies, she turned her back to it and tried to fall asleep. When she slept, she didn’t have to think, she didn’t have to be scared. She was tired of being scared. With her eyes closed and her brain burning with images of the man standing in the doorway, she felt the need to use the washroom. Then she remembered the chain on her leg.

She opened her eyes, turned and surveyed the room. In the same corner of the room with the camera above, she saw a bucket. Next to the bucket on the floor was a roll of toilet paper. She didn’t want to use that bucket. It was right under the camera. What if he was watching? She really had to go now, though. There was a pressure she couldn’t ignore. Worrying about the man watching her, she used the bucket with her blanket wrapped around her. She encircled the bucket with the blanket and staying within it, she relieved herself. After, she returned to bed, her face to the wall and alternated between crying and hitting the wall with her palms. At some point, she fell asleep but didn’t remember doing it. It snuck up on her unsuspecting like the dark man had.

A bang woke her. She popped up in her bed and turned to the door. Closed. The lamp projected the shadow of the door handle onto the wall. The shape of it reminded Francine of a clown nose. Another bang. The door shook in the frame. A man grunted on the other side and Francine screamed and then stuffed a corner of the blanket into her mouth. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t want to be heard and she wanted to catch her scream the next time one tried to escape her. She heard thumps outside the door. The walls shook and rattled her bed. A man squealed, high pitched and keening. Francine took her hands off the blanket and clapped them over her ears. Even though her hands cut off the sounds from outside the door, the walls shook the bed she sat on and to her, it felt like the one time a plane flew low over their house. The violent passing of the plane had shaken a picture frame off the wall. The wall bowed in a the chocolate milk bounced on the side-table and when it hit the floor, the shaking stopped. Her eyes bulged from her head as they studied the door handle. She could smell her sweat. It slicked her skin. She heard her heart from the pulse in her ears. She removed her hands from the sides of her head and spit out the blanket. She heard the metallic strike of a key. She saw the doorknob turning.

Francine pressed her back to the wall and muttered, “No-no-no, don’t come in, don’t come in here.”

A man entered the room wearing a coat with a dark hood with fur around the collar hiding his face. A different man, taller than the other one, leaner and with wide shoulders. He froze when his hood turned to her and she heard him expel a sigh. His head followed the chain to the cuff looped through a link. He held up a key ring to the light. She saw an eye in the shadow of his hood. He picked one and held it between his index and thumb and moved towards her.

She pressed herself further into the wall and she heard him say, “Shhhhh,” as he grabbed the cuff and held the key up to her eyes. She extended her foot and held her breath. She smelled the cold on him and the freshness of winter on his clothes. He un-cuffed her ankle and stood back from her and waited. Behind him in the doorway, a shadow moved.

Francine screamed and the man turned to the other shadow and they grabbed each other and fought in the small room. One man fell to the ground and tipped her pee bucket. The man standing tripped on a leg and fell on top of the other man with an ‘oompf’. The contents splashed up into the air and onto the men grunting and grappling on the floor. The smell of her urine permeated the room.

The man who had freed her rolled the other man onto his back. In doing so, his hood fell back and exposed part of his jawline. He grunted and struggled to one knee. He pushed the other man flat to the ground with one hand and started punching him in the face with the other. Every punch, punctuated with grunts, was knocking the other man’s head into the hardwood floor. The man on the floor cried out, “Stop! Stop it!”

The man who had un-cuffed her didn’t stop. The scent of blood rolled over Francine erasing the smell of her waste in the tipped over bucket. In the weak light of the lamp, red spatter followed a hard thump. The hits kept coming until the man on the ground could only gurgle. The man stopped hitting him. Francine could hear his ragged breaths. Then the man on top tilted his head back and screamed until his breath ran out. Francine covered her ears again and ground her teeth. When the screams faded, Francine’s hands dropped from her ears. The man was shaking. With the noises coming from him, Francine realized the man was crying.

The man pulled his hood up and turned toward Francine. He motioned for her to follow him and waiting until she heard his steps recede far enough away, she left the bed and tiptoed to the hallway. She heard the rattling breath of the man on the ground. She paused to look at his face but the poorly lit room and his bloodied and pulped features made him unrecognizable.

Francine turned back to him with the glow of the dawn lighting her smiling features. He waved for her to go. He then pointed to where his eyes would be in the hood and then pointed back to her house. She understood. He’d watch her get home. She said, “Thank you,” and ran home, her bare feet crunching through the snow with the blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders.