Available Darkness Season 1

the attention of any law enforcement. No flashing lights yet — hardly anyone on the road at all, thankfully.
    “You sure you don’t want me to drive?” Abigail asked.
    He turned to catch her smiling wide, eyes bright even in the darkness.
    “No, I think we’ll wait a few years before you get behind the wheel again,” he said. He wasn’t sure if it were too soon to joke about the incidents of earlier and was relieved when she giggled.
    Their collective laughter filled the cabin.
    Though John had no memory of other children, let alone his own childhood, he wondered if all 11-year-olds were as articulate as Abigail. If they all thought about things like God, fate, and their place in the universe. He wasn’t sure if her maturity came as a result of her situation, or if her thoughts were normal for someone of that age. He couldn’t imagine that other children, held captive and abused for years, would be able to present anything close to the normality Abigail wore like skin. Perhaps, he wondered, she was in a state of shock, and the inevitable breakdown was yet to come.
    “Are all 11…” he asked before catching her cross look, “er, I mean, all 12-year-olds as smart as you?”
    “I don’t know. The kids in the books I read always seemed pretty smart.”
    “Books?” John asked.
    Abigail then went on to explain that Stacy used to bring her books from the local library. Abigail read many books during her captivity, such as Harry Potter , The Westing Game , the Paratime series, and most everything ever written by Roald Dahl. She rattled off a long list with every other title seeming vaguely familiar to John. Abigail said the stories offered her an escape which allowed her to live through the hell that Randy Webster had rained upon her daily.
    “She wasn’t so bad,” Abigail said, looking down, thinking about Stacy. “He abused her, too. Sometimes he made me watch, and I could see in her eyes that she didn’t want me to see what was happening. And even though he asked her to… do things to me, she never did. It was the only time she was ever brave to him. He beat her up each time she said no.”
    John didn’t know what to say. He simply sat there, eyes on the road, trying not to let the welling tears blur his vision.
    Abigail continued, her voice shaky, “She was just as much a prisoner as I was. I tried a few times to get her to set us free when he wasn’t home, but she was too afraid. She always said if he caught us, he’d kill us.”
    John thought back to when Abigail first learned that he had killed both Randy and Stacy. The girl had said “good.”
    “If you liked her, why did you say ’good’ when I said they were both dead?” he asked.
    “I was mad at her,” Abigail whispered through quiet guilt.
    “Why?” John asked.
    “She wouldn’t do something for me,” Abigail said, hinting at something he wasn’t sure he should pursue. He wondered if she wanted him to ask what Stacy wouldn’t do, or did she want him to drop the subject?
    Curiosity cut to the front of the line.
    “What did you want her to do?”
    “Randy got mad at her for not listening to him and told her that she couldn’t bring me books anymore. He came into my room and found two books I was hiding under the mattress. He ripped all the pages out and then did this.”
    Abigail pulled up her shirt to reveal an angry red cigarette burn just under her left ribcage.
    “Jesus Christ,” John said, dividing attention between the road and the hot tears stinging his cheeks.
    “He had taken the only thing I had. I wanted to die. I begged her to kill me if she wasn’t going to set me free… but she wouldn’t. She just cried and I got mad at her and told her not to ever talk to me again. That was last week.”
    He looked over to see Abigail curled into a comma on the seat, elbow on her knees, head buried in the crook as her body shattered into a series of sobs.
    He wanted to comfort her with a hand on the shoulder, a hug, or something , and grew angry at whatever curse prevented him from the most basic expression of humanity — touch.
    As despair sank its talons into his heart, something pulled at John’s attention. Ahead was the street where he needed to turn. A minute later, he found himself staring at the address on his scrap of paper.
    312 Hanover Street.
    “Welcome to the Shady Pines Motel”, a sign read, its neon letters now dark and as defunct as the abandoned, boarded up motel which sat in front of them like