The Never List

muscles had been deprived of even normal physical exertion for three years, so I was weak. My legs could barely carry me, much less pull me free of him. But my fear drove me on, and I bolted away from him. He was prepared for such an attempt, though. He jerked into swift action, running behind me. Fast.
    At that point, the world switched into slow motion. I moved as though through molasses, my breath loud in my own ear. I could hear his steps behind me, crunching each twig, his feet pounding hollows into the earth. He was strong, I could feel it.
    My lungs wanted me to give up. I couldn’t breathe anymore. My arms and hands were numb. I couldn’t feel my legs either, but Iknew they must still be moving because he didn’t have me yet. I turned the bend in his driveway, going down the hill. I couldn’t see the end, but I could sense it far ahead of me. In a way I felt trapped, thought the gig would soon be up, but I knew I had the will to live on my side. He had only evil.
    I made it another hundred yards, which, when I really reflect on it, was a kind of miracle. I had practically taken flight. But I didn’t have the strength to keep up the pace, and he was driven by rage at that point, his body fortified by it.
    Only a few seconds later I felt his strong grip on my right arm. I will never forget that moment. I knew what pains and torments I had survived for the past three years. And I knew my punishment now would be far worse.
    I could hear it in the sound that came out of me, like something more from an animal than from a human girl. It was over, and I would suffer from then until eternity. At that moment I didn’t have the wherewithal to reflect on the opportunity I had blown. I didn’t have time to be filled with the regret of a lifetime, but later, in the many hours just after, I would feel a soul-searing pain, knowing I had been so close and had thrown it all away on an impulsive act from which there was no turning back.
    He grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder. I immediately went limp, defeated. In my mind, my life was over. Just over. All I wanted was to have the mental strength to check out of the world entirely. I wanted to disconnect from the pain he was about to inflict.
    Slowly over the years I had developed that capacity. I had learned to take my mind far away, to stop anticipating either pain or release from pain and to feel everything and nothing as one long continuum. No moment any different from any other, the feelings all evened out over time. Disconnect , I told myself.
    He hauled me into the barn, and for a moment, the sheer disorientation of the new space made me panic. Then I willed myselfto shut down. No feeling. No engagement. I entered that interior space in which my mind was set loose to wander. My body was an inanimate object, distantly floating in its own space.
    I tried not to care. I tried to resign myself to death, or worse, a living torture beyond what I had experienced those years in the cellar. Enraged, he grabbed me by one arm and by my hair and flipped me over into a long wooden box deep in the interior of the barn. A box smaller than the one in the cellar, this one horizontal, coffinlike. He flung my weak body into it, then stepped away.
    Instinctively, I grabbed onto the edges and tried to pull myself out of it. As I sat up, I was met by a hard fist, pummeling me back down into the box. I covered my face to protect it from the blows. Seconds later a long, putrid object was thrust upon me. Jennifer’s lifeless body, heavy and cold, descended on me like a blanket. Then he slammed the top of the wooden box shut, and I could hear him nailing it closed, screaming something I couldn’t understand.
    For a moment, I felt relief. I was separated from him by a few feet at least, with the nailed door between us. His hands couldn’t reach me. It took me a few minutes to register that there I was, sealed shut into a coffin with Jennifer’s body, preceding me in death but clearly not by that much. With a final nail, and a shuffle outside, everything was suddenly still and quiet. Jack must have gone back into the house.
    Eventually I could tell night was falling. I pushed my body into a corner of the box, making myself as small as possible, shrinking away from her body. I began to see and hear things. I thought I saw her move. I thought I saw her fingers reach up to caress me. I thought I heard her voice, asking me not to leave her. I heard it all too clearly. I don’t know