Day 1 - she woke up

Fiction. Psychological horror. All characters are adults.
I said yesterday that I wasn’t sure whether I’d post again.
That lasted less than twenty-four hours.
A few of you called the first post fake. A few said it sounded like the beginning of an ARG. One person told me I was trying too hard to be Joe Goldberg, which was funny enough that I almost replied.
And then there were the other comments.
fake as fuck but I’m invested
bro really made a whole account for his basement girlfriend 💀
if this is real somebody needs to call the police
this is 100% fetish bait
keep posting
That last one got to me more than it should have.
Keep posting.
So I am.
She woke up today.
I knew because I heard something downstairs.
Not screaming at first. Just movement.
I’d been expecting it for hours, which meant that every sound in the house had started making me look toward the basement door. Pipes. The refrigerator. A car outside.
Then something hit the floor downstairs.
I froze.
There’s something I should probably admit before I continue.
I was scared.
I know that’s going to sound ridiculous considering the circumstances, but I was.
There is a considerable difference between planning something and standing at the top of a staircase knowing that, on the other side of a door, there is now another human being who knows you exist.
For months, Claire had been photographs.
Posts.
Comments.
Little fragments of somebody’s life appearing on a screen.
Now she was downstairs.
Breathing.
Thinking.
And presumably realizing that something was very, very wrong.
My hands were actually shaking when I opened the door.
I nearly closed it again.

THE FIRST CONVERSATION
I keep my phone with me and record our conversations.
Not because I’m trying to make some documentary. Memory is unreliable, particularly when you’re frightened or angry, and I don’t want to start rewriting things later because I prefer my version.
I’ve cleaned this transcript up slightly so you don’t have to read every uh, repetition and silence.
I haven’t changed what either of us said.
When I got downstairs, Claire was sitting against the wall beside the mattress.
She looked terrible.
Not injured.
Just confused.
Her hair was everywhere. Her eyes weren’t focusing properly yet. She kept looking around the room as though there might be another door she’d somehow missed.
Then she saw me.
She stopped moving.
CLAIRE: Where am I?
ME: You’re okay.
CLAIRE: Where am I?
ME: You’re not hurt.
CLAIRE: I didn’t fucking ask if I’m hurt. Where the fuck am I?
I had rehearsed this conversation.
That became irrelevant almost immediately.
ME: I need you to stay calm.
CLAIRE: Who are you?
ME: Claire—
The second I said her name, her expression changed.
That was the moment I think this became real for her.
CLAIRE: How do you know my name?
I didn’t answer.
She stood up too quickly, lost her balance and caught herself against the wall.
I instinctively moved toward her.
CLAIRE: Don’t fucking touch me.
So I stopped.
ME: Fine.
CLAIRE: Where’s my phone?
ME: You don’t have it.
CLAIRE: Give it to me.
ME: No.
CLAIRE: Give me my fucking phone.
ME: Claire—
CLAIRE: Stop saying my fucking name!
There was a long silence after that.
I don’t know how to describe the way she was looking at me except that she was trying to calculate something.
Distance, probably.
Whether she could get past me.
Whether shouting would matter.
Whether I had a weapon.
I know what you’re thinking.
And yes.
Standing there and watching her work all of that out made me understand exactly what I looked like to her.
I’m not oblivious.
I know what I’ve done.
That’s probably important.
Understanding that something is wrong and believing it is necessary aren’t mutually exclusive things.
CLAIRE: Are you going to kill me?
ME: No.
CLAIRE: Then what do you want?
ME: Nothing like that.
CLAIRE: What the fuck does that mean?
ME: Exactly what I said.
CLAIRE: You kidnapped me.
I didn’t answer.
CLAIRE: You fucking kidnapped me.
ME: Yes.
It was strange saying it aloud.
She stared at me.
CLAIRE: Why?
That was the first question I genuinely didn’t know how to answer in a sentence.
ME: Because you weren’t safe.
She actually laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
It was one of those little involuntary laughs people make when something is so absurd that anger doesn’t arrive quickly enough.
CLAIRE: I wasn’t safe.
ME: No.
She looked around the basement.
The mattress.
The concrete.
The toilet.
Then back at me.
CLAIRE: And this is safe?
I didn’t answer quickly enough.
She laughed again.
CLAIRE: Jesus fucking Christ.

I brought her water.
She didn’t drink it until she watched me open another bottle and drink from that one first.
Fair enough.
Then came the questions.
How long had she been there?
Where were we?
Did her parents know?
Did anyone know?
Had I touched her?
Had anyone else touched her?
Was she going to be allowed to leave?
I answered some.
Not others.
She became increasingly angry whenever I wouldn’t answer.
Eventually she asked the question she’d been circling since I entered the room.
CLAIRE: Is this sexual?
ME: No.
CLAIRE: Bullshit.
ME: It isn’t.
CLAIRE: Then why me?
I said nothing.
CLAIRE: You know my name. You know who I am. You obviously watched me. So what, you saw me online and decided you fucking owned me?
ME: I don’t own you.
CLAIRE: I’m in your fucking basement.
That one was difficult to argue with.
Then she said:
CLAIRE: If you brought me here because you want something from me, just fucking say it. Stop doing this creepy shit and tell me what you want.
ME: I want you to understand something.
CLAIRE: I want to go home.
ME: I know.
CLAIRE: No, you don’t.
I told her she’d eventually understand why she was there.
That made everything worse.
Apparently there are sentences that sound reasonable inside your own head until another person hears them.

THE RULE
I waited until she’d calmed down slightly before explaining the one thing I’m going to ask her to do every day.
Write something.
That’s it.
One word.
A sentence.
Ten pages.
I don’t care.
Every day I’ll give her paper and a pen.
Whatever she writes, I post here.
I told her she can insult me.
Describe the room.
Beg for help.
Tell you I’m insane.
Tell you exactly what she thinks should happen to me.
I won’t tell her what to write.
There is one exception: she cannot give identifying information about me.
I think that’s reasonable.
She didn’t.
CLAIRE: You’re posting this online?
ME: Yes.
CLAIRE: Where?
ME: Reddit.
She just stared at me.
CLAIRE: You’re fucking kidding.
ME: No.
CLAIRE: You’re kidnapping me and posting about it on Reddit?
Hearing somebody else summarize your decisions is an unpleasant experience.
ME: Yes.
CLAIRE: Why?
I told her the truth.
ME: Because people should hear what you have to say.
CLAIRE: Then give me my fucking phone.
ME: No.
CLAIRE: That’s not letting me speak. That’s you deciding when I’m allowed to speak.
I didn’t have a particularly good response to that.
She noticed.

WHAT CLAIRE WROTE TODAY
It took her almost twenty minutes.
At first she just sat there holding the pen.
She asked whether I was really going to publish it.
I said yes.
She asked whether I’d change anything.
I said no, unless she tried to identify me.
She called me a hypocrite preemptively.
Fair.
Eventually she wrote this.
I’m reproducing it exactly as she gave it to me.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to write.
My name is Claire. I’m 24.
I don’t know where I am.
I don’t know who this man is.
He says he’s going to put this on Reddit and apparently I’m supposed to believe him.
If you’re actually reading this then please understand that I am not playing a game with him.
I’m not roleplaying.
I didn’t agree to this.
There is a mattress on the floor and a toilet and concrete walls and I don’t know if anyone can hear me from outside.
He knows things about me that I didn’t tell him.
He knows my name.
He won’t tell me where I am.
I want my parents to know I’m alive.
Mom, Dad, if somehow you ever see this, I’m sorry.
I don’t know why I’m saying sorry.
Please find me.
Please.
And if this is some sick joke to everyone reading it, fuck you.
I mean that.
Fuck every single one of you if you turn this into a joke.

She folded the paper after writing it.
Then she unfolded it.
Then folded it again.
She asked me whether I’d really post the part where she told all of you to fuck yourselves.
I told her yes.
So here it is.
Every word.

SOMETHING I HAVEN’T TOLD HER YET
Claire keeps asking why her.
I haven’t answered.
Not properly.
There will be time.
But I’ll tell you one part of it.
The version of Claire I first noticed online wasn’t remarkable.
That’s not an insult.
She was just… normal.
Twenty-four. Pretty. Messy bedroom. Clothes on the floor sometimes. Photographs with friends. Outfit posts. Complaining about work. Joking about still living with her parents.
The kind of person you scroll past every day.
The mistake people make is assuming nobody is actually looking.
Most people aren’t.
But somebody might be.
And somebody who looks long enough starts noticing that photographs contain more than the person standing in the middle of them.
They contain a life.
Claire never understood that.
I did.
Later I found another side of her online.
One she clearly thought was separate.
She was much less careful there.
I’m not going into detail about how I connected the two. Some of you reading this are exactly the kind of people who don’t need additional ideas.
What matters is that I knew.
And then I started reading what strangers said to her.
Men reducing her to individual pieces of her body.
Telling her what they would do if they had her.
Talking about her as though there wasn’t a twenty-four-year-old woman sitting somewhere on the other side of the screen reading it.
That’s part of what I deal with for work.
I work in Trust & Safety.
Content moderation, if you prefer the less impressive term.
I spend my days looking at the things the rest of you aren’t supposed to see.
You would be surprised what human beings upload when they believe nobody important is watching.
Maybe you wouldn’t.
After enough years, you stop being surprised.
Claire doesn’t know that about me yet.
I’ll probably tell her eventually.
She thinks I’m the danger.
I understand why.
The irony isn’t lost on me.

Tonight, before I came upstairs, she asked me one last question.
CLAIRE: Are people really going to read that?
ME: Probably.
CLAIRE: And you’re going to show me?
ME: Tomorrow.
CLAIRE: Show me what?
ME: What they say.
She looked at me for a long time.
Then:
CLAIRE: Why?
I told her because if I’m going to put her words into the world, she deserves to know what the world does with them.
She said:
CLAIRE: You really are fucking insane.
Maybe.
We’ll see what you think tomorrow.