Broken Bonds

Bondage

Fear had become her new master, usurping control of her bodily functions. Her heart claimed the role of a prisoner, begging to be freed, vigorously hitting against its ribbed cage. Alongside the intensity was an irregularity gutting her of wind. She managed to catch her breath momentarily to ask, "Are you ready?"

On the floor lay her 13-year-old son, her only baby. Hands cuffed to the bed's foot-end legs and gagged with a rag for a situation whose gravity he was kept entirely unaware of. She was on his right side, kneeling on the wooden floor of their tiny, one-room log cabin. Their eyes met for a brief moment before she looked the other away.

"It's my mother. She wouldn't do this if there weren't a good reason. There has to be. Just have faith. She's never led you wrong before," he kept reassuring himself mentally. He responded to her previous question by nodding. Upon receiving his approval, she reached for the socket wrench.

The moment of dread they'd both been anxiously waiting for finally reared its head. Again, her breathing caused her trouble, further prolonging the inevitable. She regulated her breath by commanding full control of the process, taking in a surplus of wind for three seconds and dispelling the air from her lungs with a count of seven. To get it right the first try, precision was key. A second attempt would be more than either of them could stomach. After repeating the process three times, she regained control, took her hand occupied with the socket wrench, fully extended it in the air, and used the weight of the wrench and all the force she could muster from her body to break her son's right wrist.

He belted, "ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" to match what he felt.

There were no items in the log cabin to alleviate his pain, and they were running scarce on time. Her son writhed in agony, forcing the cuffs to dig deeper into his skin. She reached down to release him but decided it was best not to.

However, seeing him like this provoked mental anguish within her, equal to her son's broken wrist. The maternal mission she chose to partake in was to protect her child from pain, not inflict it. She gazed upon him as blood ran down his wrists and tears streamed down his face. Truly, this was a mother's worst nightmare.

"Get it together, Nala! It has to look authentic. The more gruesome, the better," she convinced herself internally.

Preparation was paramount to pull this off. Nala collected her son's face with her hands and took the rag out of his mouth.

Voice trembling, she told him, "Listen to me! The people coming for me are going to ask questions, and you have to be ready!"

"IT HUUUUUURTS! MOM, IT HUUUUURTS! AAAAAAAGH" he cried out.

She tried her damnedest not to look away and keep going while still cradling his chin. However, seeing your child cry tears of agony pales in comparison to feeling them rain down, adding moisture to the very skin that produced their torment. Her head dropped towards the floor as she back tears of her own.

"C'mon, Nala!"

She picked her head up and looked at her son in his tearful light-brown eyes. The details of his features caught her off-guard. All his childish features were gone. His ears finally caught up to the size of his head. All of his baby teeth had dropped out. He'd gone from having caramel skin to a darker tone from cutting grass in the sun every day. Fuzz was even starting to show up on his upper lip. Memories flew into her mind's eye, depicting his physical growth, beginning as an infant and progressing to the present.

"NALA! IT IS NOW OR NEVER!"

Nala grabbed the socket wrench and slammed it against her foot, hoping to bring her back to reality. It worked. She retook hold of his face while he was still wriggling.

"Your name is Jonah. You're from New Orleans. Your age is the same. I kidnapped you near the levee on the Westbank. We have never met before! Repeat it back to me!"

"AAAAGHHHH"

"REPEAT IT!"

"My name... sniffle sniffle... is Jonah. I'm from... sniffle sniffle... Keystone. My age is the same. I was...sniffle... kidnapped?"

"Good. What else?"

"We've never met... sniffle... before."

"Yes, exactly, baby. Remember that, and everything will be fine."

"How?! You haven't told me anything! I'm scared! Let me go! LET ME GO!" thrashing throughout his last sentence. Nala ignored him and put the rag back in his mouth swiftly, almost choking him.

Jonah persisted in his begging for freedom, but it fell upon deaf ears. His mother had turned her attention to the ceiling. He watched her eyes dart across its surface as if something was crawling on it.

"What the fuck is she doing?" he aggressively pondered in his head.

"They're here," she whispered while tranced.

Jonah gazed at his mother with a blend of confusion and horror. Her focus might've been towards the ceiling, but, to him, her sanity was out the window. He'd lost hope in there being a legitimate reason behind her actions. Now, she was just fucking nuts, and he had to get away from her. Positioning his tongue to the back of where his gag was, he was able to push it out of his mouth, roaring, "SOMEONE HELP ME! PLE-"

Nala grabbed Jonah's broken wrist with a vice grip before he could finish his sentence, effectively knocking him out from the pain. Then she heard what she had been waiting for all this time.

Outside the cabin came whistling matching the chorus of Fleetwood Mac's Dreams.

*BAM*

The entrance door to the cabin had fallen to the floor. Its crash spread enough dust throughout the room to cloud Nala's view of the person responsible.

At the opposite end of the dust, a robust, twangy male voice spoke, "Nala, yer a bitch to track down. But seein' as I'm here now..." he stepped inside waving the dust around to get a full view of the cabin, "How's about lettin' that poor kid go?"