The Plans of Eli Mills

Chapter 6

True to his word, Eli returned to work the following morning. It felt impossibly strange, even in the grand scheme of all of this, to feel the bed shift after the sound of his alarm, and listen to him readying himself for work while she simply lay there, knowing she was not allowed to leave with him.

Drowsily, Ava glanced over at him in the closet pulling his usual dress shirt and pants off the plastic hangers. She closed her eyes when he turned back towards her, hoping he would think she was still asleep and leave her be. The standard morning arousal she felt was beginning to return and she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had succeeded in training her as he'd planned. Maybe when he was gone she could clandestinely take care of herself under the covers without him noticing through the cameras.

She heard him approach her with the sound of a pill bottle rattling and the pop of the top being removed.

"Here," he waited until she opened her eyes and then her mouth before he placed the antibiotic on her tongue and reached for the Gatorade on the nightstand. She drank and swallowed the pill without argument, then laid back down on the pillow and closed her eyes again by way of an excuse to avoid seeing him.

Undeterred, Eli bent down and kissed her softly, "The TV is downstairs just talk to me through the cameras if you need help working it. Tablet is in the kitchen, books are upstairs," his voice took a hard turn, "Just enjoy yourself while I'm gone, and show me that I can trust you."

Ava didn't make any attempt to show that she was listening, but Eli knew she heard every word. He left, shutting the door quietly behind him. When she heard his footsteps on the stairs fade, she looked over and saw the keypad on the door glowing green.

Giddy, even though it was a pitiful taste of freedom compared to her life before he trapped her in here, she lay back down, heart racing, as she waited to see how long she could hold out before venturing into the rest of the house, not wanting to go too soon and chance running into Eli again before he left for the day.

When she finally did rise, the day passed by in relative solitude. Now and then Eli would talk to her via the cameras throughout the house to check in and ask how her day was going. Ava still didn't have much of an appetite, but she managed to cook herself some eggs and toast every morning. She tried to read some of his books on the 3rd floor, but most of them were about business or dinosaurs and there was only so much she could read of that before she started dozing off. The tablet was useful insofar as she could window shop for clothes and whatnot, but of course, all social media was blocked. When she was sitting on the couch figuring out the tablet and what she was able to do, Ava typed Facebook in the browser out of sheer habit, not thinking twice. Suddenly, she watched the screen freeze and winced. When she tried to go back or visit anything else, it would not work. For several minutes she sat there in a panic, waiting to hear from Eli who surely knew what she had done.

"Ava," his voice finally echoed through the room from the closest camera, "What did I tell you about the tablet?"

She took a deep breath, trying to swallow the urge to react defensively. "I'm sorry, I'm so used to typing it in, I wasn't even thinking."

A momentary pause, then she heard the tablet beep in her hands and suddenly it showed a phone icon with the blinking bars of an incoming video call. She cursed herself, this was her break from him and now her carelessness was forcing her to spend more time appeasing him.

Her finger pressed accept and she fought the urge to touch her hair or do any of the usual things she did before accepting a video call. Why should she make any effort to please him?

Eli's stern face appeared, seated at his desk which she recognized by the familiar bookshelves he kept behind him in his office at work. Ava knew exactly who else was in his vicinity. Audrey Langhorne had an office diagonal to his. The walls between her office and Eli's comprised of two solid, two made of glass windows. If she or Ed Derrick, who had the office directly across from Eli's, were to walk by at just the right time and notice Ava's face on Eli's screen, then maybe they would realize something was amiss.