Exhaling deeply, she was not able to articulate her response to their rather obvious question. She knew everything they were going to ask. It wasn’t hard to surmise that they wanted to know how she made it back and, more importantly, why.
The last thing she felt like doing was talking about her tormentors with a new crew that appeared to be every bit as horrible as they were. But they did have the upper hand: she was tied up and outnumbered. She would have to tell them something, true or otherwise, if she hoped to escape.
So she began weaving a tale of her exploits, peppered with just enough reality to keep them on the hook. They asked: “How did you break out?” and “Why come back here if you really had no family?” All of these were relevant queries, and yet they were no closer to getting what they wanted than when they began. She was a cipher.
© 2021 Jeff E. Brown. All rights reserved.
Writing and Photography by Jeff E. Brown 