Laura

“Mi’Lud. The prosecution asks that Gary Wilson be given the maximum term of imprisonment allowed for this offence. He has shown himself to be an habitual criminal, and implicated in at least three murders, or suspected murders. He has shown no remorse for his actions, even when the victim was in court, now unable to stand by herself, because of the defendant’s actions. The prosecution believes that Mr Wilson will, upon his release, simply continue where he left off, and we ask for the maximum sentence, in an effort to reduce the possibility of this happening.”

The Judge sat silently as Wallis-Collins made his closing argument. The defendant had already been found guilty of attempted murder, his victim paralysed from the waist down, and confined to a wheel chair for life. And all for the sake of a debt of less than a thousand pounds.

“Will the defendant please rise” the judge said, looking over at the man in the dock.

“Your lack of remorse does you no favours. You have been found guilty of a very serious crime, and it takes much understanding to see how you could inflict the injuries you inflicted, and then simply walk away leaving your victim to die, slowly. That she lives is a miracle of modern medicine, and not down to any consideration of your own. Had you had your own way, she would not have been here to give evidence against you. Any normal human being would fail to understand the callousness you displayed when you beat her to the ground, and then ran your car over her. It is beyond comprehension. The maximum, sentence for this offence is life, with a minimum time served of thirty years.  This is the time you will serve behind bars. You will not be eligible for parole until such time as you have served thirty years, and my recommendation that you are rejected, will go on your file.” The Judge looked at the two burly police officers standing either side of him. “Take him down”

Laura sat, tied helpless to the chair, watching the scene unfold on the television in front of her. Her mouth was dry, filled with a large amount of cloth, then held in place by the duct tape across her face. She didn’t understand any of what was happening.

She had opened the door to take a special delivery, and the next thing she knew, she was in this warehouse, naked, and tied helpless to a chair. She could see no-one, just the television in front of her.

The voice came from behind her.

“Mrs Wallis-Collins. You are hereby sentenced to a minimum of thirty years solitary confinement. This may be altered, depending on whether the defendant in the case you have just witnessed, gets parole or not. For every day he spends in prison, you will spend alone, no creature comforts, and without daylight. Your husband has successfully prosecuted my brother, and you will serve the same sentence he serves. Your only hope of getting free, is that my brother has a successful appeal. If that fails, you will serve the same sentence as he does, day for day”

Laura tried to scream for release, but the gag allowed no noise past it at all. She couldn’t understand what was happening. What did he mean, solitary confinement, no daylight for thirty years. This was inhuman.

She tried frantically to get free of the ropes holding her in place, but they would not budge. Her screams came to nothing, the gag silencing them before they could leave her throat.

She could hear footsteps from behind her, but could not turn her head far enough to see who was behind her. She suddenly felt a needle entering her arm, and something being pumped into her. Whatever the injection was, she could not keep her eyes open. She tried, but the television blurred in front of her, and then everything went dark.

The room in which Laura woke was not very large. She guessed it to be about ten feet by eight, certainly not more than that. She had awoken on a wooden board, which would serve as her bed. It had a thin mattress, and a single cotton sheet.. the pillow was almost as thin as the mattress, and offered no support for her head.

In one corner of the room was a small toilet, with no seat, and no visible signs of a flushing mechanism. The room was lit by several bright lights built into the walls somewhere above her head.

There was no door. She had tried all the walls, but there was no door. The walls were solid concrete, as was the floor. Only a small hatch. Built into one of the walls,  that her food would be delivered through, showed any relief in the solid grey concrete.

She had no idea how long she had been in the room. It could have been hours, or days. She had tried screaming for release, but her words had simply echoed off the walls back at her. No-one seemed to be listening to her.

The only sound she could hear, was her own breathing. The walls were so dense, nothing seemed to travel beyond them, in either direction.

She could feel cool air being pumped into the room, but she could see no source. Wherever she was, there was no way out.

She sat on the edge of the bed and cried. She had done nothing wrong, except marry a successful QC. Why should she be punished for him doing his job? But, according to the voice she had heard before awaking in the room,  his success was the reason for her own confinement.

She had needed the toilet after she had awoken, but though there seemed to be no device to flush it, it had done so itself as soon as she climbed off it.

She tried to find some relief in the stony concrete surrounding her. But there was nothing. It was as if the walls had been built around her. There was no bricked up doorway, nothing. Just the hatch through which she was being fed.

Time had no meaning any longer. The lights above her stayed on relentlessly. Certainly not the summer holidays in Barbados that she was used to. Not the Winter skiing holidays in the Alps.

Surely Robert would be looking for her. He had to somehow connect the case he had been prosecuting, to her disappearance. Why had the man not been arrested, and she released?

No questions seemed to have any answers any more.

She sat wondering how long she would be held this way, how long had she already been held. Was it still the first day? Or had there been a gap since she heard her own sentence, and now?

The silence in her room was deafening. She could hear the padding of her own feel on the cold concrete, the flushing of the toilet when she had used it, but other than that, only silence.

Time itself meant nothing to her. Each minute was as long as an hour in her mind. She passed the hours thinking back over things she could have done to prevent this from happening, but it had all taken place so fast, there had been nothing to do to stop it.

Had she gone to her mothers it would not have happened. Had she gone shopping she would not have been home when they came for her.

Why did her husband have to be so good at his job? Surely there was a technical flaw that would render the case flawed, and she could be released. But Robert was meticulous when preparing any prosecution. He had only lost once, and that was when a witness failed to turn up. There would be no review of the case, and no review of her own case.

Robert would have the police out looking for her. And she had seen enough police films to know that one of the first places they would go, would be relatives and friends of people Robert had tried. Surely they would find her soon.

The hatch built into the wall opened, and a tray of food was pushed through. Even before she could reach the wall. The hatch had closed again.

The food was basic, more like prison food than what she was used to. Creamed potatoes, lifeless vegetables and something that looked like it had once been meat.. the plastic cutlery would serve no purpose to help her escape.

Not only was she being held prisoner by these men, she was being treated the same way as well.

The hatch re-opened and a plastic cup of tea appeared, with a note.

“Replace your plate and cup by the hatch when you are done. If you do not do so, your next meal will be thrown into the bin, as will your meal each time you refuse”

they were obviously taking no chances, even though she could do nothing to escape her box. Maybe they thought she would hurt herself, and were taking steps to stop her. But she had no intention of hurting herself. She knew that soon she would be found, and released, and she would make sure the men responsible for this, suffered.

The meal was as tasteless as it looked, and the tea had no sugar in it. She took only a few mouthfuls of the food, but drank the tea slowly. Other than the toilet, there was no way to get a drink. The tea, even though it tasted wrong without sugar, was going to be her only source of refreshment.

Sometime later, the hatch opened, and her plate, cup and cutlery disappeared through it before it once again closed. She tried to force the hatch open with her bare fingers, shattering three of her nails.

Laura sat back on the bed and wept. Even animals were better treated than this. Animals occasionally got fresh air, but all she had was the air conditioning that her room have been built with. The air was not dank, but nor was it fresh.

Laura knew she was going insane. She had been speaking to herself for so long, just to break the monotony of the silence in her room. She had, for a period, started sitting on the toilet and standing up, just to hear it flush.

Three times a note had come through the hatch to tell her to put her bedding by the wall. Some time later, it had been removed, and clean bedding had been provided. There was a constant supply of toilet paper, when she needed it, so someone was obviously watching her. She wondered if they could hear her talking, and decided to whisper, just in case.

She had no idea of how long she had been kept captive. The food that was distasteful when she first arrived, was now eaten with relish, leaving nothing on the plate. Her cups of tea were still drunk slowly, but she had got used to the taste of tea without sugar. She even told herself that it would help her to lose weight.

She had stopped counting her periods, this, originally, had been her way of counting how long she had been in the box, but she had lost count somewhere along the line, and now had no idea of how long she had been held.

She had convinced herself for a long time, that release was minutes away, but those minutes, like the days, had passed, and she was still there.

She had accepted that she would be there until her captors finally released her. But that in itself was the problem.

She had, for a while, tried to remember things from outside the box, but the memories were getting harder to recall. Even Robert’s face was a blur sometimes. She could only just remember his eyes, but these memories were also getting harder to recall.

The hatch opened one day and there was a newspaper cutting inside it, about her. It said that the continued police search for her, was leading nowhere. The paper was not dated, so she had no idea how long they had been looking, but she knew her husband would not give up on her.

He would pay whatever the cost to get her free. But he had to find her first. Maybe her captors would get tired of keeping her, and ransom her back to Robert. Maybe, even then, they were discussing the final details.

But several meals later, Laura was still in her box.

She no longer cried herself to sleep. In fact, she now thought tears were beyond her. She had cried copiously at the beginning, but not for a long time since. Her hair was, she knew, a mess. It had grown long, and knotted. What she would give for a hairbrush and a mirror. And a hot bath? She would kill for a hot bath, or any bath.

Not once since she was taken had she been allowed to bathe, or even to wash. She had, at one time, started to use the toilet water, after it had flushed, to try to keep clean, but even this she had given up on.

She had no motivation for anything, spending her time laying in the bed, waiting for the next meal. The meals were the only things that meant anything any more.  Other than them. There was nothing. The only sounds were her own feet, and the occasional flushing of the toilet.

She had been told at the start that her life would be solitary, and this had proved to be the case. Whoever was delivering her food, was not seen, and never spoke. She had, at first tried to get them to talk to her, but had been met only with the continued silence.

The only reason she knew they were there, was the hatch opening and closing to bring her food, and take away the plate and cup after the meal.

She had no idea if it were day or night. The constant light kept the room the same all the time. She wondered what would happen when the bulb needed changing, and then laughed. How could she worry about the bulb, when it wouldn’t matter. Light, dark, neither mattered as long as she was still in this box. She only needed the light to find her way to the toilet and back, or to the hatch when her food arrived.

She was sat on her bed when the newspaper cutting was pushed through the hatch.

“In the High Court today, an appeal against severity of sentence was heard for convicted life criminal Gary Wilson. The three Judges decided not to grant the appeal, on the grounds that Wilson was an habitual criminal, and that the sentence of life with a minimum of thirty years time served, should be upheld.”

Laura looked at the cutting and read it over several times, not believing what she was reading.. this had to be a mistake. She didn’t know how long she had already been held prisoner, but she could not stay there for thirty years. She screamed for someone to have mercy, to let her out, but only her voice echoed around the room. There was no reply.

Laura looked again at the cutting that had just sentenced her to thirty years of total isolation. Never to see another human being. Never to breathe fresh air. Never to see Robert again.

It was then, that Laura discovered she could still cry.

End