The alarm wasn’t supposed to go off yet. Surely not. Maybe he was playing with her. Or maybe time was contorting; she was sure there were gaps, her brain intentionally creating breaks in consciousness, attempting to deliver her from the unprecedented situation. Maybe she was losing her mind.

The strident bell hurt her head. She filled her lungs, and attempted to mentally prepare herself for the question, examining it from every angle in an attempt to glean a different meaning that would unlock the answer. Her life, her freedom, depended on it. Useless. She knew this. It would be better to deny him, refuse to play his game. She massaged her temples, her many rings tinkling, riding loose on fingers that had recently filled them comfortably. She needed food and water. How long had it been?

She eyed the shattered mess of porcelain in the corner of the room with distaste. On the remains of sandwich bloomed spots of mould; they crawled over it like diseased fingerprints. There had been a bad time, after she had defiantly hurled the plate from herself, where she had become desperately hungry; she had strained and writhed against the unforgiving steel, eventually losing herself to complete hysteria and rubbing her neck raw trying fruitlessly to reach it. It surprised her to realise she had not actually been hungry for some time. Even the thirst which had peaked after the thin streams of her urine had dried up had, for the time being, left her.

She froze as she heard the first creak. He was making his slow way across the floor above, pausing, as always, at the door between them. Savouring the moment, perhaps? She didn’t know, could not fathom the inner workings of the mind of a person who could keep another human being chained like a dog.

She didn’t raise her eyes as light flooded the dank basement, as his heavy tread descended the stairs. She would not give him the satisfaction of her fear, her begging. Words, tears – they had no effect, didn’t distract from the actual purpose - to watch her slowly die. She trained her eyes on a crack in the concrete floor before her, her expression apathetic, and waited.

Her mind hurriedly went over the question, attempting to frame the simple words with meaning. Anything to distract her from his entrance. She did not want to face his wry smile, the one she saw every day.

Do stairs go up or down?

Six little words….when she had first heard them they had hung in the air between them; she had only been able to gape, incredulous. Over the inevitable days shock had dissolved into anger - It wasn’t fair! Her emotions were now spent.

The alarm clock was silenced as he crossed the room. Sitting atop a small wooden table, it was the only furnishing other than the solitary chair, which squealed as he dragged it across the floor to sit in his accustomed place.

Helplessly, her eyes were drawn to his. Veiled as they were by his low brow, they appeared black. She stared into them, steeling herself, and he looked patiently back.

“You should have eaten.”

He sounded almost sad. A startled laugh burst through her obstinate wall. Was he actually trying to make her believe he cared for her wellbeing? She knew who he was, just as she knew her fate. Had known from the moment she had woken in his sparse, sweltering basement with the choking collar tethering her to the sweating brick wall.

The thin lips tightened, and he jerked to his feet, his body spasming with rage. With no time or energy to react, she closed her eyes to slits as he hurled himself across the room and rained frantic punches on the wall, flecks of blood and brick flying into the air.

Grunting heavy breaths, he leant against the wall, his anger spent as quickly as it had risen. He stood very still then, facing the wall intently as a bad student wearing the dunces cap. An unintelligible whisper, and then he pushed away and pounded up the stairs, slamming the door.

Trick. He’s a trickster, he’s trying to lull me into a false sense of security, she thought. Then she realised how ludicrous the idea was. She was chained in a basement, the latest in a long line of women who had disappeared without a trace.

Several breaths later, a cold finger slid its way down her spine as she refocused on the clock, deliberately positioned so that she never knew the actual time. He didn’t set the alarm, she realised. Would he be back, or leave her to rot? A fitting punishment, perhaps, for the sandwich.

Another gap. This one akin to a long blink.

What if he did it while she was still alive? This was the first coherent thought as she swam up through the muddy waters of consciousness. The Riddler. That was what the media had dubbed him, creating what she had thought a rather tenuous connection. The authorities had either not known or not disclosed whether the markings on each victims chest had been made pre- or post-mortem. The single word that had been slashed deep into the skin: “Wrong.” She grimaced as other snippets of the news stories flashed before her eyes. The widely available flick knives stabbing deep, ripping flesh. The small, neat squares of generic paper, with small, neat, square print, secured by each knife, stabbed savagely into a breast, or an eye. Each one a riddle, seemingly unanswerable as argued by some of the finest brains in the country.

In the midst of the horror, a soft voice echoed in her mind. A voice she had not heard for many years, but which instantly calmed her. Her grandfather’s voice. Her gumpa.

“There’s always an answer, Sweet Pea.”

She smiled, the familiar nickname invoking a thousand memories; the way the dust motes danced in air that smelled of musk and pot pourri; the slanted rays of the sun as she sat across from him at the little wooden table, the fragile device in her hands. Receiving encouragement, looking every so often into his kind and patient face. There’s always an answer. This was the reply she received whenever she complained in frustration, reminding her to be patient, that one false move could shatter the tiny vial inside the cryptex, rendering the message meant only for her illegible. She remembered the click, the one that seemed so loud after hours of careful concentration, the one that seemed to carry actual weight as she raised her eyes to look at him, knowing he would be beaming with pride.

The click seemed to rouse her from her daydream, it’s echo bringing her back to the here and now. She was aware that the quality of light had changed; the shadows at her feet were lengthening.

And there it was. The answer, delivered whole by her subconscious. She examined it with mild surprise, feeling in equal parts saddened and exhilarated. The answer was it didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. There would be no white knight, no one to deliver her from evil. She would have to do that for herself. The decision was hers, the only decision left. Yes, she would die, but she would not do so on her knees.

With this thought she pushed off the floor with the last of her strength, ready to stand resolutely before him the next time he appeared. Such was the feeling of freedom surging through her that she felt the shackle around her neck loosen miraculously. Her hand went automatically to her neck, and she froze. Her neck was bare, her cold fingers touching the skin. Cold fingers. For the first time since she had awoken to this nightmare, the basement was freezing – a fact which had gone unnoticed in her reverie. Now fully awake, she heard the unmistakeable hum of an air conditioning unit. She examined her shaking fingers, seeing for the first time a bluish tinge. An exhale gusted from her, but even this action seemed wrong, somehow. Her strained mind replaying the moment.

The truth hit her with physical force, almost knocking her to the ground. Her breath. That’s what was wrong. Simple physics. When a person exhaled in a very cold environment, their breath created a water vapour, a fog. A living, breathing person. The action had felt incomplete because there was no fog. None at all.

Moments flickered through her mind, everything that had happened since the last time the alarm had sounded. She looked through a different lens; that of the truth. Her lack of hunger, of thirst. The gaps. His rage. She smiled weakly at that; clearly he didn’t cope well with wrinkles in his plans, his carefully written play.

Good.

She threw back her head and opened her arms, ready to embrace whatever came next. Her final thought was not her own. There’s always an answer, Sweet Pea.