I got a GameBoy for my sixth birthday. It was wrapped in a nice little white box with a red ribbon. It was from my out-of-state uncle; the only person who always got me something. My mother hadn’t gotten me anything, but she told me we had some batteries out in the car trunk that I could use. Given how GameBoys chew through batteries, I figured I might as well stock up.
So I got my GameBoy, crawled into the trunk of the car, and started looking for batteries. I found a whole bunch of them. Some used, some not. I ended up cozying up next to an old sleeping bag and playing my game right then and there. There was this strangely comforting smell of gasoline and freshly cut grass that lulled me into a gleeful comfort.
I didn’t want to be in the house anyway. It could get so dreary watching my mom sit by the kitchen table, doing nothing. She was rarely, if ever, responsive.
As I felt a few raindrops on my bare knees, I realized there were clouds brewing above. So I shut myself in the trunk, listening to the rain and playing my game. I had one of those flashlight extensions, so I could stay there forever.
Except I couldn’t.
I hadn’t realized that car trunks lock themselves when shut. I was stuck in there, and my mom wasn’t helping me anytime soon. We lived in a small home in an isolated part of town, where most other houses were either abandoned or far off, so no one could hear me scream. Eventually, the batteries ran dry. Even the backups. And as the cheerful Wario Land theme music died, it was just me, stuck in the dark, flailing helplessly to get out.
It took 18 hours before someone passing by could hear me. When I was finally let out, CPS took me away and placed me with my uncle. My mother, who was diagnosed with clinical apathy, has never really been a part of my life since.
So as you can imagine, I have a bit of a complicated past when it comes to confined spaces, and birthdays.
But I still consider myself having a happy childhood. My uncle was amazing, and he cared for me more than my mother ever did. I did well in school, I made many friends, and I did well as a point guard on the high school basketball team. You don’t have to be tall to be a good point guard.
I moved up to Morgantown and got my master’s in business administration from John Chambers College. Ever since, I’ve been working hard and staying out of trouble. I’ve made myself quite comfortable. Still don’t celebrate my birthday though, that brings up a lot of… emotions.
A few years ago, I got a letter informing me that my mother had passed. I was asked to come back home to Juniper to collect her things and sign the papers in person. So one late September afternoon, I took a trip down memory lane to say goodbye to that chapter of my childhood, once and for all.
But something didn’t feel right. When I arrived later in the day, the house was in shambles. It’d been abandoned for years. And there was no one there to greet me; it was just me, standing in an overgrown yard, listening to the crickets waking up. A one-story home with every window broken, where the white paint had peeled so much it looked like the yard was covered in dandruff.
Then, someone put a bag over my head.
It all went black.
When I woke up, I was in immediate discomfort. My muscles ached, and my back was arched in an awkward fetal position. I had this terrible urge to stretch and straighten out, but I couldn’t; I was confined. I could barely move. All I could feel was rough-hewn wood, and all I could smell was vinegar and dirt. It was so strong it made my eyes tear up.
I didn’t understand what was going on. I fought, twisted, pushed, and screamed. Neither the walls, the ceiling, or the floor gave an inch. I got splinters all over my arms and legs. It was so oppressively dark that I couldn’t even see my hands. It was also getting warmer, and I didn’t even realize I was hyperventilating until I heard my own breathing. I could feel the salt of my sweat dripping into my eyes and my clothes sticking to my skin. Like wearing a nylon shirt in the rain.
There were these wildly irrational, panicked thoughts that came to me all at once. But the first and foremost was the feeling that maybe I never got out of that car trunk all those years ago. Maybe all of this had been a hallucination. Maybe I was still that six-year-old kid, trying to find my way out, dreaming of the world outside.
Hell, maybe my GameBoy was still around.
I snapped to attention. There were footsteps, and they were coming closer. There was an echo. I was somewhere enclosed, and spacious. Someone outside was walking on concrete.
“Have I got a treat for you, birthday girl,” rasped a whiskey-torn old voice. “Have I. Got a treat. For you.”
A man, possibly middle-aged. Maybe older. I seized up as I slowly came to realize I’d been abducted. I couldn’t think of a reason for someone to lock me in an actual box other than some terrible, nefarious purpose. A thousand troubling thoughts passed through my mind at once; everything from being sold to tortured. I held my breath.
“I’m sure you’ll enjoy this,” he continued. “I’m sure you will be pleased.”
I don’t know what I was thinking. I started hitting the walls, screaming to be let out. I screamed and begged and threatened and cried, and I was getting so frustrated I couldn’t even hear him responding. The tears wouldn’t stop.
Finally, there was a loud bang. A hammer coming down on the box and something piercing my skin. He’d hammered a nail in to make a point, and it had been close enough to scrape my knee.
“Don’t be so emotional,” said the man. “It would make things easier if you weren’t so emotional.”
I quieted down, but I couldn’t slow my breathing. There wasn’t enough air in the world to fill my lungs, it seemed. The man outside waited patiently, then left the room with a jaunty whistling.
“Beautiful birthday girl,” he said, as he left the room. “Beautiful, perfect, birthday girl.”
There was a loud chunk, as a metal door slid shut.
I thought back on that day where I’d been locked in that trunk. I thought about the smells and sensations. Gasoline, and fresh cut grass. Now, there was vinegar and musty wood. A bit of mold, perhaps. Wherever I was, it was old.
I decided I needed to take control. There would be no one passing by to help me this time. I had to be proactive, even if everything in me screamed to just curl up into a ball and weep. I had to do something.
I forced myself to map everything in my immediate environment, to figure out if there was something I could use. I slowed my breathing and carefully ran my hands across the surface of the box. I calculated that it was about three feet across, and an almost perfect square. There was a slight gap in-between some of the planks, but there was another layer of wood outside. It also seemed like the entire box had some sort of fabric wrapped around it, as I couldn’t hear wood scraping whenever I shifted the box. It was a smooth fabric. Cotton, maybe?
I also realized that I’d been out cold for at least 12 hours. My birthday had been a day off, so if he was congratulating me I must’ve been out long enough for midnight to pass. You can get pretty far in 12 hours, so there was no way for me to know how far he’d taken me.
My fingers brushed against something smooth. My GameBoy?
No.
My cellphone.
I came to realize that I still had all my belongings. My car keys, my cellphone, my jacket. I took off my jacket and propped it up to relieve my back a bit. Then I got my cellphone out.
The brightness blinded me. It took me several minutes just to adjust my eyes, and even then they were still getting watery. I wiped them over and over, until I could finally see something.
The battery was at about 34%. Not great, but serviceable. I dialed the emergency services immediately, but I couldn’t get through. There was no signal. No internet connection.
We were off the grid. Way off the grid.
Maybe underground?
I tried lying on my back to kick the wall out, but I just couldn’t get enough momentum. The planks were rough, but I couldn’t get them to buckle. The only side I wasn’t entirely sure of was the floor. I tried standing and pushing myself upwards, but nothing moved.
I closed my phone to save on battery and kept exploring the rigidity of the box. I was at it for more than an hour, just pushing myself against the planks. Still, nothing budged, but I refused to stop trying.
I took a breather when I suddenly heard the door open again. It was pretty far off, and I could hear echoing footsteps coming my way. Someone coughing, clearing their throat. It sounded like he was smoking.
“Alright birthday girl,” he sighed. “Time to get started.”
There was a loud banging again, but not on my box. On something nearby, another wooden surface. Something across from me.
Another box?
“Let me know when you’re ready,” he continued. “I’m right outside.”
“Ready for what?!” I yelled back. “What are you talking about?”
There was no response. Instead, he just walked away, closing the large door behind him.
Moments later, there was a scream. A young woman. It was muffled, but clear, and close by. I shifted around in my box to come closer, only to realize our boxes were literally next to one another. There were two of us.
“Hello?” I called out. “Hello, are, uh… who are you?”
“Wh-where… what’s going on?!” she called back. “Who are you?!”
“We’re trapped,” I said. “We’re… we’re both trapped.”
I tried to explain to her what I knew. I had her confirm everything on her end; that she was also in a box, roughly three feet across. That she also had a phone, but no service or internet connection. We smelled the same things, saw the same things, and had both been taken suddenly and in the last 24 hours. I got so wrapped up in it that I barely remembered to ask anything about her as a person.
Finally, she learned my name, and I came to know her as Lorette, or Lori for short.
“He came in to talk to me a couple of times,” I sighed. “He keeps calling me birthday girl.”
“Maybe he was, uh, talking to me,” said Lori. “It’s my birthday.”
“Mine too,” I said. “That… that can’t be a coincidence.”
It was eerie, but it didn’t explain anything. We tried to find more commonalities. I was 28 at the time, Lori was 21. We were both women, but we had wildly different backgrounds. She had a family with three sisters and two brothers, I’d been alone with my uncle. She went to public school, I’d had a private tutor. My hair was black, hers was brown. My eyes were brown, hers were green. We had basically nothing in common, except for our birthday; and it didn’t lead us anywhere.
We stayed in there for hours. At first I’d felt that tinge of hope, knowing someone might help me. That we could help each other. But now, it was growing increasingly clear that this just meant we were stuck together; two victims, rather than one.
Lori wasn’t about to give up. While I’d resigned myself to preserving my energy, she was still in denial. She was kicking, punching, and pushing against the planks, hoping something would give way. Of course, it didn’t. But she stopped for a second.
“There’s… there’s something in the cracks,” she said. “Some, uh… insulation. I got short nails, I can’t-“
I brought out my phone and checked. And yes, looking into the spaces between the planks, I could see some kind of white insulation. A piece of it was poking out just far enough for me to reach it.
I pulled out strips from a towel, drenched in some sort of vinegar. I conveyed the information to Lori, who tried to make sense of it.
“Maybe he’s, uh… covering up the smell,” she said. “If we die in here. Vinegar can soak some of that up.”
“So we… we’re in for the long haul. Days. Maybe weeks?”
“Oh my God…”
Lori started weeping. I could hear her rocking back and forth, her box shifting slightly. But there was another sound as she did; a rumbling. A deep, dark rumbling.
I wrapped my jacket around me like a blanket. It was getting cold, and I had to preserve my energy. You get exhausted quicker in the cold.
At some point, Lori and I were just leaning against our boxes back to back, talking about whatever came to mind. Whatever made us remember that we were in this together, and that we weren’t alone. The man hadn’t come back for several hours, but it might as well have been days. I talked about my uncle, my job, my mother… anything that crossed my thoughts. Lori told me about her cats, and how she was saving up for a college degree.
We were just thinking out loud. And when the words ran dry, we fell quiet. I felt like I’d known her all my life.
“There’s no water,” Lori sighed. “Without water, we won’t last long. I’m already thirsty.”
“Try not to think about it,” I said. “Try to think of something else. Like an itch.”
“Great. Now, I’m… I’m itchy and thirsty.”
She got a laugh out of me. An honest to God laugh.
Suddenly, the door opened. Our laughter died, and the footsteps came closer. I heard a deep inhale, followed by a ripe cough. Definitely a smoker. He stopped just ahead of us, saying nothing. I decided to just wait, and listen. There could be something out there. A hint.
“You’re not feeling up to it, birthday girl? You’re not enjoying your present?” the raspy voice asked. “I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time.”
Lori couldn’t help herself. I could hear her shifting in her box.
“I-I don’t want anything from you. I want nothing, and… and you have to release me.”
I could hear the man turn around. I got the impression that he’d been facing away from us. Strange.
“Excuse me,” he said, his voice shifting. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Then listen to me,” I said. “She’s right. You have to let us out.”
There was a loud bang against the side of the box. He kept hammering at it, over and over again. Despite several layers of planks and insulation, the sound was deafening. I covered my ears, closed my eyes, and waited for it to be over. Seconds later, he was done. I could hear him panting and coughing.
“Shut up!” he yelled. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut your pretty mouths when I’m talking to her!”
A chill crawled up my spine.
If he wasn’t talking to either of us… there was someone else in the room.
I could hear a groaning noise, like metal being bent from pressure. Then a thump; a big fat footstep slapping against concrete. I held my breath, trying to paint a picture in my mind. I couldn’t make anything of it. I’d never heard anything like it.
“There we go, birthday girl,” the man said. “There we go. Nice and easy.”
I could feel the pressure shift as something large came down, slamming into the box next to me. Something large, that moved with great effort. But as Lori started screaming, it seemed to pick up speed. It got angry. Or excited.
I could hear creaking wood and snapping nails, as Lori’s box was being torn open plank by plank. And the more she screamed, the angrier it seemed to get. The air shifted as her screams were flung high into the air. Both she and the box were hoisted at least 15, maybe 20 feet up. Her screams turned shrill as they bounced off the concrete walls. Planks breaking. Fabrics torn. And now I could hear her terrified shriek as clear as day. She was out of the box.
And whatever was on the other side made her cry like a cornered animal.
There was a loud crunch, like massive teeth biting into a ripe apple.
And Lori fell silent.
I sat there, shaking. I tried not to breathe or imagine what was happening outside. I tried my best to be anywhere else. And for the first time in my life, I wished and begged to be back in the trunk of that car; playing my GameBoy.
I could hear things falling against the concrete. Planks, nails, and something wet. Chunks.
“There, there, birthday girl,” he shushed. “Aren’t you gonna open your other gift?”
Another groaning noise. More chunks falling from above. Bones breaking. Splashes of liquid.
“Alright, I’ll be back in a bit. Love you, birthday girl.”
There was a kissing noise, followed by footsteps. Wet footsteps.
And he whistled a jaunty tune all the way out the door.
I had three minds inside my head at that moment. One mind wanted to scream and bash myself bloody against the walls. Another mind wanted to curl into a ball and cry. But in the back of my thoughts, there was a little mind left. It had grown there for years. Festering from a wound back from when I was locked in that trunk as a kid. And that third mind was telling me to listen. It was telling me that no one was coming to save me. And it was telling me I had to keep trying.
So I listened.
There were still little things falling from above. But what I was just now realizing was that the floor seemed further down. There was either a hole next to me, or my box was elevated.
I tried shifting back and forth. The box barely moved. I decided on a direction and kept shifting that way. Inch by inch, throwing myself against the side of the box. Finally, there was a stop. Some kind of threshold.
That first mind was screaming at me to panic. To kick and scream. That other mind was telling me to give up. But that third mind just kept telling me to stay calm, and to try.
It could be a short drop that would just put me on the floor, and change nothing. It could be a long drop, killing me. Or maybe something I couldn’t even imagine.
So I threw myself against the threshold. And I threw myself at it again, and again.
This time, the trunk would pop open. It had to.
There was a slight shift as I felt the box clear the threshold. And as I pushed further, I could feel that there was no more ground to support me. The further I pushed, the more it gave way.
I was balancing on an edge. I could feel it. I could lean back, staying upright. Or I could push forward, and tip myself off a cliff.
And while two voices were screaming at me to wait, it was that third voice that came through the loudest. And it was telling me to fall off that damn cliff.
So I fell.
The world turned on its head, and I felt my stomach rise to my throat. It all came to a stop with a violent crash, and I could feel the dimensions of the box shift. It was no longer a perfect square. Something was broken.
I could feel one of the walls giving way. I started kicking. I kicked, and kicked, and kicked. Either my legs would give, or the wall. And the way the planks were bending, I was betting it all on my legs holding for just a little longer.
And suddenly, there was a gap. Just a few inches, but I could see outside.
I brought out my phone and used what little battery I had left to turn on the flashlight. I could see a concrete floor with splotches of blood. Further in, there was a chunk of flesh, or possibly skin. Broken planks littered the ground.
With the wall of the box broken, the vinegar-soaked insulation gave way. There was a stench of blood so powerful I could taste the iron on my tongue. Moist, warm flesh.
I tried not to think about it. I kept kicking. And as I did, the door opened again.
“Was that you, birthday girl?” a voice called out. “Did you open your-“
The footsteps stopped. Then he started running.
“No!” he complained. “No no no no-“
I kept kicking. And with one final push, the entire side of the box fell away.
I could only see parts of him. He had a flashlight, but I couldn’t see what he pointed it at. It was like looking at him through a wooden frame. A man in his 50’s, malnourished, with sunken eyes and thinning hair hidden under a green baseball cap.
But he didn’t look at me. He looked at something in the center of the room. Something big and groaning.
“I-I… I didn’t open your present,” he said. “It broke, I-I’ll… I’ll get you another one.”
There was a loud puff, like an exhale. The man shook his head and carefully stepped forward. He held his hands open in surrender.
“I love you, birthday girl. I love you. It’s your favorite, I made sure. They have that date you like. I’ll-“
He moved out of sight.
There was a thump as something came down next to him. Something wet that stretched across the floor. Something pulsating, throbbing.
“You want me to put the present in a new box?” he asked. “You want something else? Roast chicken? Sunflower seeds? I know you love the blue ones-“
There was a sudden shift as something large moved. I could hear him fall to the floor, bowled over like a pigeon hit by a truck. There was a newfound fear in his voice. His flashlight disappeared, turning the room as dark as a grave.
“Honey?” he wheezed. “You’ll… I’ll get you a new one. You’ll get a new present. I-I’ll…”
Another thump, followed by a piercing shriek. Whatever was out there was making itself busy with my assailant.
This was my chance.
I crawled out of the box. I almost slipped on the blood, but I managed to steady myself. I didn’t turn to look. I didn’t do anything but to listen to all the little voices in my head, now in complete, unison;
RUN.
He begged her to stop. He screamed and pleaded, but nothing changed. I heard bones snapping and tendons tear. The sound of those big teeth biting into a ripe apple. And as his panic gave way to maddening acceptance, he started laughing. He laughed like I’d never heard anyone laugh before.
“This day will be all yours, b-birthday girl! No one else c-can have your birthday! No one else! No one!”
But I didn’t stop, and I didn’t look. And as his laughter came to a crunching stop, I burst through the metal door.
I scrambled up a spiral staircase, and as I collapsed into an old, abandoned tobacco field, I made a 911 call so frantic I can’t remember a word of what I said.
As my phone finally died, I was left on my own. Only a single voice remained, whispering gently into the back of my mind.
I made it.
I made it out of the trunk.
Well… that was a few years ago. I was the third kidnapping victim of this man, and I was the only one who made it out. You might’ve read about it; it wasn’t too far from Greenbrier Valley. It was a big deal for about a week.
I’m bringing this up now because the investigation has been in a standstill for years. They’ve determined that he acted alone, and that he worked as a consultant at a local law office. He had access to a lot of confidential information; that’s how he picked his victims. The first victim, which I never met, also shared our birthday.
There’s a lot of strange things going on surrounding this. They worked on the initial report for days, but when it was finalized, it barely said anything but “nothing to report”. Strange how it can take days of investigation to come to that conclusion. Especially considering what they must’ve seen when they first entered that old storage cellar.
The case is officially closed, but I know there’s more to it.
But for now, I’m just happy to be out of the trunk.
For good.