“Did I dream the whole thing?” she asked the empty room.

It gave her no more clues than what it already had. She pulled herself up to a sitting position and grabbed the water. She ignored the glass and put the bottle to her lips and drank thirstily. After her third drink, she noticed the tape again and grabbed it. On the face of the tape in black marker was written, “Play me.”

Lucy looked around the room and noticed a tiny camcorder sitting just below the window plugged into the power outlet.

“It must be recharging,” she thought as she gently rose to her feet.

Her legs still a bit unsteady, she staggered towards the camcorder. Lucy succeeded in walking well enough to keep from falling over, but bending down to pick up the camera proved to be another matter entirely. Her already aching head bumped hard into the boards that covered the window when she leaned over to pick up the camcorder. She fell to her knees as another dizzy spell buzzed in her head. She fell back to the floor, staring once again at the ceiling. Lucy decided to stay exactly like that until she regained enough of her wits and balance to make the journey back to the bed.

With the camera in hand, Lucy crawled across the floor. Crawling on all fours meant a shorter trip down should she lose balance again. It wasn’t until she climbed back into the bed that she realized she wasn’t wearing her own clothes. She was dressed, but they were not her clothes. She wore an old, button-down sweater that looked like something her grandfather would wear. She slid her fingers between the buttons and felt her bare breast. She reached for her shorts and discovered they were missing, replaced by a baggy pair of pants.

“Who did this?” she thought as her heart started to race again.

Lucy rolled up a sleeve to reveal plenty of scratches, but no blood. She pulled up the pant leg. More scratches, no blood. With a fright she realized someone had taken the time to remove her clothes and bathe her while she was unconscious. Another fear raced into her mind as she imagined herself lying naked while somebody bathed her. A tear escaped her frightened eyes as her heart pounded in her ears.

Lucy looked at the tape, wondering what it was she was supposed to watch, and, more importantly, who made the tape?

Her mind raced through recent memories of what she did know.

Lucy remembered walking for what seemed like days to escape this place and had awoken in what looked like the same house. She was bathed and wearing somebody else’s clothes, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know who was responsible for that. Lucy apprehensively flipped the tape in her hand as her eyes continued to scan the room.

Her thoughts were getting clearer now, though she still couldn’t tell the nightmares apart; it all seemed so surreal. The nightmares that haunted her dreams overlapped the nightmares she was positive she had witnessed with her own eyes; yet it all seemed like one, bad dream. She was not sure which of the nightmares that haunted her mind really had happened.

As Lucy looked around the unknown, yet strangely familiar room, her eyes stopped at the foot of the bed.

“What an odd place for a dresser,” she thought, looking it over before settling her gaze on the hole in the ceiling above it. “It wasn’t put there as a dresser. It was meant to be a ladder.”

Still thumbing the tape, Lucy continued to investigate the room. She tossed the tape on the bed and pushed herself back to her feet. The tiny table next to the bed held no other secrets, but at the far end of the room was a closed door.

“A closet?” she guessed.

Lucy slowly inched towards the door. Upon reaching it her hand hung suspended, inches above the doorknob.

Grownups smile when their young children say there are monsters in the closet because grownups know there is no such thing as monsters. It hadn’t been all that long ago Lucy believed that too. Since then, however, she learned that monsters were real. Not the giant Godzilla-like creatures or aliens from space like you see in the movies. These monsters were different. They were us, except that they were walking around dead and eating people.

Who knew what monster was just beyond that door?

Lucy failed to keep her hand from trembling. It ached for her machete, but it was nowhere to be found. She looked at the other door boarded securely, then back to the closet door.

“No boards, no danger,” she thought. She hoped.

Lucy lowered her hand and grasped the door handle. The squeaking sound of the turning handle filled the tiny room as Lucy heard the gentle click of the door latch being released. Gathering her courage she pulled the door open quickly and ran back to the bed like a frightened child. She dove with such effort onto the bed that she slid off it and crashed hard onto the floor.

“Fuck!” Lucy yelled as she pulled her elbow towards her in pain.

She looked under the bed towards the now opened closet. Monsters had not chased her out. Lucy sat up and peeked over the bed. Still nothing came out. She stood up, her eyes never leaving the door, then cautiously walked back to the closet. Her heart pounded so hard she could feel her blood pulsating through her shaky legs and trembling hands. She darted her head in and out of the closet so fast it was as if she hardly moved at all, but it was enough for her to see that the closet was empty except for a row of clothes hung neatly on hangers. Mustering up more of her failing courage she took a deep breath and pulled the rack of clothes apart. She exhaled sharply in relief. It seemed silly once she’d done it, but she had to check that monsters were not hiding behind the clothes.

They were more of the same of what she wore, non-descript sweaters that smelled as if they had been hanging there a long time. She pulled her own sweater to her nose. It had the same musty, unused smell. On the floor she noticed a bucket and an old pair of shoes. She looked at her own feet. They were bare of course, but her cut foot looked like it had been cleaned and dressed by a doctor.

Lucy walked back to the bed, eyed the tape and picked it up again. She knew she was supposed to play it, but she didn’t know what she would see, or if she wanted to. None of this was making any sense, and she wanted to get as many answers as she could before watching this mysterious tape.

Lucy walked over to the window and looked through the slits at the world outside.

“Well, at least there are no zombies,” she said with a smile, then remembered that the door was nailed shut from the inside. Her smile faded.

“Yet,” she added with a sigh.

Lucy spent a few minutes going through the drawers in the dresser. Folded boxers and tartan socks told her it was a man’s room, an older man at that, but who or where he was she did not know. She shivered with the thought of an old man undressing her and putting her in his clothes and doing God knows what else while she lay unconscious on the bed. Staring aimlessly at the top of the dresser her eyes slowly focused on the dust. It took a few heartbeats for her weary brain to catch up. In the dust she could make out scattered footprints. Somebody had used it as a ladder to climb out.

“Well, obviously,” she said to herself. “The door and window are nailed from the inside. How else are they going to get out?”

It was then that she noticed that some of the dust made a perfectly straight line, and a little behind that, another shorter line. It looked like something a picture frame would make, she thought, but where was the picture?

She looked around the room again and noticed a small waste-paper basket in the corner that held a picture frame. As she picked it up, the tinkling of glass told her why the picture was thrown out; the smiling faces in the picture told her the who.

“Robin and her father,” Lucy said to the empty walls. “This must be his room.”