We All Live in a Yellow Submarine

I wasn’t alone. I’m never alone anymore. I first saw that man at the mall. I was at the food court with my best friend Ashlin when I caught him staring at me. I’d felt it for a while, his stares on the back of my neck. Always watching. Even through his sunglasses I could tell he was watching me. 

Ever since that day at the mall I’ve been careful not to be alone. I’ve seen the movies. I know when people get kidnapped. I even told my mom I thought someone was watching me. She rolled her eyes and said her usual “You just want attention, Lily,” before returning to her sixth or seventh bottle of beer that night; she’s lost count by this point.

The scariest part is I don’t know how he finds me. Everywhere I go I see him, or at least I think I do. I’ve started imagining his face on the television and in pictures. I can’t turn to page 306 of my social studies book because they have a picture that looks too much like him. And then there is his car. A 2009 Saturn Outlook. It’s a nice, silver SUV, quite innocent. Sadly, when I see that car I automatically go into panic mode. He’s everywhere. Always watching. Always waiting. For his chance.

I’m walking to the bus stop; that’s the farthest I’ll go by myself. I arrive at the bus stop and wait around with Gary Clements, the only other kid at my stop. I’m safely on the bus when I hear a scream. The bus stops. The engine dies.

“Is everyone okay back there?” my bus driver calls.

When I see the silver 2009 Saturn Outlook parked nearby, I know we aren’t. Much to my dismay, there is a collective “yes” from my classmates that says otherwise.

My bus driver gets up to check under the hood. With the hood popped up, his bright red shirt disappears from view. The other students sit on the bus, gossiping nonchalantly amongst themselves. I try to peek out the small window of the bus at the driver. I look down the narrow Georgia road and see nothing but telephone poles and cotton fields. Trees dust the horizon causing long shadows from the morning sun. Of course my school has to be out of town, easier for him to get away with kidnapping me. 

This all just worked out too perfectly for him. But of course it had. He’d worked out the time in my schedule that I would be most vulnerable. And of my alcoholic mother was too drunk to care.

Nearly ten minutes after the bus driver left to check out the hood, Sasha Willis pipes up from the back of the bus. “Where is Mr. Randolphe?” she asks.

“He’s still in front of the bus checking out the engine,” answers Brad Bellmen.

“Still?” Sasha remarks.

“I’ll go check on him,” I pipe up. I don’t know what I’m thinking, but I do it anyway.

When I’m off the bus I walk around to the front. The bus driver is nowhere to be found. “Mr. Randolphe? Hello?”

Then I’m being strangled. Large, hairy hands wrap around my mouth preventing me from screaming.

“You’re just the one I wanted to see,” my stalker says with a smile. “I didn’t know how many others I was going to have to kill by hand.”

My eyes are wide. I am going to die. He drags me about ten yards away from the bus. The rest of the students are still on the bus, casually talking about normal high school kids.

Talking until they couldn’t anymore. I watch the school bus go up in flames.

“That took me a long time,” my stalker says with a smile on his face. “You have no idea how much planning has been put into this one day. Thank you.”

The last things I remember are my muffled screams and then a sharp pain on my head.

****************

I wake up, my head throbbing, in a room full of pictures. Pictures covering the walls, even the ceiling, pictures laying in piles on the floor. All I see is pictures. And the worst part is that they are all pictures of me.

Everywhere I look is my blond hair, my blue eyes, my slender body. Some of the pictures I have seen before, pictures that I’ve posted on Facebook. Some pictures I have never seen before. Likely they were taken by him. Side profile pictures, pictures of my back. Everywhere I look I see me.

At least I’m alive, I suppose. But as of right now, I don’t know which is better. As I stand up to look around, I hear a soft whistle. The tune sounds familiar but I can’t quite put my finger on it. The whistle gets louder, approaching my doorway.

When it gets to the chorus I realize what song it is.

We all live in a yellow submarine.

The whistling stops when the doorknob to my room begins to open.

“Hello,” says my stalker.

“Who are you?” I say, refusing to show emotion.

“You can call me,” he hesitates for a moment, “Daddy…”

I pause, not exactly sure how to respond to that.

“Any other questions, my flower?”

“Yeah, where am I?”

“But didn’t you hear our song? We all live in a yellow submarine.”

“We? There are others?” I ask.

“Not anymore,” he says with a smile. “Now it’s just you and me.”

And then I’m alone again, floating through the deep sea. I feel the ship rock back and forth as we float. The pictures hanging on the wall sway back and forth in one harmonious dance. I don’t know how long it has been, but I decide to get up and move around a bit. I try the door. It’s unlocked.

I step out into the hallway and look both ways. It’s dark, so I pick a direction at random and walk. I feel my way down the dark hallway until I feel another door knob. Unlocked. I turn it and enter the brightly lit room.

And boy, did it get worse. Everything about this room is familiar. The shade of purple on the walls, the bed, all of the furniture: it’s all mine. This room is my room. It has the same bed sheets, the closet is in the same spot with the same clothes. I open the drawers to my desk. The key to my house is in the same spot in the drawer. Everything is exactly the same, almost as if he copy and pasted my entire room onto this sub.

“Do you like it?” his voice returns.

“What? This? How did–” he cuts me off.

“No more questions, my flower. Why don’t you sleep? You’ve had a long day.”

“Has it really been only a day?” I think out loud.

“Well you got on the bus this morning at 6:54, the bus was a minute late. You came with me at 7:23. We drove down to the docks and arrived at 9:12. Got on my submarine and then we were off! It’s probably about nine or ten at night. You usually go to sleep around this time unless you are up texting Ashlin.”

He knows everything about me.

**************** 

It turns out time doesn’t really matter on the sub. The days turn into weeks, the weeks into months, and the months into years. I’ve lost all count of time. Daddy, I’ve gotten used to calling him that by now, said he had ten years of food. We are about a third into it. Maybe three years? I honestly have no judgment on how long it has been, sailing around these deep waters. 

I think I’ve explored almost the entire ship. It is much larger than I originally thought and there are very few spots I have not been. That is until tonight. I finally picked the key to the secret room off of him. In every movie, every book there is a secret room. Of course the secret room holds the key to my exit. Doesn’t it always? I just have to figure out how to get in. 

And I’ve finally done it. 

I rush through my dinner. He fixed my favorite for the third time this week. After three years of eating it, fried chicken and mashed potatoes are no longer my favorite. Especially not this frozen stuff he bought to last us ten years. After the ten years, I don’t know what he plans to do. I don’t plan on finding out. 

After dinner I go to my room. It is starting to feel like home down here, as weird as it sounds. Maybe spending three years anywhere makes it feel like home. 

Once I am sure he is asleep. I quietly and cautiously slip out of my room. I go down the dark hallway and make an immediate left. 

And there it is. The small circular door that leads to what I presume to my way out. I slip the key in, careful not to jingle it and wake up Daddy. 

I open the door. It’s dark. There has to be a light switch in here somewhere. I find the lights and turn it on. 

This was not the way out. I shouldn’t have come here. 

There are bodies. Female bodies. They are at various stages of decomposing. Some, have obviously been here for a very long time. They all look to be about my age. 

“Oh, my flower,” I hear his voice from behind me. “I thought we had a deal.”

I slowly turn to see the hideous face of the only other passenger aboard the ship. 

“I’m sorry,” I quickly apologize. I know I need to get back into his good graces. I can’t end up like these girls. I look at their hideously twisted bodies. Dried blood mats their hair. Their skin is so decomposed they hardly look human anymore. “What did you do to them?” I ask. 

“They, like you, did the one thing I told them not to do. And they, like you, had to die for their crimes.” 

The next seconds flash by in an instant. Daddy pulls out a knife, swinging at my neck. 

“I’m sorry, my flower,” he says, pushing me onto the ground. I’m trashing for my life. He has already cut off a chunk of my hair. I bite his wrist when he pushes me. The look in his eyes is monstrous. He is set to kill me, and if I want to live, I have to kill him first. 

I’m bleeding. There’s blood everywhere. It’s dripping into my mouth. I try to spit out the warm salty taste but I’m being choked. I’m going to die. 

And then by some miracle of God the knife is in my hands. It only stays in my hands for a short moment before I plunge it into his stomach. 

“My flower...” his voice fades away as the life drains from his eyes. 

And then I’m all alone on this yellow submarine at the bottom of the ocean. I don’t know how to drive this or maneuver it through the ocean, but that is the least of my worries. I’m alive; I’m not quite sure how, but I’m going to get home. 

I make my way through the dark hallways, eerie with emptiness, and to the control room. As I stand behind the wheel, I see a small piece of paper taped to the steering wheel. I read what it says. 

As we live our life of ease

Everyone of us has all we need

Skies of blue and seas of green

In our yellow submarine

Under it is a picture of me smiling.