“Thank you, Dad,” Kazhi said when Bruce handed her the bowl of porridge, because that was what he wanted her to say. Day by day, it felt more true. Thank you for only bringing food. Thank you for letting her live.

Beside her, Kazhi’s “sister”—white and blond to her black and brown—said thank you fervently. There was a time, not too many months ago, when Sarah had spoken of escaping. Had spoken of her parents, and the outside world.

Now, she spoke of pleasing their father. Now, she spoke of love.

To Kazhi’s other side, sitting slumped in the same manacles, was a dried-out corpse. Lakisha. Kazhi’s heart panged to remember the girl she had admired for years, the girl she had hoped would someday see her as more than friends, but Kazhi’s eyes were as dry as the stale air around them.

You’re not our father! Lakisha had yelled the last day she’d been fed. You’re just a bus driver! We have real parents out there, and they will find us. They’ll find me.

But they hadn’t, and the truth Lakisha had spoken so fiercely had settled like the dust sleeping around them now on the cold stone floor—Kazhi couldn’t feel it, could only see it in these rare moments of half-lit gloom that her eyes could barely stand. She had to think about it to remember it was there.

One way or the other, Kazhi thought as Bruce shut the basement’s door and darkness enveloped her as closely as a lover. She would go one way or the other.

– Frances Koziar

Author’s Note: Stockholm Syndrome was first named in a hostage situation in Stockholm, Sweden, but Stockholm Syndrome is much more common in abusive relationships with partners or even parents. Although “One Way or the Other” describes a more typical struggle with Stockholm Syndrome in the narrator’s fight to remember the truth while being held captive, it is one of a series of stories by the author inspired by her personal experience having Stockholm Syndrome from a relationship, and what that taught her of horror, resilience, and the importance of truth.