1. October 17, 2012

On Octo­ber 17, 2012, in a declin­ing old city by a lake, Sug­ar Heights emerges as a notably pleas­ant sub­urb, espe­cial­ly Ridge Road that stretch­es from Bell Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences to the expan­sive Deer­field Park. Despite the unkempt Thick­ets on the west, the park is metic­u­lous­ly main­tained, offer­ing a pic­turesque set­ting com­plete with ponds, play­grounds, and a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty life, though lack­ing a pub­lic pool due to bud­get con­straints.

Jorge Cas­tro, a forty-year-old cre­ative writ­ing teacher at the col­lege, main­tains a healthy lifestyle to avoid becom­ing an “Amer­i­can manslob” as he ages. One driz­zly night, he jogs towards Deer­field Park, encoun­ter­ing only the old poet observ­ing the mist along his route.

Upon reach­ing the park, Jorge assists Emi­ly Har­ris, a col­league, and her hus­band, mis­tak­en­ly think­ing their van’s bat­tery died. Instead, Jorge is inca­pac­i­tat­ed by a sting-like injec­tion and kid­napped by the elder­ly cou­ple.

Wak­ing in a cage with­in a well-equipped base­ment, Jorge real­izes he’s been kid­napped by the Har­ris­es. Dis­traught, he nav­i­gates through the ini­tial shock, dehy­dra­tion, and hunger, all while attempt­ing to com­mu­ni­cate or under­stand the motives behind his cap­ture. His attempts are met with silence or cryp­tic inter­ac­tions, esca­lat­ing his des­per­a­tion.

Emi­ly Har­ris, now dis­play­ing con­trol, forces Jorge into a cru­el form of com­pli­ance, hav­ing him con­sume raw liv­er and its juice before final­ly grant­i­ng him water—a dis­turb­ing inter­ac­tion hint­ing at a com­plex, yet undis­closed, ratio­nale for his impris­on­ment. Through­out, Jorge’s pleas for com­mu­ni­ca­tion or release are ignored, empha­siz­ing the despair and help­less­ness of his sit­u­a­tion, while the nar­ra­tive care­ful­ly bal­ances ele­ments of sus­pense and psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror amid the oth­er­wise nor­mal back­drop of the aca­d­e­m­ic and nat­ur­al set­ting.