"That's it, just like that. Steady, steady now."
Eighteen-year-old Elisabeth Fritzl was helping her father, Josef, carry a door down into his cellar workshop. The relationship was uneasy between them for good reason. Although she put on a quiet, calm face in public and with her friends, inappropriate things had been happening since she was eleven. Her father would expose himself to her and leave pornographic magazines under her pillow. He'd even touched her. Just last year, she had run away from home in Amstetten and hidden out in Vienna with the help of a friend, but the police had found her and hauled her back home. He had ominously promised her that she would never get away from him again.
As she braced the door, holding it in place for him to fit it into the frame, he pulled out a rag and smothered her face with it. She could only struggle for seconds before the sweet-smelling ether soaking it made her legs weak and consciousness slip away.
She awoke with handcuffs on her wrists. Her father, almost fifty with a mustache, loomed over her, his features severe. "Listen to me, Elisabeth," he said.
She looked at him groggily, frightened.
"Listen to me," he said again, "very carefully. No one knows you are here. This place does not exist. You can scream and make all the noise you'd like, but no one will ever find you. You are going to write a letter telling everyone that you ran off again and joined a cult. They'll believe that. When they come to me and ask where my daughter has gone, I will tell them this story and they will have no reason to think it as anything but the truth. Do you understand?"
Her breath came in hiccups as the first waves of fear and disbelief welled in her. She began to hyperventilate, panic-stricken. Josef studied her like she was a blueprint for one of his engineering projects, coldly satisfied with his work.
"I have to hear you say it, Elisabeth. We have all the time in the world to spend together, down here." He stroked her hair as if she were a pet.
"I… I understand."
"Good. In case you don't, in case some of that rebellion is still in you…" he said and pointed to an air vent. "If you try to escape, I'll gas you. You'll learn obedience quickly or else you'll starve. Now that I've laid out the basic terms, we can enjoy ourselves." He smiled and placed a hand on her shoulder, peeling back her blouse