by J. L. Drake
I wouldn’t swear to it, but as we drove away I thought we passed my mom’s Kia pulling in the lot. I beat my palms against the back window, slamming them against the glass, letting out a deep, guttural scream. If only my mother had gotten there a few minutes earlier. Now I was never going to see her again, I realized fearfully. Pounding on the glass, I watched the rink drift farther and farther away from view.
Suddenly, the glass window was covered in some sort of liquid, all sticky and red. I stared at it incredulously, realizing that I’d beaten my hands so hard they were raw and bleeding.
I didn’t care about the blood, or the state of my hands. Turning toward my captors, I was ready to make them bleed…but then the driver reached back, holding something in his hand…and then my head exploded with a sharp pain. My whole world went black.
***
I awoke in a black, dank room. Here’s what I could see—nothing. Lying on my back, I realized my hands and feet were restrained. A shrill, piercing sound reverberated in my head. Eventually, I realized it was the sounds of my own screaming. Like the blood, my body was releasing strange sounds and substances, and nothing about this situation made sense.
My head felt heavy and painful, and for a moment, I wondered if I’d been shot in the skull. No, silly…If you’d been shot in the head, then you’d be dead by now, I chastised myself. They must have hit me over the head with something heavy, something sturdy enough to knock me unconscious.
I tried to look around, struggling to sharpen my focus in the dark. But still, there was nothing, and all I could do was scream and pray that someone, somewhere, could possibly hear me.
My captors reacted to my screams strangely; they turned up the volume on the music that played outside of the room. A haunting voice sang about the end, how his only friend was the end…
Something about the song was familiar, but yet it seemed foreign to me somehow too. I laid there in the darkness, listening to those lyrics, my eyes widened in fright. When the song finally ended, it began again, an endless tune on repeat. Jerking my head and body from side to side, I tried to loosen my restraints. After a while, I started to wonder if the song was still playing in reality, or if it was all in my head.
I began to hyperventilate, struggling against the shackles that engulfed my wrists and ankles. With the tips of my fingers, I’d discovered my restraints were metal, so there was no breaking free from them.
I’m going to die, I realized. I screamed some more until my throat felt as though it were filled with fire and a dozen tiny needles. I thought about water and ice. And everything nice, I thought strangely, delirious from my concussion and overwhelming terror. I started banging my head against the floor beneath me; I’m still unsure what I was trying to accomplish. Eventually, I either went unconscious or fell into a deep sleep. I dreamt of snakes, the lyrics of that song playing over and over again in my head, even in my sleep.
Chapter 4
I woke to the sounds of birds chirping. Without opening my eyes, I sniffed at the air, praying that since it was Sunday, my mom would be making her world famous pancakes. She would add a handful of blackberries or strawberries to the batter, and they always tasted so good and fresh in the mornings. But then my thoughts shifted, and I remembered the dark Blazer and the pounding music that’d filled that hellish room.
I opened my eyes slowly. I was no longer restrained, but I was in a room that unfortunately, was not my girlishly decorated room in Flocksdale. I was on a thinly carpeted floor in a small, ten by twelve room. Most likely the same room I’d been in last night. The room was lacking furniture and anything, really, except for me and…I looked behind me, only to discover a woman sitting at a glass-topped vanity table, her back facing toward me.
The woman was wearing a sheer bra and panties, with a sweeping mane of long blonde hair that trailed down past her bra line. The face in the mirror was Jeanna’s. Her reflected eyes met mine, and she whirled around in her velvety seat to face me. Her eyes were colorless and frightening.
My wrists and ankles were covered in bruises and bloody sores. My head felt like a steel ball, the weight of it crushing down on my stiff shoulders. I rubbed at my wrists, then gently touched the wound on top of my head, all the while glaring into Jeanna’s beady little eyes. I was going to kill this junkie bitch the first chance I had.
“Take me home,” I croaked, my throat raw from last night’s screaming session. I barely recognized the sound of my own voice.
“I can’t do that,” she said calmly, whipping back around to face the mirror. Gracefully, she lifted a wand of mascara, brushing it lightly over her lashes. After that, she set to work curling her lashes with one of those strange metal contraptions that only serious makeup-users own. Sitting up, I tucked my knees to my chest. She continued to act as though I wasn’t there.
“Why am I here? I don’t even know you! I haven’t done anything to deserve being tortured!” I screamed, rising painfully to my feet. I clenched my hands into angry fists. I could go after her right now, I thought angrily. But if Jeanna considered the idea of me attacking her, she didn’t seem concerned. She stared straight ahead, concentrating on her beauty routine.
After a long time, she spoke. “To answer your question, you haven’t done anything wrong but just be you, darlin’.” Now she was using an eyebrow pencil to darken her brows. “A lot of men will pay a lot of money to be with a young girl like you. Garrett’s got some men lined up for you tonight.”
My eyes widened, my body rigid with fear.
“Don’t look so scared, honey. I’ll give you something for the pain,” she offered, tapping a finger on the vanity’s glass top, which contained a skinny line of a powdery, brownish substance.
“I don’t do drugs, you bitch!” I screamed, suddenly hit with a rush of overwhelming anger. I ran toward her with a surge of fearless adrenaline, my body crashing into hers. I grabbed a fistful of hair and tried to dig my nails into her scalp.
Suddenly she was on her feet and the next thing I knew, she was sprawled out on top of me, pinning my arms at my sides. She smiled down at me, a small trickle of blood dripping from her lip. I didn’t remember hitting her face, but I was glad to have caused some damage. A droplet of her blood hit the tip of my nose. I jerked back from her in disgust. Gripping my wrists forcefully, she used her weight to restrain the lower half of my body. “Do that again and I’ll kill ya. Better yet, I’ll sell you into permanent slavery,” she warned.
I stopped struggling and looked at her crazily. “Kill me then,” I challenged bitterly, giving her a crazy, wide-eyed stare. “I would rather be dead than do what you want me to do!”
“That’s what Claire said too,” Jeanna whispered softly, releasing my arms to wipe her bloody lip.
I lay there, frozen. My heart stopped momentarily and the room seemed devoid of any air. She couldn’t be telling the truth…why would she mention Claire? Suddenly, the whole room was spinning.
When I last saw Claire, she was headed in the other direction with Joey and Zeke in the limousine. Joey and Zeke…their stepdad introduced us to Jeanna…Oh, no! I realized then that I wasn’t the only one in danger. They must have taken Claire too!
I thought about that ride in the limo and going to Jeanna’s house. She was acting so strangely, but I didn’t understand it, and then something clicked. When Jeanna asked about her “stuff,” she must have been referring to me and Claire!
“It was all a setup, wasn’t it? Joey and Zeke didn’t like us. They recruited us for you, their aunt,” I said softly. Jeanna didn’t answer. She stood up, dusting nonexistent debris from her bare legs.
She walked out of the room, gently closing the bedroom door behind her, leaving me alone again. It was a terrifying feeling, but at least this time I wasn’t strapped down or in the dark.
Chapter 5
I spent most of the late afternoon being dolled up by Jeanna. She told some crazy story about being sold into the sex slave business at a young age. I didn’t know if I belie
ved her. “Now I’m a part-owner of the business,” she announced proudly, raising her eyebrows at me.
“Do you want a fucking cookie?” I spat angrily.
My anger didn’t faze her. Jeanna was tough and shrewd, cold as winter and hard as ice. Nothing I said seemed to break through her calm, sociopathic demeanor. She kept working on my hair, humming a melancholic tune I didn’t recognize.
“Where is Claire?” I demanded for the twentieth time, emphasizing each word slowly and angrily.
“I don’t know,” Jeanna admitted, setting down the brush and shrugging her shoulders casually. “She went with Garrett to a separate set of buyers. Like I told you before, we don’t keep girls long term. You’re no good to us all used up,” she explained calmly, twisting my hair painfully with the curling iron.
Jeanna had a gun tucked in the back of her jeans. I’d seen it earlier, as she’d moved around the room. If I was strong enough to wrestle her for it, and knew how to fire a gun, I would go for it. Finished with my hair, she started applying gobs of makeup to my face. Thick powder and creams. My eyes glazed over, focused on thoughts of the gun, imagining myself holding its shiny, steel body in my hand. Watching her concealer-caked face blow apart as I pulled the trigger, and giving no sense of hesitation…
I opened my eyes; the girl in the mirror staring back at me looked like a circus clown, with heavy rouge and thick gobs of black, spidery mascara on her lashes. “I don’t get it. If these creeps want to fuck a child, then why the fuck are you making me look like a full grown woman?” I asked, whipping around in my chair to face her.
She paused, mulling over my question. “They don’t want to fuck children. They want to fuck innocent young women. You’re the closest thing,” she muttered softly.
“So, you really think I believe you when you say you’re going to let me go? I may be young, but I’m not a moron.” She started lining my eyes with heavy eye shadow and liner, to match the big lashes below.
“Like I said, Wendi, I have no use for you. If I kill you, then that would leave evidence. If I let you go, there will be none.” She applied another coat of powder around my eyes, the edges of the makeup pad slicing the bottom of my eyelids painfully.
I looked at her like she was crazy. She is crazy, I realized. “I’m the evidence, dead or alive. They will still track you down,” I threatened.
Again, she smiled. She sat down on a stool across from where I was perched on my own. “You don’t know our real names, honey. You don’t know where you are. They’ll never find us, Wendi,” she stated matter-of-factly.
“I know where you live. Remember how Jed brought your drugs to the house? I was with him, you idiot,” I reminded her. She abruptly smacked me across the face, knocking me off the seat sideways. I sat there on my knees, catching my breath, my hand covering the spot she’d battered on my face. The angry blow was shocking compared to her statuesque demeanor. I tried to rub the stinging sensation away.
“His name isn’t Jed. Joey and Zeke, also not their names, are not even related to Jed. He doesn’t really drive a limo. And that house you met me at? Also a set up. That is not where I live, you idiot,” she retorted.
I was dumbfounded. She dropped her powder brush and walked out of the room, leaving me there on my knees by the vanity table. I pulled myself up to my feet, my body still shaking. I sat at the vanity table for hours, dozing for a short while, my curly hair and made up face splayed out across the table.
There were two small windows in the room, but they were too high and minuscule to do me any good. The door was locked, obviously. The only thing in the room besides my previously used shackles and the vanity table was a narrow antique-looking vent on the floor in the farthest left hand corner. When I woke up from napping, I headed straight for it, a newfound energy in my step.
Lying on the floor, I fiddled with a small metal switch attached to the slatted vents. I pulled it down hard and suddenly, it was open, and I could see the contours of a room below. Wherever I was, I was upstairs, because I could see a small bedroom displayed beneath me.
I wasn’t ready to scream down into the vent just yet, fearful of attracting the attention of Jeanna, or someone inherently worse. I pressed my face against the vent, scoping out the room below. Like my room, it was mostly empty. There was a free-standing bookshelf, but that was all I could see. Then suddenly, a flash of something moved past the vent. I jumped back, startled. But then I crawled back over, hesitantly looking back through the slats, holding my breath as I peered down below. I let out a cry of relief. It was Claire!
Chapter 6
“Claire?” I whispered down through the grate. Tears were streaming down my face, my body trembling with distress. Finding my friend was bittersweet; I didn’t want her to be here with me, but seeing her meant she was still alive. I felt a mixture of emotions rushing through me: relief, sadness, and then anger. How could they do this to us? What sort of sick, depraved individual would kidnap two young girls? And then, most importantly: how the hell were we going to get out of this situation?
Claire looked around the room, confused. I whispered down to her again. When she looked up and met my gaze, she let out a small cry of dismay. I put a finger to my lips, shushing her.
She started moving around the room, and I couldn’t help wondering what she was up to. But then I understood as I saw her shoving the bookshelf across the room, lining it up directly under the vent. She climbed it slowly, treating the shelves like steps on a ladder so she could get closer. When she was standing on top of it, she stuck her long fingers up through the slats, intertwining them with mine.
I wept uncontrollably, gripping her fingers as tightly as possible. Claire always had a silver ring on her thumb, and her arms were encircled with nearly a dozen macramé bracelets, the kind you can spell out words with in tiny beads. I stared at the tiny letters, still unsure what they all spelled, my eyes brimming over with tears.
“What happened to you?” I asked hesitantly. It sounded like a stupid question. Did it really matter how we got here anymore? All that mattered now was that we were here in captivity, and finding a way out was imperative. Now I had to figure out how to get myself and my best friend out of here. Damn them for doing this to us!
“Joey and Zeke…it was all a trick, Wendi! They held me down and tied me up. They blindfolded me and brought me to this room…” Claire explained, holding her head down to her chest, shamefully. “I kicked and screamed, but there was nothing I could do! They were just too strong.” She let out a whimper.
I shook my head woefully.
“How did they get you?” she asked, searching my eyes. Briefly, I described how I was kidnapped from the skating rink by Jeanna and a man she called Garrett. Claire looked at me, her face consumed with guilt and sadness. “I’m so sorry, Wendi. This is my fault…I should have listened, and I never should have followed those boys…I’m so freaking stupid…”
I shushed her again. “You most certainly aren’t, and it’s just as much my fault as yours,” I tried to reassure her. “Are there windows in there?” I asked hopefully, trying to scope out as much of the space below as possible. “Yeah, but the windows are covered in metal bars,” she said, squinting up at me.
“What is out there? Can you see through the bars?” I asked, suddenly feeling hopeful. She shook her head dejectedly. “It’s blacked out. It looks like the outside of the windows are covered in thick wooden boards, or something.”
I leaned my back against the wall, feeling rueful and helpless. I was tempted to tear at my own hair and clothes, screaming until they were forced to kill me. If the walls were barred on the inside and boarded up on the outside, there was definitely no way to escape through the windows. The windows at the top of my room were too small and too high to do me any good. There was nothing for me to climb on to reach them, and even if there was, they were too small and high to climb through. My thoughts were racing; my blood was pumping. I’d always been the sort of person who just figured shit out, the
leader of the group, but I was at a loss right now…
But then it occurred to me—the only way out was through the doors to the rooms we were concealed in. I had to overtake Jeanna, or whoever came through those doors next. But I had no weapons. Pacing around the room excitedly, I tried to come up with something, anything… “Is there anything you can use as a weapon down there?” I asked, squatting back down by the grate. Claire shook her head dejectedly.
All this speculation was useless. Claire and I were going to die if we didn’t figure out something soon.
Chapter 7
Even though this situation seemed hopeless, I couldn’t give up yet. I had to get me and my best friend out of this mess. Or die trying, I thought miserably. “We have to fight back, Claire. If we don’t, we’re going to die,” I told her solemnly.
“But she said she would let us go.”
“Who? Jeanna? She’s a lying bitch, Claire! She’s not going to let us go. She—or that man of hers, the one she calls Garrett—will kill both of us. We can’t trust a word they say.”
Claire nodded grimly, seemingly accepting my words as truth.
“Whenever she comes back, we must attack with all of our might,” I instructed. Claire nodded again. She stepped down from the bookshelf, moving it back in place as quietly as possible.
I sat glumly with my back against the wall, waiting for Jeanna to return, but she never did. I listened for footsteps or voices through the door, but heard nothing. I eventually scooted back over to the vent, comforted by the thought of my best friend being so close, even though she was technically out of reach. I wrapped my arms around my knees, waiting patiently. I tried to refrain from humming that dreadful song…the one about the end…