Number One

This story starts with part one, so if want to start at the beginning, navigate yourself back to part one. This particular tale is also available in a google document that's more printable at:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=df5hzgv3_7hb96rhgq

Enjoy! Sara

Number One-Part 7

Melanie closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. She didn’t want to do this, but she didn’t really have a choice. Though she was getting pretty fed up of being frightened and sneaking around. She wanted to be home. Sitting on the couch watching TV or reading a book. She had started a new book a few days ago and it had just started to get good. She hoped she lived to actually finish it.
Mel stood up, walked quickly to the driver’s door of the Ford and tried the handle. It opened. She slipped into the seat, her heart thumping wildly in her chest. She pushed the key into the ignition and turned it. The SUV roared to life. As she shifted it into reverse, she glanced up at the window. The sound of her starting the engine had finally drawn their attention. She could see two people standing at the window, staring at her and yelling. A few more appeared to be running for the door. Mel backed the truck up almost to the trees, slammed it into gear and pressed her foot firmly to the gas pedal.
The tires spun uselessly for a second, then caught and rocketed her down the driveway. She nearly clipped a tree as she started into the first curve. She hit the brakes and slowed slightly. She didn’t remember the driveway having quite so many curves when she had walked up it earlier. It was dark enough that the running lights weren’t enough for her to see where she was going. She fumbled wildly around on the dashboard before finding the switch for the lights on the turn signal. Bright white tree trunks greeted the flick of her wrist.
Melanie didn’t even hesitate as she turned onto the main road from the driveway. She pressed her foot firmly towards the floor and accelerated. The trees were close on either side of the road, and flew by with a blur. She looked at the dashboard. There was about half a tank of gas left. She used her hand to feel around in the console and on the seat beside her, but she didn’t slow down. But there was no cell phone. She’d have to drive herself to help. She pushed the gas pedal a little farther to the floor.

The miles started to meld together in a tired blur. Melanie turned the heater on slightly against the cold and opened the back windows a crack to vent the stench of gasoline from her pants. Those pants. Those stupid, ridiculous, absurd pink pants. There was no way she was keeping them around. They were going straight into the garbage when she finally got home. Or maybe she’d burn them. They were already soaked in gasoline. All she’d need was a match.
Her knee was throbed and she could feel the skin tightening around where it was swelling. The gash in her arm had long ago ceased competing for the attention of the pain receptors in her brain. Her eyes stung with exhaustion. How long had it been since she’d slept? At least 24 hours. Maybe more. It felt like an eternity. She could feel the weariness in her arms and legs like they were lead weights, and all the individual scrapes and bruises from the past day. She needed to get to help before she fell asleep at the wheel.
She glanced at the clock on the dashboard radio. She had been driving for nearly an hour and hadn’t seen so much as a road sign. She was still driving on gravel, in fact. She had just started to wonder if the tank had enough gas to get her to the nearest house, when she saw a stop sign. She pulled up to a paved road and slowed to a stop. She didn’t know whether to go right or left. Though either way it had to take her somewhere, right? She turned left.

Another hour later she finally came across a sign. The next town was 15 more kilometers. And it had a police station. She drove directly to the station and parked in the parking lot. She nearly fell as she got out of the Ford and stumbled towards the door, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the glass. Her pants were still damp, one leg torn open with blood seeping down her leg. Smudges of dirt and blood were all over her clothes and arms. Her hair was a tangled rats nest of twigs and pine needles. And she reeked of gasoline. The young man sitting at the desk as she entered glanced up and did a double-take. Melanie held up her hands so that he knew she wasn’t armed, and wasn’t there for any malicious reason. She stepped up to the counter and rested her blood-stained hands gently on the desk in front of her.
“I need to report a kidnapping,” she croaked. The young officer looked almost frightened.
“A-all right. Whose kidnapping, miss?” he asked.
“Mine,” she replied.

The next few hours were a flurry of activity. She had a bit of trouble convincing the young officer that she had, indeed, been kidnapped and held somewhere against her will. Though her appearance may have helped with that. But when she finally convinced him to search the motor vehicles database with the license plate from the Ford she had, in fact, stolen, he began to understand. Evidently, the owner had a criminal record.
After divulging her story completely to the police at least twice, she was taken to the emergency department at the local hospital. There she finally found out that she was nearly three hours from home. The chloroform had done it’s job quite well. They had managed to drive her 5 full hours away from where they picked her up. Why they picked her up, on the other hand, was still a mystery. Even several days later, no one would tell her anything.
Melanie wasn’t particularly angry about the whole ordeal. Yes, she’d been frightened, and yes, she’d been kept against her will. But they hadn’t hurt her. They hadn’t even really made many threats to hurt her. It all seemed very surreal looking back on it, sitting in her mother’s kitchen. All she really wanted to do at the moment was forget it had happened and go back to her apartment. But her mother wouldn’t let her, too paranoid that she’d disappear again. Funny, though, that no one had missed her until she showed up in that little police station a couple days later. Everyone had just assumed she wasn’t answering her phone.
Over the next few weeks she was periodically called in to the police department to answer questions, clarify earlier statements, and once for a lineup. She had easily picked Chubby and Blue Eyes out of the lineup in seconds. Neither of them had looked particularly happy. It had only been a few days when she’d been brought in for the lineup, and Blue Eyes still had a huge bruise over his eye where she’d whacked him with the rock. According to the police, neither of them had said anything during questioning, and had pretty much asked for lawyers immediately. And she wasn’t able to shed light on the reason for her kidnapping, either. It seemed the police really didn’t know why she’d been taken. And, truthfully, she was really starting not to care. She was home safe, relatively unscathed, and she’d decided it really didn’t matter to her why, since it didn’t change the outcome.
And she had burned her pink scrubs the second she got home from the hospital.

Number One-Part 6

The gravel logging road was potholed and not even remotely level. Once she had left the clear cut section the trees towered over the road and the sun was cut from the sky once again. Though it was still brighter on the road than in the trees themselves. After a few minutes of walking Melanie began to feel exposed again. While she was fairly certain Blue Eyes wouldn’t be a threat for at least another couple hours, she had no idea what Chubby was currently up to. He could be stalking her at this very moment, in fact. She veered into the trees and off the gravel roadway. She could parallel the road, but if she stayed in the trees a few meters at least then she’d have a little bit of cover. Hell, maybe Chubby would be coming back up this very road with some sort of vehicle. The road looked like it hadn’t been used in years, but might still be navigable with a four wheel drive. Better safe than locked up in a basement again.
As she walked, Mel took stock of herself. She was alive, thankfully. She knew her legs were bruised, and she had torn a small hole in the left thigh of her pants during her tumble down the hill. Her arms were scratched, with red welts and bruises coming up all over them. There was dried blood caked over the spot on her arm where she’d scratched it, and both her wrists were raw from the handcuffs. And she was so tired she knew she must look like death.
She sincerely hoped that she would find something or someone not far down the trail. Her feet were beginning to throb, and her knees threatened to give out. She had been running nearly all day, after all. On any other day a walk in the woods might have been enjoyable. These particular woods were even quite scenic. But it was hard to enjoy the scenery in her current condition. Though Mel knew she couldn’t feel sorry for herself. It wouldn’t help anything, and it would more than likely slow her down.
Her mind slowly turned itself off, her thoughts passing silently through her brain. She wasn’t really conscious of much of anything as she plodded through the trees, following the old gravel road. She wanted to sit down and sleep. That’s what she really wanted to do.
“What the hell?” came a startling, loud voice from behind her. She nearly screamed as her heart slammed up into her throat. Without really thinking, she pulled the gun instantly from her pocket and whirled around to see who it was.
Chubby stood before her, a shocked look on his face.
He made a move towards her, but she took the gun in both hands and raised the barrel to face him, her finger on the trigger.
“Don’t,” she heard herself say firmly. Bond, Melanie Bond. License to kill. He stopped and held his hands up, as though she were about to ask him to hand over his wallet. They stood there, staring at each other. Neither spoke. Melanie had no idea what the man was thinking. She hoped he couldn’t see that she had no idea how to handle a handgun. The safety was probably on still, actually. She had to do something. They couldn’t stand like this forever. Then she remembered the handcuffs in her pocket.
“Back up, slowly,” she said firmly. She wondered if he heard the waver in her voice. He began to back up slowly. After a few steps his back bumped into a tree trunk. Melanie reached into her pocket and took out the handcuffs.
“Try anything and I’ll put a bullet through your brain,” she said. She couldn’t have done it if she wanted to, but he didn’t know that. Melanie Bond was fearless. All she needed to do was sound like she meant it. She pressed the gun to the side of his squishy head, grinding the barrel in to emphasize her point. Then she snapped one side of the handcuffs around his wrist. Then, sliding the gun around to the back of his head, she stepped behind the tree. She lowered the gun and grabbed his other wrist and attached to two, effectively attaching him to the tree.
She lowered the gun and stepped around in front of him. Her insides squirmed as she checked his pockets. Mel didn’t want to accidentally leave him with a key to the handcuffs. He had dropped a backpack when she had pulled the gun on him, and she picked it up. She thought about asking him some questions before she left, but she didn’t much feel like sticking around. And it didn’t really seem like he would answer anyway. She slipped the gun back into her pocket, grateful that she hadn’t had to use it. She turned to walk away.
“Hey! Wait a second, bitch! You can’t just leave me here!” Chubby screamed at her back. Melanie had no intention of gratifying him with any kind of response. He’d left her in handcuffed in his basement, she could leave him handcuffed to a tree in the woods. What she really wanted to do was go back and smack him a few times in the head. Take out some of her frustration. Maybe it would knock some sense into him. Unlikely, but hitting him would still be cathartic. No, she’d leave him there, wondering. Just like he’d done to her.

Mel waited until she was out of his line of sight before she opened the backpack. She was hoping for some kind of sweater or jacket, but no luck. Instead there were a couple of flashlights, matches, extra ammunition for the gun she now possessed. But no cell phone or radio. She sighed and slung the backpack over one shoulder. She was going to have to hike out of here, after all.
She felt slightly better now that she knew both of her kidnappers were taken care of. A weight had come off her shoulders. She was still ridiculously tired, but now at least she knew that she had time. Maybe she could even stop for a little rest. A nap maybe? No, she should really get somewhere before the sun went down and she was left walking in the dark. Though she did have flashlights now. No. she really did need to get indoors. It was definitely going to get cold out tonight, and all she was wearing was a thin shirt.
She was walking boldly out on the gravel road now. Her feet dragged slightly as she walked, and the blood in them puled with nearly every step. But she refused to stop. She just really wanted to be home and in bed right now. She had no idea how quick or slowly time was passing, but she did notice the sun was beginning to sink farther and farther into the trees. It was getting steadily darker, and she was truly hoping she’d come across a house, a cabin, even a woodshed would do. Just something to stay inside for the night, where she could curl up and fall asleep.
It was getting dark enough that she was considering turning on one of the flashlights when she spotted a side road headed off into the trees. The gravel logging road changed abruptly at the junction with the side road, going from rough and overgrown to bare and smooth. It had definitely been driven on a lot, and a lot more recently. She turned and followed it. It was little more than a section that had been cleared of trees and driven over many times. It twisted violently through dense tree trunks. As she turned a corner a small building came into view. As she came closer, she realized it had to be the house she had been kept in. In behind the house she could just make out the shed she had passed on her sudden dash into the woods. She had come full circle.
She took a few steps into the trees as she came closer. The front picture window was brightly lit, and she saw movement beyond the panes. There were at least four people in the living room, having an animated discussion. Directly in front of the house were parked two pickups and an SUV. She made her way closer under the cover of the trees, but the windows were closed and she couldn’t hear what they were saying. They were angry, though. That much she could tell from their faces and body language. It was unlikely if she went and knocked on the front door that she’d get a warm reception.
Melanie wondered if they had all been there when she’d been locked to the pole in the basement. They couldn’t have been, though. There hadn’t been nearly enough noise coming from the upper level of the house for it to have contained that many people while she was there. No, these people were backup. The reinforcements.
So now what? She couldn’t just walk up to the front door and ask for help. And she doubted she could sneak inside and use the phone without getting caught. There were too many of them for someone not to notice something. But she couldn’t leave and keep going, either. She’d freeze to death out here. Already her fingertips were getting numb and she was starting to shiver. And it was that time of year where the nights were really, really long. Plus, a few more kilometers and her feet were literally going to fall off.
She sighed and leaned up against a tree to try and think. She had to shift her position when something hard dug into her leg. The gun! She could use that to force her way inside. No, that didn’t seem particularly wise. There were at least four of them, maybe more. Someone would be stupid enough to try and get it away from her. And they’d most likely be successful. She rummaged through the backpack again, but still came up empty-handed. Nothing useful. The keys! She still had the keys to the handcuffs, and there were other keys on that ring. One of them had to be for one of the vehicles parked in front of the house.
She pulled the keys out of her pocket, her heart stopping momentarily when they jangled loudly in the night. She looked up at the window again, but no one in the house even glanced in her direction. The windows were closed, after all. She held the keys up in the light, but couldn’t quite see them clearly, even less than a few inches from her face. She pulled a flashlight out of the backpack and covered the bulb with her fingers, then turned it on. She maneuvered it so she could see the keys in her other hand. There was the key for the handcuffs, one that looked like a house key, one for a mailbox, and a fourth, a large one with the Ford logo stamped on it.
She turned off the flashlight and squinted at the vehicles. She was pretty good with makes and models of cars and trucks, but the two pickups were a few years old, and she couldn’t quite see what company had made them. They were backlit, so she was going to have to get to the front of them to see their grilles. Melanie edged up the road right up next to the house, keeping her eyes trained on the picture window. Every now and then someone would glance out the window as if they were expecting someone or something to come down the driveway. It made Mel paranoid they were expecting someone else, and that they’d show up and and she’d be caught suddenly, a deer in the headlights.
All the more reason to hurry, really. Once she had passed the edge of the house she took several quick steps and pressed her back flat against the siding of the house. There were no windows on this side, so thankfully she knew she wouldn’t be seen. She peered around the corner carefully, trying not to expose more than just a sliver of her face. The first pickup was a Mazda. Okay, one down. If the one next to that was something other than a Ford, then the last one was, by default, the vehicle she had a key to. She hoped. There was no guarantee Blue Eyes had driven his car out here. Maybe Chubby had given him a ride. She hoped that wasn’t the case.
She was too far away to see the make of the next truck. She edged around the corner, keeping her back as flat to the side of the house as she could. She shuffled sideways a few steps. Another Mazda. Well, at least they were consistent criminals. Now that she was closer, she could see the SUV was a Ford Explorer. She sagged against the house. There was a chance, after all.
Then the front door opened. Her heart stopped, and she held her breath. If anyone did come out the door, they were sure to hear the pounding of her heart before they saw her. She turned her head towards the door. It was solid, not the screen door with glass type, and at the bottom she could see a pair of feet. Then she heard the tail end of a conversation.
“Okay, I’ll see if I can see them. But we don’t know if they headed for the logging road or not. They might still be on her tail.”
Someone murmured something from inside she couldn’t understand.
“Yeah, but we’ve gotta check. We know he’s not smart enough to actually pack a jacket or anything.” Whoever it was, was coming out of the house. She had to get out of there, before they saw her. And they would if she stayed there. Melanie shuffled as quickly and quietly as she could back around the corner of the house. She took a few more quick steps and she was in the trees and could breathe again. That was a close call. Way too close. She ducked down behind a thick tree trunk and watched as a tall, thin figure walked to the nearest pickup, got in, and fired up the engine. There was a brief moment of panic as he backed up and the headlights lit up the area she was kneeling in, but her breath came back in a whoosh as whoever it was turned the truck around and continued down the driveway.
Well, that was something at least. Now she only had one vehicle to deal with. But she had to work fast, or the other one would be back.

Melanie needed to disable the other truck somehow. If she didn’t, the second she turned over the engine and gunned it down the driveway, they’d be after her. And she was no Dale Earnhardt. Melanie decided she’d prefer to avoid a car chase. Okay, best ways to disable a car? Disconnect the battery. Can’t do that, they’d definitely see her through the window if she tried to lift the hood. Let the air out of the tires. Possible, but if there was an air compressor handy, they’d be back on the road in less than an hour. And it might take her that long just to get to the next house. Then slash the tires. That would work, except she had nothing to slash them with. She could shoot the tires out, but they would be on top of her before she got to the Ford. Siphon the gas from the tank. Actually, that might work. As long as she could find something to use for a hose.
There was a shed behind the house. She walked slowly around the back of the house, staying within the shelter of the trees. As she rounded the back she saw the shed, lit dimly by light streaming through a window in the back of the house. Melanie moved behind the shed, and looked up at the house. The kitchen light was on, and there was someone standing with their back to the window. Mel crouched down and watched the person’s back through the window. They head was bobbing, and they looked as though they were having a conversation with someone else in the room. And they showed no signs of moving. She didn’t have the time to wait for them to move. She’d have to get into the shed while their back was turned.
Melanie edged around the sheltered side of the shed. The door swung outwards, and was held closed by a latch like the ones used to keep garden fences closed. Keeping an eye on the kitchen window, she stepped out in front of the shed and slid the latch slowly open. It made a slight squeal, but the figure in the kitchen window didn’t change position. She opened the door as little as possible and slipped inside the shed. She was forced to leave the door slightly ajar since there was no way to open the latch from the inside of the shed.
Melanie slipped her fingers over the end of one of the flashlights to shield the light and turned it on. She opened her fingers slightly and shone the flashlight around the shed. In one corner she found what she was looking for. A green garden hose hung coiled behind several shovels. It was a fairly long hose, though, and was probably too unwieldy to get out of the shed unnoticed. She'd have to cut it in order to be able to use it as a siphon. She shone the light around the shed and saw it glint off a large pair of garden shears. Perfect. She set the flashlight on a shelf with the lighted end almost against the wall of the shed, so it was as dim as possible.
She took the shears carefully off the shelf, then carefully moved the shovels away from the hose. She took several coils off the hook, and used the shears to cut a length of hose about 5 feet long. She clipped the threaded end off the hose, and set the shears back on the shelf where she had found them. Then she took the newly cut piece of hose and slipped it into the backpack. She slung the pack over her shoulders. She covered the flashlight with her fingers again and turned to face the door. She opened it as little as possible so she could see the kitchen window. The figure was still there, but they had turned around and were now facing the window. The man she saw wasn’t looking into the backyard, though, he was looking down.
Melanie ducked back into the shed and pulled the door closed again. She waited a minute, maybe two, and opened the door and peered at the window again. The figure was gone. She quickly came out of the shed and shut the door quietly behind her, lifting the latch and letting it down with her fingers so it made as little noise as possible. She crept back into the woods just as the figure reappeared at the window. She watched for a moment, then started back around the house. She came around the opposite side as before, this time the Ford stood between her and the other pickup.
She needed to get to the gas tank on the pickup. Mel walked through the trees so that she was even with the back bumpers of both vehicles. There was still a bright light streaming from the front picture window that bathed both vehicles. And she could still see people standing and sitting around the room, though now their discussion appeared significantly less animated. No one was looking directly out the window, but they didn’t all have their backs to it either. The only way she could get to the truck would be to run into the open between the trees and the back of the SUV and hope no one saw the flash of movement.
She stopped to study them for a moment. No one seemed particularly interested in keeping an eye on the driveway. And why would they, really? They clearly thought she was out in the woods somewhere, being hunted down by their friends Chubby and Blue Eyes. Though occasionally one of them did glance in the direction of the window. Mel took a deep breath. Time was becoming an issue, and she couldn’t stand here, watching them forever. The second truck was probably on its way back from wherever it had gone by now. She waited a few moments until it looked like the people closest to the window were looking away, and she darted behind the SUV and dropped to a crouch.
It had been a mere few steps to get here, but her heart was pounding like she’d just run a three minute mile. She rested her shoulder gently against the dirty vehicle and shuffled to the edge. She peered around the bumper up into the window. The light coming from it was particularly bright here, and she felt sure they would see her. None of the people in the window appeared to notice her, or have seen her scurry across the driveway. One of them turned their head towards the window and she let out a gasp, and ducked behind the bumper. She waited a moment then peered out around the bumper again. They hadn’t noticed her. She was probably barely even visible from the window, but that wasn’t much comfort at the moment. She looked at the side of the truck and saw no access to the fuel tank on this side. Good. That meant it was on the other side. The side that wasn’t in full view of the window.
Melanie took a deep breath and, staying in a crouch as best she could, took two steps and was behind the truck. It was a small truck, with no canopy over the bed, and she had to kneel behind it so she wasn’t seen. She shuffled around the bumper to the far side, the gravel from the driveway digging cruelly into her knees. She had almost reached the fuel access when her left knee screeched suddenly in pain. She clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
She felt the area gingerly with her hand and it came back warm and wet. She couldn’t see very well, but she was certain she had cut herself, probably on a piece of glass. But it didn’t feel like the glass was still wedged there. Now she was going to have to get rid of these pants. Oh, darn. She rolled over and sat directly on the ground, still able to feel the sharp gravel. She used her arms and levered herself over to beside the gas cap, and heaved a sigh of relief that there was no key required to get it open. She opened the panel and quickly clicked open the gas cap, listening to the hiss of escaping fumes. Melanie took the coil of hose out of the backpack and slipped one end into the gas tank, pushing it as far as it would go, so she was certain it had reached the bottom of the tank. She knew she couldn’t get the tank bone dry, but hopefully she could get enough out that the truck wouldn’t run for more than a few minutes.
She took a deep breath, clamped her mouth around the hose, and tried to pretend it was a giant straw. She felt a slight give in the pressure as the gas was sucked into the hose, and she immediately removed her mouth as soon as the pressure ceased completely. Just in time, too. Gas poured quickly out of the hose and directly onto her lap, soaking her pants and sending burning pain up her leg as it reached the open wound on her knee. She gasped and whipped the hose away from her, holding it at arm’s length. It was all she could do not to scream from the pain in her knee. It hurt so much she thought she might actually wet herself. Not that she would have noticed, since her pants were already completely soaked in gasoline. Though, it would’ve been a little warmer, at least.
She did manage to keep control of her bodily functions, and it took only a few minutes for the fuel to drain completely out of the truck. When the trickle finally stopped, she pulled the hose from the tank, clicked the fuel cap back into place, and closed the panel over it. She peered briefly over the truck bed to make sure no one was looking, and pitched the hose into the darkness.
Mel’s knee screamed in protest as she struggled into a crouched position and waddled around the back of the truck again. She peered around the bumper again. It still appeared as though no one knew she was there. She leaned her shoulder against the tailgate of the truck. Now was the time. To get into the SUV she was going to have to walk right into the light from the window. She pulled the keys out of her pocket, and found the one for the Ford. It might be locked and she wanted to get inside of it as quickly as she possibly could. That is, assuming this was the right Ford.

Number One-Part 5

The window. She’d go out the window. She took two quick steps and was at the wall, her hands already reaching for the window sill. She hesitated. It was an older style window, with the metal around the panes, and those ones usually made a loud squeak as they opened. She thought about trying to open it slowly, but that would just prolong the agony. And she had already heard them on the stairs. She heard the blood rushing in her ears.
And there was no time like the present. Best to do it quick, like ripping off a band-aid. She gripped the edge and pulled heavily, expecting it to give a her some resistance. It didn’t. It simply whooshed open quickly and easily. She heaved a great sigh of relief when she didn’t instantly hear the sound of footfalls quicken on the stairs. With no time to waste, she grasped the little ledges set into the screen and lifted it out of the window, setting it on the floor inside the room. She breathed deeply as the fresh air hit her full in the face. The window was set just over waist height in the wall, but outside the house was only a couple feet off the ground. Melanie leaned forward through the frame, and jumped slightly, trying to get as much of her body as possible outside the frame.
She only managed to succeed in coming down hard on her hip bones on the window frame. The thin metal frame dug sharply into her hips when they landed, but she managed to not cry out in pain. Though it was definitely going to leave an ugly bruise. With her hand on the ground she rocked side to side, pulling her legs out a bit more with each movement. Not exactly graceful, but it was working, and she wasn’t making much noise. When she managed to work enough of her body out of the frame, she set her foot on the ground and brought the rest of the other leg through. She stood up and quickly backed up against the house next to the open window.
There was no one in sight. To her left, past the edge of the house, was a metal utility shed. To her right, the line of trees curved around the house, so she couldn’t see much. She thought briefly of going right, since that was probably the direction of the road. But if she did, and they discovered she was missing, that was definitely the first place they would start looking. And she had no way of knowing if there would even be any traffic if she did manage to make it to a road. She went left, towards the shed. Behind the house was much the same as the side, just a wall of forest that sat about 10 feet from the siding. Maybe there was something in the shed she could use as a weapon. And weapons were good. She started towards it but didn’t get more than five feet from the house when she distinctly heard someone yell from through the open window.
“Shit!” they screamed. Without a second thought, Melanie bolted directly into the trees as fast as she could.
“She’s running!” she heard one of them yell from through the window. She stole a quick glance back and saw Blue Eyes crawling out the same window she had come through. He sprang to his feet and their eyes met just as she glanced back. She could barely breathe, her heart forcing adrenaline to every inch of her body. Every second felt like an hour as she dodged upright tree trunks and smaller bushes. Thankfully there weren’t many fallen trees in this particular forest. A champion hurdler she was not. She ran as fast as her legs would move, even though it was totally unsafe. But to hell with safety, Mel wanted out of there.
Suddenly, her right foot caught on a stump, and she crashed headlong into the ground. She threw out her arms in front of her to cushion the fall, but felt a sudden sharp pain in her right arm. She quickly scrambled to her feet and continued her mad dash through the foliage. Shouting came from behind her, but couldn’t make out the words over her own thrashing heartbeat. She was gasping for breath, not accustomed to such explosive speed. Her legs protested but kept moving. She knew she couldn’t stop. She didn’t know what would happen if they did manage to catch her, and she didn’t want to find out.
She suddenly passed into a section of forest that was mostly coniferous, and the crashing she was making with her own feet diminished and she could hear them behind her. Too close behind her. She stole a glance back and saw them, less than 200 yards behind her and gaining. How in the hell had they managed to catch up with her? She had to have had some head start, but there they were, right behind her.
“Stop or I’ll shoot you, bitch,” she heard one of them yell breathlessly. It had to have been Chubby, he was the one with the gun. She redoubled her efforts. She knew there was little chance he could actually hit her, even if he was an experienced marksman. She was a moving target and there were trees in the way. Nonetheless, she tried zig-zagging her path slightly, but not enough to slow her down. She hoped to hell it would work.
She heard the bullet before the report from the gun. Something very, very fast whizzed by her right side, missing by a fair amount. Good, he was a poor shot. The loud boom of the gunshot was deafening over the throbbing of her heart. There was another whizz slightly closer, but he still missed. Then a split second later the sound of the gunshot. She wondered how many rounds his particular gun held. And if he’d had time to pick up spare bullets before chasing her into the woods.
Despite the messages her brain was sending to her legs to move faster, they were no longer listening. In fact, she was slowing down. Two days of hunger and sleeping on the floor were not conducive to fleeing your captors. They were yelling at her to stop now. At least they had stopped shooting. She stole another glance behind her as she plunged out into a tiny open meadow. The bright light in the clearing was almost blinding, but she saw they had fallen back significantly. She managed to make it across the meadow and just into the coverage of trees before she saw them burst out into the open on the other side.
I can’t keep running like this forever, she thought. Her legs were already threatening to turn to jelly. There was no way she could outrun them. Just as she re-entered the trees, and she turned sharply left. If they hadn’t seen her turn, and she was quiet enough, they might keep going straight. She had a slight head start, so she altered her course as best she could to minimize the noise she was making as she ran. The forest was still evergreens, though, and they had few lower branches she could hide behind. She veered left more, hoping to find some bushes, or anything, to hide in. Anything that would conceal her would do. Though the pink pants she was wearing definitely wouldn’t help.
She heard them yelling as the entered the trees again on the other side of the meadow. It had worked...sortof. They were arguing now about which way she had gone.
“She had to have gone straight.”
“No way. She had a head start, she probably turned, hoping we’d keep going straight.”
“Okay, then which way did she go?”
“I have no idea! You go that way, I’ll go this way. Yell if you see her. Remember she’s wearing pink so she should be easy to spot out here.” Mel kept running as they argued. There had to be somewhere she could hide. She kept to the left, skirting the meadow, hoping to find some kind of bushes or at least some low-hanging branches that were reasonably thick. She thought fleetingly about scrambling up one of the trees, but there was no way she could climb one of them fast enough.
She was breathing in gasps now, her legs and lungs burning with the effort. Then off to the right she saw a large fallen tree trunk. She hurdled over it and dove to the ground. It wasn’t as big as she’d have liked, and she had to lay flat on the ground to prevent any of her body from being visible. She was gasping audibly and tried as best she could to calm herself down and get her breathing under control. When she finally stopped gasping, she noticed how silent it had become. Nothing stirred. She was sure they would be able to hear the thumping of her heart.
Her right arm stung as she ground it into the dirt and pine needle floor of the forest. She ran the fingers of her left hand over the sting and they came back with a wet, sticky substance clinging to them. She had managed to cut her arm when she’d tripped on the stump. Well, nothing I can do about that right now, she thought, and wiped her hand on the shoulder of her shirt, leaving a bloody smudge.
Melanie lay there for what must have been at least ten minutes before she dared move again. She had been watching what she could see of the trees around her and hadn’t seen any sign of either Chubby or Blue Eyes. But she didn’t want to get her hopes up. In fact, even if she had lost them, she was basically lost herself. She had absolutely no idea where she was, or how far it was to the nearest anything. Or even in what direction anything was. She slowly raised her head off the ground, using her elbows to raise herself. The cut on her arm protested painfully. She peered cautiously over the log, scarcely allowing herself to breathe. And then she saw him. It was Blue Eyes, walking slowly toward her, maybe 50 yards away. He was scanning 360 degrees around him, looking for any sign of her. She ducked back down. He hadn’t seen her. But he had probably seen the log. She hoped he wouldn’t put 2 and 2 together and come over to check behind it. It was basically the only cover around.
Then she heard someone yell from somewhere nearby. It must have been Chubby, but he was far enough away she couldn’t tell what he had said from behind the log. She heard Blue Eyes yell back to him.
“What?” he hollered back. A reply came, but it was still unintelligible. She heard Blue Eyes sigh and then heard the sound of his footsteps walking away. It could be a ruse, she thought to herself. She lay there for a few more minutes, and the sound of silence returned. Slowly, very slowly, she raised her head and peered over the top of the log. The forest was empty. He had actually left. She got up, her legs nearly collapsing underneath her. She looked quickly around, trying to figure out what to do. She had absolutely no idea where she was. And they might be gone now, but there was no guarantee they wouldn't come back. She had to keep moving.
She could just see the edge of the clearing from where she was standing. She knew the approximate direction from which she had come running, and decided that at least getting back to the house was probably the best idea she had. They were in the woods looking for her right now, so the house would be empty. At the very least, she knew in that direction there was a road that would take her out of wherever the hell she was. Though she knew she was far from anything. While she was running she hadn’t come across a road, a trail, or any sign of nearby human life. And they had shot at her, so there couldn’t have been anyone around to hear. She thought about hiding somewhere for a few hours. Maybe in the garden shed behind the house. Maybe she could wait for dark, then get a head start on then road while they regrouped inside.
She walked slowly back towards the clearing and skirted around it, looking for the spot she had gone in. She came around a corner and nearly broadsided Blue Eyes and Chubby standing just on the other side of a fairly thick tree trunk. She nearly cried out, but strangle the sound and dodged back behind the tree trunk. Thankfully it was wide enough to hide her. Her heart had started up again and she prayed they hadn’t heard or seen her. She edged around the tree little by little until she could just barely see them. They couldn’t have been more than 30 feet away, and they were talking.
“Well, obviously it wasn’t her, ‘cause there’s no sign of her now,” Blue Eyes was saying irritatedly.
“Christ, dude, I’m sorry. I swear I thought I saw those stupid pink pants go running the other way,” Chubby replied.
“Well you didn’t, and now we have no idea which way she went. All right,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “We’ll split up again. But I think you should head back to the cabin and get some stuff just in case this takes a while. She can’t keep running forever, and we know these woods. She doesn’t. So there’s a good chance we’ll find her before she finds any way of getting out of here. Pay attention. I want you to bring back a couple flashlights…” The rest was drowned out as Melanie’s brain started screaming. Blue Eyes was going to keep looking for her, Chubby was headed back to the cabin. Blue Eyes was almost certainly going to head towards where she was, because they must have gone around the clearing in opposite directions of each other. So they’d been the other direction already. The tree might be wide enough to hide her while she was standing still, but any sign of movement could draw his attention. She had to get out of there, or he’d see her.
She glanced back around the tree towards them. Chubby was handing Blue Eyes the gun and Blue Eyes was checking it. It was now or never. She back slowly and carefully away from the tree, trying to keep it between her and the two men. She rounded the edge of the clearing and heard them say good-bye to each other as she lost sight of them. She broke into a run, hugging the edge of the clearing to keep as much foliage between herself and Blue Eyes as possible. When the edge straightened out she took off into the trees, hoping she'd make it far enough that he wouldn’t see her through the tree trunks. But again, her poor choice of work pants a few days prior made it hard to believe he might miss her. Next time, she thought, I buy camouflage pants. That never goes out of style. And at least it’s useful, unlike this ridiculous pink.
She ran as fast and hard as she could, not even bothering to look behind her to check if she’d been seen. She doubted Blue Eyes was stupid enough to shoot at her like Chubby had done, but she still didn’t care to find out just how close he might be. Her legs ached now, and her body felt like it had no adrenaline left. The fatigue was setting in. She was hungry, tired and getting a little cold in the shade of the trees. She listened carefully as she ran, for any sound that would give away where he was, but if he was within audible range he wasn't making much noise. The sound of her own footfalls was probably drowning him out. The sweat began to accumulate on the back of her neck as the forest floor started tilting upwards. She hated hills. Especially when she was jogging. They always slowed her down, and this was not the best time to be slowing down. But as far as she could tell, up was the only way to go. She wondered how fit Blue Eyes was. Would he be able to keep up with her? Could she risk slowing down, even stopping for a second, just to see if he was anywhere nearby?
She kept going, and the grade of the hill increased even more. It was getting very difficult to maintain any semblance of an actual run. And now her legs and lungs were burning with the effort. She had to stop now, or she’d have a heart attack. Or collapse into a little pile on the forest floor. Well, at least that would save them the bullet, she thought. She slowed her pace right down to a slow walk, then after a few more paces, stopped and turned around. She was gasping for breath, but only silence greeted her in return. She strained through the murk of the trees and shade but saw no telltale signs of movement. Her breathing finally slowed from panting to just hard breathing, and still she heard nothing. Maybe she had managed to get away from them. Maybe Blue Eyes really hadn’t seen her as she sprinted away from the edge of the clearing. She decided this was the time to dare to hope. She looked around and found a nearby fallen log, and set herself down on it, resting her tired legs.
She set her head heavily in her hands and tried to think. She had lost them, for now. But who knew if they were good trackers or not. They had said that they knew this forest, but that could mean anything. Perhaps they had grown up in the cabin and had wandered here as children. On the other hand, they could be hunters, who could track a deer over miles and miles, waiting for a good opportunity to shoot. She sighed. They were right, she couldn’t run forever. And she no idea where she was. It could be days worth of walking to get to another populated area, and who knows what animals could be lurking in this forest. She also had the problem of them looking for her. Even if she did manage to figure out which direction to go, they were bound to cross paths at some point. It might be a big forest, but her luck wasn’t that good. At least, not lately. And they would find her before she could get to help, she was sure of it. Even if they weren’t good trackers, they’d find her eventually.
So she’d have to disable them somehow. That was really the only chance she had. Disable them, then get to some kind of road or back to their cabin, and then find her way to civilization. But she was without any kind of weapon. Hell, she didn’t even have a jacket. She shivered slightly. The cold was starting to set in, and the sweat that had soaked into her shirt was now sucking the warmth out of her. It was gonna be a cold night in the forest if she didn’t get out of here.
And she was so tired. She hadn’t had anywhere near enough sleep in days. And the diet of sandwiches and pop tarts wasn’t exactly what you’d call healthy. And she’d been running for hours. Instead of thinking, trying to find a way out of this, all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep for a couple hours. Even cold and shivering, she was pretty sure she could’ve slept. Her brain fought her as she sat on the log, trying to figure out what to do. She shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs, but the clung stubbornly to the fold of her grey matter. She took a few deep breaths and stood up, looking around for some inspiration. Mel knew she couldn’t stand there thinking for long. Even if Blue Eyes wasn’t hot on her trail, he was bound to come within eyesight at some point, and she didn’t know how much time she had.
Incapacitating someone couldn’t really be that hard, could it? All she really needed was a sharp knock to the head or some other type of trauma. But she couldn’t use just her bare hands. She’d never been in a fistfight, never taken any kind of fight training or even a self-defense course. She made a mental note to enroll in some kind of martial art when she made it back to the city. So hand to hand combat was out. For now, she’d just have to settle for some kind of improvised weapon. But what? She had no knife, nothing sharp she could use to make a spear or anything like that. All she had was the clothes she was wearing. Maybe she could jump down on him from a tree. Jump down on top of a guy with a gun, yeah, that sounds like a brilliant idea. Okay, what would MacGyver do? Build some sort of snare with just a few sticks and his shoelaces, probably. But she had no idea how a snare worked in order to build one. Yet another thing for the to-do list, buy all old MacGyver DVDs and memorize each episode. But she did have her shoelaces. And the drawstring from her scrub pants if she needed it. Okay, string good. String might come in handy. Maybe she could figure something out. Not a snare, necessarily, but something else. Hmm, if she were to roll something heavy down the hill from high enough, it just might pick up enough speed to at least injure him a little, if not completely knock him out. There weren’t a lot of rocks around, but there were fallen trees. And logs tended to roll pretty good down hills.
What she needed was a section of hill relatively free of tree trunks, and a log short enough to roll between them, but large enough to cause at least some damage if it were to run over a person. Given her current surroundings, that seemed like a tall order. Or maybe she could bend a reasonably thick branch back and tie it off with one of her shoelaces, then when he came close enough, she could let it go. Kind of like a whip. If she managed to find a good sized branch at the right height, and she could get it to bean him in the head, it might at least stun him enough for her to get his gun away.
What she’d do with the gun once she had it was anybody’s guess, really. Melanie wasn’t sure she had it in her to shoot someone, even if they had kidnapped her. And given that she had no experience with handguns she was more than likely to miss, and not get a second shot off before he tackled her to the ground. Neither plan was particularly brilliant or appealing, but she had to do something. She couldn’t just wait for them to find her and start chasing her again. And she really didn’t want to end up in that basement staring at the walls again.
She turned and started up the hill again, walking quietly this time. She kept alert for fallen logs, or branches that stood at the right height. There were plenty of branches, but not a lot of fallen logs. It looked like she was going to have to take door number two. She stepped up to one of the branches that came out from the trunk at about head level. That would probably be the best height, as Blue Eyes was maybe slightly taller than her, so at the very least it would come across his neck. A crushed windpipe would work quite nicely. She grabbed about 2/3 of the way to the end of the branch and pulled it back as far as she could get it to go. It bent back fairly far, and when she let it go again it made a satisfying whipping sound. But it didn’t look like it would be strong enough to knock someone unconscious, which is what she was going for.
Even if there hadn’t been a lack of fallen logs to roll down a hill, there was a serious lack of open space in which to roll them. There were so many tree trunks sprouting out of the ground there was little chance of finding a space empty enough, even if she did find a suitable log. Maybe she should just keep running. If she could get a line on a road, or some sign if civilization, there might be a chance she could make it there before they found her. Then again, they might be somewhere nearby right now, watching her, wondering what the hell she was doing. She was out of ideas, and so tired she really couldn’t think well enough to come up with any other viable options.
Melanie looked straight up the hillside. If she squinted right she could almost see a clearing and what looked like the top of the hill. If it was, she might be able to get the lay of the land a little, maybe even see a road or a building somewhere. She looked around to make sure there was no one sneaking up behind her, then started walking slowly straight up the hill. She tried to be as quiet as possible, hoping if someone did show up she’d be able to hear them. Within seconds she was breathing hard, and within minutes sweat was popping out on her forehead again. The hill hadn’t looked nearly this steep from down below.
She stopped every few minutes to look around her. With her rapid breathing and pounding heart, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear anyone coming up behind her. Still there was no one there. She tried not to get her hopes up that she’d lost Blue Eyes for good. He’d be chasing her, just maybe a bit slower now that she was deeper into the forest and he wasn’t sure which way she had come. It wasn’t a heavily trafficked forest, either, and she was fairly certain she was at least leaving scuff marks in the fallen pine needles that even the worst tracker could follow. But she was having enough trouble just keeping moving that covering up her trail seemed an extravagance. As she came closer to what she had seen as a clearing from the bottom of the hill it was getting brighter. She stepped out from the trees into bright sunlight, the sudden brilliance making her squint and shield her eyes.
It was a clearing of sorts, she thought. Just not in the traditional way. It was actually a section that had been clear-cut by logging. The hill continued past the trees and peaked about 400 yards farther up. She could see the clear cutting had gone over the peak and down the other side because of the lack of tree tops poking out above the ridge on the other side. The sun had an instant warming effect and she was suddenly reenergized. Despite that, she knew she couldn’t stay in the open long. But one thought did occur to her: where there was logging, there were logging roads. And logging roads lead to backroads, which lead to highways. Highways with lost of cars that might pick up a stranded woman in the middle of the bush. She almost laughed aloud at the face her mother would’ve made at that last statement.
They might be expecting her to find this clearing. And they might be expecting her to follow the logging road out. Then she caught a glimpse of a large round log sitting just at the peak of the hill. She couldn’t tell how long it was from here, but it looked like a reasonably short section. Maybe…just maybe, it would work. She glanced around what she could see of the clearing. No one was there. Well, it was now or never. She made a dash for the log, her heart pounding again as she tried to close the distance as quickly as possible. The area must have been recently cut, as no brush or other trees had grown up in place of the evergreens that had been cut down.
When she reached the log she ducked quickly behind it. Luckily it was large enough to shield her lying down. She took a second to catch her breath. The log was sitting rather precariously right on the top of the hill, and where she was sitting she was completely exposed to the other side of the clear cut. She didn’t like it, but there wasn’t a lot she could really do about it other than running back down into the trees. Where Blue Eyes might be waiting. Melanie got up and quickly walked around the log, trying to decide whether or not it would roll if she gave it a shove.
She used her foot to nudge it gently, to see how easily it would move. She was surprised when the small push she gave it nearly rolled it immediately down the hill. It was almost too good to be true. She had a log the right size, in a good spot and it moved easily. Now she just needed a place to attach a piece of string so it could be released easily and quickly. She searched the entire log and didn’t find much other than a few pieces of bark sticking out here and there. She yanked on a few of them and they were actually quite secure. One in particular was very large and looked like it would work.
She pulled the drawstring out of her scrub pants, grateful that they fit well enough that they wouldn’t fall down around her ankles. It simply wouldn’t do to be running around the forest with in one’s underwear trying to escape from one’s kidnappers. She tied one end of the string tightly around the piece of bark sticking from the trunk of the tree. The bark was sticking nearly straight up towards the sky, and the drawstring wasn’t quite long enough to reach a nearby bush she had seen that she wanted to tie it to. She knelt down and pulled the shoelace from her right shoe. She secured one end of the shoelace around the thickest branch of the bush and tied a quick-release knot between the two strings. She left a few inches of slack so she could push the log so it was weighted against the string, and would fall when she released the knot.
Melanie stepped back and examined the trap she had set. MacGyver would have laughed. There were so many different ways that this could fail she was afraid to even start counting. Her biggest problem remained. How she’d get Blue Eyes in just the right spot to actually hit him with the log. He’d have to be fairly close so that he didn’t have time to get out of the way before it got to him. It was pretty hard to miss a giant log rolling towards you down a hill. She decided she would hide, and wait until she could see him at the bottom of the hill. That way, if he showed up on the wrong side of the hill she could just continue hiding, hope he didn’t find her, and try to come up with a different plan.
She put her foot against the log and pushed. It toppled off its rather precarious position and looked like it was going to roll down the hill, but way stopped abruptly by the string. Excellent. That part of the plan had worked. She examined the slip knot to satisfy herself it would hold until released. She decided it would. Now, keeping an eye on the edges of the clearing, she gathered up as many branches as she could find without going too far. Then Mel sat herself down next to her trap with her side nearly touching the end of the log, her knees pulled up to her chest. She arranged the branches as best she could so they concealed her body. Again her stupid pink scrub pants were an issue. The color was so incongruent with the green and brown of her surroundings she felt like a great big beacon, sitting exposed on top of the ridge for all the world to see.
But it’s the best I can do, she thought. I can’t think of anything else, and I have to stop at least one of them before they have a chance to find me and finish whatever it is they’ve already started. She could see through the branches she had rested on her head, and she scanned the edges of the clearing constantly. Her plan was to wait until she saw him, then stand up and make sure he saw her. She was fairly certain that even though Blue Eyes had the gun now he wouldn’t shoot at her. It seemed as though they needed her alive, for whatever reason. They were, after all, going to a lot of trouble to find her, when it would probably have been a lot easier to simply let her wander in the woods until she starved to death and her body was dragged away and consumed by hungry animals. Once he saw her, she would duck behind the log, as if she were running down the opposite side of the hill. She would wait behind the log until he was close enough he couldn’t dive out of the way, then release the knot. If she had any luck at all, the log would at least hurt him enough for her to maybe get the gun away from him. If she was really lucky, he would end up unconscious.
Hurry up and wait. As Melanie sat at the top if the ridge, feeling exposed, the cold crept up her body through her behind. The cut on her arm from when she had fallen on her first dash into the woods started to sting and throb, as did many other places where she had either landed or hit something in her mad dash for freedom. And she was tired. So very tired. She fought to keep her eyelids open. Funny how even though she felt vulnerable all she could really think of was falling asleep. She could even fall asleep right here, the place didn’t really matter. No, she couldn’t think of that. She wasn’t done yet. She had to stop Blue Eyes, then she could think of sleep. Once she got out of here, back to her apartment in town, then she could sleep for as long as she wanted. She was definitely taking a few days off work after this. What would she tell her boss, exactly? Oh, sorry, I was kidnapped and I need a few days to recover. Would that be sick time? A leave of absence? Maybe stress leave. Yes, stress leave. That seemed appropriate.
And then she saw a little flicker of movement at the edge of the clearing. She wasn’t sure at first, maybe her tired eyes were playing tricks on her. But there it was again. No, this was for real. She recognized Blue Eyes as he came out of the trees, his head moving back and forth, scanning the clearing. Even from this distance she could see he wasn’t carrying the gun, instead he had it tucked into his belt. She waited, watched as he stopped just past the trees. He seemed to be scrutinizing the hillside quite closely. Again she cursed her stupid pink pants. Never again would she buy pink pants, never.
She watched him turn slowly around, and look back where he had come from. Now was her chance. Melanie stood up as quickly as possible, pushing all the branches away from her. She quickly stepped behind the log, so it looked as though she had been sitting on the other side of it and had just gotten up. She looked back in his direction and waited for him to turn back around. Her adrenaline began again in earnest as she saw him turn back around and he saw her. A curious look crossed his face, and he immediately began running up the hill towards her. Mel did her best to look surprised, then quickly turned and took a couple steps away from the log, as if she was going to start the fleeing all over again. Then she dropped to the ground and wriggled as quickly as he could back towards the log. Well, that performance wouldn’t win her an Oscar, but she doubted he’d paid enough attention to the expression on her face to care.
She wriggled right up to the edge, one had poised near the end of the slip knot, ready to pull. Blue Eyes kept running. He must have been in better shape than she realized, because it looked almost effortless for him. He wasn’t gasping for air as she had been when she had run up the very same hill. And he was going a lot faster too. He was getting very close now, but Mel forced the voice in her head to be quiet and waited for him to take a few more steps, just a few more. Now!
She pulled with all her strength on the shoelace she held in her hand. The knot let loose and the log acted exactly as she had wanted it to. It began to roll down the hill. She almost couldn’t believe it had worked. Blue Eyes came to a screeching halt as soon as he saw it coming towards him. Then it stopped. It just stopped.
“Shit!” Melanie swore in a whisper. It took a moment for them both to register what had just happened, and another moment for him to see her lying on the ground just behind where the log had been. Mel leapt to her feet, her instinct taking over. She took off as fast as she could go, careening headlong straight down the steep hill. Blue Eyes followed. She could clearly hear his footfalls crashing behind her. She didn’t have to look back to know he was catching up.
They were nearly halfway to the trees on the downhill side of the clear cut when Mel heard a sudden gasp behind her and the world turned upside down. Before she could understand what was happening she felt something solid smack her back violently and she was nearly airborne. Her arms and legs flailed helplessly as she crashed down the hill, tumbling end over end. She was unable to stop herself, unable to think. It felt as if someone had pressed the slow motion button on the camcorder in her brain. She was nearly at the trees when she finally came to a rest against a large stump.
Somehow, miraculously, she was still conscious. She was facing up the hill, and she saw Blue Eyes getting standing up, not ten feet from where she was lying. She shoved herself away from the stump, ready to start running again. She wasn’t about to let him get her. She had to get away. Or fight back. Or something.
He was on her before she managed to get to her feet. He pushed her roughly back onto her back and sat unceremoniously across her chest, pinning her to the ground. One had held a set of keys, the other gripped her wrist where the set of handcuffs still dangled. She tried to dislodge him by thrashing her legs, but to no avail. She grabbed for the keys, but he held them out of her reach. The he grabbed her wrist where the handcuff was still attached, grinding the metal into her skin. He was releasing the empty manacle with the keys. She reached around on the ground with her other hand, searching for anything she could get her fingers around. Her hand managed to grasp a round, rough object that felt like a branch, but when she pulled it didn’t budge. She wriggled her other arm as, her hand kept searching frantically for some kind of weapon. Just as he had gotten the other manacle open and was reaching for her other arm, her fingers closed around something cold and solid. A rock.
She grasped it with all her strength and brought it up as quickly as she could toward his head. It connected with a sickening hollow sound. The blow reverberated back down through the rock and into her arm. She felt his body to go limp and he fell forwards and on top of her, unconscious.
Melanie heaved a sigh of relief and shoved at him with all her might, rolling him off her. Jeez, he was heavy. She lay there for a moment, trying to figure out what had just happened. He must have tripped coming down the hill and fallen into her. But he had stopped before she had and managed to get up before she got away. Hell, he had almost caught her again. What the hell had gone wrong with that damn log?
She got slowly to her feet. Thankfully nothing had gotten broken on her flight down the hill. Bruised, yes. Broken, no. The keys he had been fumbling with lay on the ground just next to the unconscious Blue Eyes. She picked them up and released the handcuffs from her wrist. The skin underneath was raw and sore, but not broken or bleeding. She slipped the keys and the handcuffs into the side cargo pockets of her ridiculous pink pants and knelt down next to Blue Eyes. There was a huge welt beginning to form on his temple where the rock had hit him, but she could see he was still breathing. He’d wake up with a hell of a headache, but at least he’s still alive. Payback for the chloroform, she decided.
It was probably best not to linger. There was no way to know how long he would be unconscious for. And when he did wake up, he was going to be pissed. And she didn’t want to be around for that.
Mel noticed he no longer had the gun tucked into his belt. He must have lost it during their tumble down the hill. She started up the hill, carefully inspecting the ground, hoping to find it. When she did, it felt heavy and foreign in her hands. She’d fired rifles before, with her Dad when she was little, but never a handgun. It was modern-looking, the kind the police and other law-enforcement use on TV. It felt wrong in her hands. But there was no way she was going to leave it here. If Blue Eyes came to, or Chubby showed up, she figured it would be better if she at least had something, even if she was clueless as to its operation. She slipped it into the other cargo pocket of her pants.
It was heavy enough that her pants now threatened to come down off her hips, so she hiked back up to the top of the hill to retrieve her shoelace and drawstring. She cursed the log as she fed the drawstring back through her waistband. She wasn’t sure why it stopped, and when she looked she still couldn’t figure it out. No sense on dwelling on that, really. It was a pretty stupid plan to start with. She started back down the hill, heading for the gravel road logging road that lead away from the clearing. And, hopefully, freedom. Blue Eyes still lay near the tree line, motionless. Mel noticed he was wearing a sweater, and thought briefly about taking it with her to keep warm. There was no telling how long she was going to be outside for. But the thought of wearing something of his was seemed repulsive, and she decided she could take the cold. There was no need to make her skin crawl.

Number One-Part 4

Melanie woke up with her head resting on cold concrete. There was something hard nudging her in the thigh, and she opened her eyes to a pair of old hiking boots directly in front of her head. She pushed herself up awkwardly, not sure how she ended up lying on the floor. She glanced quickly out the window to find that it was now bright and sunny outside. She must have fallen asleep.
“Bathroom,” the booted figure said abruptly. She looked up to find it was Blue Eyes. Chubby was nowhere in sight. She tried to stand but stumbled on the blanket as she was getting up. Blue Eyes caught her arm and hauled her unceremoniously to her feet. He released her handcuffed arm and pushed her quickly towards the bathroom. Melanie thought briefly about trying to get away, maybe kicking him in the junk and running, but she was fairly certain she wouldn’t get far. Her mind was slowly clearing away the fog of sleep. She was pretty sure she could outrun him distance-wise, but he looked like he could catch her before she had a chance to get too far away. That, and a full night lying on a frigid concrete floor with no padding hadn’t exactly been kind to her. Her legs didn’t seem to want to obey very well as they made their way to the bathroom, and she’d had to put her hand out to steady herself against the wall at least twice.
As before, the door was left open a crack so he could hear what was going on. As she sat down, she simultaneously turned on the tap, so that when she was finished it would sound like she was still going. She hoped it would buy her more time to try and pry the nail loose. She had managed to get it to turn on her previous visit, but hadn’t had the time to pull it free. It was one of those skinny jobs with the tiny ball-type head instead of a flat head, but she could still grip it slightly between her fingers. She twisted it back and forth as much as she could, but it still wouldn’t pull away from the window frame. She tried wiggling it sideways, hoping it might compress the wood around the nail and make the hole bigger so it could be pulled free. She was so intent on getting the nail out she nearly forgot about the time, and suddenly heard shuffling outside the door followed by a quick knock.
“Almost done,” she called a little too eagerly. She washed her hands under the still running water and flushed, and turned around to find Blue Eyes already in the room. Dammit. It had felt close to coming loose on that last tug, too.
When they re-entered the room, Chubby was waiting for them. He was holding the tray, which now had another full glass of water and two pop-tarts on it. Blue Eyes re-attached her to the pole and Chubby set the tray on the ground, and they both left.
Well, at least they’re strawberry, she thought to herself as she took a swig of the water and started on one of the pop-tarts. Her mother would certainly not approve of this diet of pop-tarts and peanut butter sandwiches. Thankfully they had left the blanket there, so she folded it as best she could and sat on it like a cushion. Much better than the cold concrete of the floor. She was still hungry after finishing the second pop-tart, but she doubted that trying to look like a sad little orphan and asking for more would work very well. In fact, it would probably earn her a swift smack to the head.
She leaned back against the pole and stared out at the trees beyond the window, her mind blank. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think anymore. Maybe she could just accept her fate, whatever it was. It would surely make her last hours a lot easier. No. That was no way to think. There was a way out of this. There had to be a way out of this.
The door opened and Blue Eyes came in to take her tray away. She barely glanced at him as he came and went. He wasn’t bad looking, really. On any other day she might have smiled politely at him, maybe hoped he would talk to her. But now, she just really hoped he wouldn’t say a word. And he was doing well so far. She didn’t want to hear either of them speak. It would just piss her off even more. She couldn’t think of a single reason she should be here, and it was really making her hate the two people who she knew were keeping her from leaving. She hadn’t been treated poorly, yet. She hadn’t been tortured, yet. Unless you counted the psychological torture of not know what you’ve done to end up in a situation like this. In that case, there was plenty of torture going on. It wasn’t so bad, really. Neither of them was particularly mean. Oh great, Mel thought, here comes the Stockholm Syndrome. No. I’m trapped in a basement because of them. It’s their fault and I’m allowed to hate them.
God, this sucked. If they had left anything, anything, in the room for her to do it would’ve been better than this. Watching the weather channel on a TV all day would have been better than this. She had nothing to occupy her mine, and she had exhausted all her theories of ways to escape. Except for that nail in the bathroom. She was sure if she had just one more trip she could get it out. She’d felt it budge the last time. She knew she could get it out of the window frame. After that it was just a matter of picking the lock on the handcuffs. Not that she’d ever picked a lock before, but she’d burn that bridge when she got there. She had vague notions of tumblers and needing to push things around inside the lock, but that was more for door locks. This was handcuffs, and she had no idea how they worked. She lifted her wrist and studied the tiny keyhole. But the light in the room was too dim to see anything inside. She twisted around the pole, trying to get better light, but still saw nothing. Now that was a skill that would be useful at some point. She made a mental note to learn the art of lockpicking when she finally got free. And it’s not like she needed to do it quickly, either. She had no pressing engagements to get to. Though Blue Eyes had checked on her regularly yesterday, she was fairly certain they had left her alone all night long. That would give her a good eight hours that night to fiddle all she wanted. Now she just needed to get that nail.
She sighed and shuffled around the pole so she could lean against it and stare out the window. The hours that passed so slowly yesterday didn’t pass nearly as slowly today. Maybe because she had a plan, but more probably because she had something other than bare walls to look at. She watched the sun become more and more intense outside the window as it rose through the sky. As it did, she could feel it get slightly warmer in the basement, though it was still cooler than she liked. She estimated it was a few hours past noon the next time blue eyes checked on her. Guess they didn’t have a schedule, after all.
She still had one arm free, but he didn’t seem to mind that. He simply shook the handcuffs lightly and let them drop when he was satisfied she was still secure. Earlier, staring out the window, she’s made her mind up to ask him why she was here again. He hadn’t answered yesterday, the first time she’d asked, but it didn’t hurt to try again.
“What am I here for?” she said clearly, and loudly enough she knew he could hear. She’d kept her voice neutral, tried to sound more curious than angry or scared. He stopped, almost to the door, and turned. She wasn’t good at reading people particularly well, but she thought he looked sad. But sad about what, exactly? When he didn’t say anything, she tried a different question.
“Why me? What have I done?” she asked. She had done her best to keep from sounding like she was pleading, but she wasn’t sure she had managed it. He just stood there staring at her. After a few minutes that seemed to stretch into eternity, he shook his head slowly, turned, and left. She sagged back against the pole and readjusted her legs to keep them from falling asleep. For a second there she’d thought she was going to get an answer. Damn.
She spread the blanket out and lay down, her head turned so she could see out the window. And with no immediate threat and the room finally getting warmer, she fell asleep. Melanie had no idea how long she’d slept for, perhaps a few hours, because it was getting dark when she woke. There was no one in the room, and nothing to indicate anyone had come or gone while she was asleep, either. She shifted into a sitting position slowly. Her whole body ached from sleeping on the hard concrete for two days. Her mind was surprisingly blank considering where she was. Maybe she was just tired of contemplating her fate, and looking for a means of escape. Tired of trying to figure anything out. Her brain just wanted to idle for a while.
The door opened and Blue Eyes came in, the handcuff keys in his hand. Melanie automatically rose to her feet, suspecting it was late enough for her evening trip to the bathroom. As he unlocked the handcuffs, her heart sped up. This was it, her chance to get that nail. She had to keep herself from running to the bathroom as he followed her down the hallway.
As she sat her hand simultaneously went to the little nail and began to pull. It moved slightly. She wiggled it back and forth a few times, and pulled again, this time twisting it at the same time. It moved achingly slow, but it moved. She kept twisting and pulling until it suddenly popped free of the frame. She nearly toppled over when it suddenly came free, not realizing how much force she had been using to pull on it. She was about to slip it in her pocket, but thought better of it. The material of her scrub pants was too thin, and they might be able to see there was something in her pocket when she left the bathroom. Not that they were that observant, but better safe than sorry.
Shuffling came from outside the door, and Melanie stuck her hand quickly down her shirt and slipped the nail into her sports bra. She wasn’t particularly well-endowed, but they definitely wouldn’t see it there. She was just wiping her wet hands dry as the door opened and Blue Eyes pointed her down the hallway. She went obediently, her heart pounding in her ears. She prayed she didn’t look as suspicious as she felt. The tray was waiting on the floor for her, bearing another anemic sandwich and sad glass of water. Blue Eyes reattached her to the pole and left, leaving her with the tray.
She almost couldn’t believe she’d gotten away with it. It had seemed too easy. She was tempted to take the nail out, make sure it was real, that she hadn’t imagined it, but she knew they would be back for the tray soon, and she had to eat before they took it back. She was starving. Melanie had always thought that she didn’t really eat much normally. But being stuck here with nothing but peanut butter and jam sandwiches and pop-tarts, her stomach had been complaining almost continuously. The first thing I’m doing when I get out of here is eating an entire pizza, she thought as she took the last bite of sandwich. And washing it down with a nice cold beer. Or several beers.
She had just drained the last swallow of water from the cup when Chubby came to take the tray. She put the cup on it and picked it up to hand it to him. He paused before he took it, looking at her with an expression she couldn’t quite understand. She felt a little silly, sitting there holding the tray out for him to take. Slowly his arm came up and he took it from her, leaving without a word.
What the hell was that about? Melanie couldn’t quite understand why he had paused. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting her to hand him the tray. She thought it might be because she should feel some kind of contempt towards him. And she did. But they hadn’t mistreated her, or been particularly cruel, so there was no reason for her to show any outward hostility. She hoped that particular move hadn’t made Chubby suspicious. Great. Now she was convincing herself they knew she was up to something. She could picture them standing upstairs talking:
“She handed me the tray.”
“So?”
“Well, why would she do that? Was she trying to be nice? Maybe she’s up to something.”
“Well, maybe we should check on her again every few minutes.”
This was insane. Now she was just being paranoid. It was nothing, and Chubby probably hadn’t thought twice about it. He didn’t seem very bright, anyways. He probably forgot about it the second he closed the door behind him. Well, no point in sitting here waiting for rescue. She had her own self-rescue to attend.
Melanie pulled the nail out of it’s snug, warm hiding place and brought her left, handcuffed wrist up the pole so she could see it more clearly. It was a stroke of luck that they’d chosen to handcuff her left hand, since she was strictly right-handed. She used the pointy end of the nail and pushed it awkwardly into the side of the handcuffs that were attached to the pole. Luckily, the nail was thin enough to fit into the keyhole. It was a tight fit, and it was going to scrape the edges of the hole, but there was nothing she could do about that. She’d simply have to succeed or face the consequences if they found out what she was trying to do. She’d been here two days and they hadn’t hurt her, there was no reason to think they’d start now.
She twisted the nail around in the slot to little avail. She couldn’t even hear the nail scratching anything inside the cuff. She worked feverently for a few minutes before she realized she was in full view of the door. If they did decide to check on her again tonight, they would definitely walk in on her, bent over the handcuffs with a nail in her hand. That would be sure to bring some consequences. She shuffled around so she was sitting cross-legged with the door behind her and the pole directly in front of her. At least this way, if she heard the door open, she might be able to palm the nail before they saw what she was trying to do. And Blue Eyes never really inspected the handcuffs, he just shook them to make sure they were still firmly attached. He might not see they were scratched. So there was a chance she might get more time if they did come back tonight, as long as they didn’t catch her with the nail in her hand.
She worked away with they nail, trying to make contact with anything inside the lock mechanism, for what felt like hours. But it wasn’t working. She realized she wasn’t doing anything except scratching the inside of the keyhole, which might not necessarily be a good thing. Maybe if she could bend the tip of the nail slightly it would be a better tool. After all, she wasn’t getting far with the nail the way it was. Night had descended outside the window, but she wasn’t sure when, so she had no sense of how long she had been fiddling.
She tried to bend a slight bit of the tip of the nail with her fingers, but despite how thin the nail was, she couldn’t get enough of a grip on it. She tried putting it under her foot and pulling on it, but that didn’t work, either. Finally she set it up at an angle against the pole and the concrete floor and put some weight on it with her foot, and it bent slightly. One small victory, she grinned.
She went back to work with her newly bent nail. But still she made no progress. After another long while, she could feel her hands beginning to cramp and she was having trouble holding onto the nail. Clearly not built for lengthy lock-picking sessions, she thought. She set the nail on the floor and flexed her fingers, giving them a bit of a break. Maybe she just needed to bend the nail a little more. After a few minutes she bent the nail a bit farther, using the same technique as before.
Her fingers were numb and aching within a few minutes this time. She was clutching the nail with a death-grip. Relax, she told herself. You’ve got lots of time, you can do this. They do this in the movies all the time. Hell, ditzy actresses do this in the movies all the time. If a ditzy actress can pretend to pick the lock on a set of handcuffs, surely you can do it for real. She tried to keep giving herself a mental pep talk as she worked away. She bent the nail a few more times, until it was nearly at a 90 degree angle, before she had any reason to believe she was making progress.
Well, progress would have been the handcuffs popping open and me getting the hell out of here, she thought, but she did feel the nail make contact with something inside the locking mechanism. She wiggled and wiggled, cursing herself for not taking up the art of locksmithing when she had the chance. She looked out the window once, as she took a quick break, her fingers aching like an 80-year-old arthritis victim, and thought she saw the trees getting a bit brighter. The idea that she was running out of time filled her with dread. She had to do this. There was no way they wouldn’t notice that she had been messing with the handcuffs now. The keyhole was bent and scratched around the edges. It would be blatantly obvious what she had been doing if they saw that. Then they’d search her, find the nail, and she’d be out of options.
She bent intently over the lock again and wiggled the nail in as far as she could, moving it around. Please, please, please, she thought. Just this once, please let this work, let me do this. This has to work. She was breathing hard, and her heart pounded even harder when she glanced out the window and realized that it really was getting lighter outside. She’d been working the lock all night with no success.
And then, suddenly, it worked. The side of the handcuffs that were latched around the pole moved. She wiggled the nail again, pulling on them, and they came free. She had done it!
Melanie stood up, suddenly completely unsure of what to do. Where should she go now? It didn’t seem very intelligent to leave the house by way of the door, since she had no idea what time it was, and for all she knew one of them was lying in a sleeping bag directly outside the door, waiting for morning. In fact, since it really was now morning, there was no telling when they would be coming. She had to get the hell out of there, and fast.

Number One-Part 3

Not surprisingly, nothing in the room had changed. She slid down the pole to a sitting position. She had seen the nail in the bathroom. Maybe that would work. If she could pry it out she might be able to get herself out of the handcuffs. She’d never picked a lock before, but there was a first time for everything, right? And it wasn’t like she had other pressing things to do. She’d just have to work at it until she got them open. And hope they didn’t kill her first. Or do whatever it was they were planning to do with her. And she could think of a lot worse things than death. She tried to out that possibility out of her mind. There wasn’t much she could really do to stop them short of escaping, so there was no point in dwelling on it. Freaking herself out even more wasn’t going to save her. Maybe she should yell for help. If they were indeed in a residential area, someone might hear her.
“Help!” she screamed as loud as she thought she could. “Anyone! Help! I’m in the basement! Someone help!” There was a flurry of footsteps and she heard the door open quickly behind her.
“I was wondering when you were gonna try that,” came the voice of the chubby man. She turned her head as he walked around her and squatted down to her eye level. “It ain’t gonna work. There’s no one around for miles that’s gonna hear you. Plus,” he pulled a small handgun out of the waistband of his pants, “I’ve got this. And I really don’t like the racket. So keep it down.” He stuffed the gun back into his waistband and left.
Trapped in the basement of a crazy person with a gun. The future just kept looking more and more bleak. No one around for miles. That meant that they were probably out in the country. Great. Far from civilization. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if this were all a dream? Then she could wake up, look around and see only her darkened bedroom and heave a huge sigh of relief. As much as Melanie wanted to believe that was true, she knew it wasn’t. This felt too real to be a dream. While she could remember having some pretty vivid dreams, none of them had come close to this. And her mind wasn’t screwed up enough to come up with this, even if she had eaten a huge bowl of curry on her last break at work. No, this was real. The concrete floor, the handcuffs digging irritatingly into her wrists. All real.
The reason for her being here still nagged at the back of her mind. She had to have done something. Anything to either of these guys for them to have gone to all the trouble of getting her here. And now she had seen the second guy, Chubby, so she had another face to try and remember. She wracked her brain. She had to have seen him somewhere. But as hard as she tried, she came up with nothing. Even picturing him without the stubble didn’t help. The thing was, he had one of those faces that just blended in. She thought he looked familiar, but couldn’t place him. Likely because there were a lot of people in the world who looked like him. The same floppy cheeks and double chin. Chubby didn’t seem to have a lot of characteristics that would distinguish him in a crowd. But nonetheless, she kept thinking.

She was deep into her memory, trying to reconstruct the past few weeks in her mind when they checked on her again. So deep, in fact, that she jumped a little when the door opened suddenly. It was Blue Eyes, and, just as before, he came in, checked her handcuffs with a shake, and left. Not a word was spoken.
Mel began to wonder how long it would take before she was missed. She lived alone, so there was no roommate around to start asking questions when she didn’t get home from work. And she wasn’t friendly with any of her neighbors, so none of them would even know if she was missing for weeks. And even then they’d probably just think she’d gone on vacation. She didn’t really have a lot of close friends, either. Well, close physically anyways. She had close friends, they just lived in different area codes. And she hated the phone, so they didn’t really talk much, it was more email and text-messaging.
A slow feeling of dread began to creep over her. No one would notice that she was missing. Well, someone would notice if she didn’t show up for work in 4 days, but that was 4 days from now! Between now and then there was no reason for anyone to be looking for her. She had no appointments, no classes, nothing. She talked to her mother on the phone every now and then, but they didn’t have any kind of regular calling schedule. If her mother called and didn’t get a call back for a few days, she’d just assume Mel was working and would call her back when she had a day off.
A lot could happen in those 4 days. In those 4 days, she could be dead. Or worse. She silently cursed herself for being such a hermit. If only she’d made a few friends at work, or taken some kind of classes when she’d moved into the city. Something, anything where someone would wonder why she was missing enough to actually look for her.
She hadn’t wanted to be a hermit. She wasn’t exceptionally shy or stand-offish. It just took her a while to get to know people. She’d only been in the city for a year. Which would be plenty of time for anyone else, she thought. Even if she had gone on a date or two. A boyfriend would notice if she was missing. A boyfriend would wonder where she was enough to start looking for her, get worried she wasn’t answering the phone. But no one had even shown the remotest interest in her. Not that she met a lot of men. And not that any of this was going to help her right now. Dwelling on what she should’ve done wasn’t going to change the fact that no one was looking for her. That there would be no knight on a white horse charging in to save her. As far as she could figure, she was the only person who could get herself out of this. And that was damn scary.
She must have been dwelling on her regrets for quite a while, because Blue Eyes came in again to check her handcuffs. And once again, he didn’t say a word. He walked directly towards her, bent down, shook the handcuffs again, then went back towards the door.
“What time is it?” Mel asked as he was about to disappear. He stopped dead, and turned around to face her. He said nothing, but walked towards the window and drew back the curtains. Beyond the window was nothing but a wall of trees that looked like they were maybe 10 feet from the house. The light was dim, it looked like it was either dusk or dawn.
After opening the window he left. It bothered Melanie that he never said anything. At least she knew Chubby was an asshole. Blue Eyes, on the other hand, remained a mystery. Why didn’t he talk? Maybe he was even more of an asshole than Chubby, and he said nothing to piss her off. Or maybe he was afraid if he said anything that he’d let something slip that he shouldn’t. Or maybe it was to intimidate her. If that were the reason, she would unhappily admit that it was working. Though Melanie was pretty sure he was an asshole, too. Only someone deeply disturbed could do this to someone she was pretty sure was a complete stranger. Even if he wasn’t the mastermind, he was still involved.
She looked out the window. At least now she had something to look at. It seemed as though it was getting darker by the minute. Which would mean it was later in the day. She couldn’t remember what time the sun was going down these days, thanks to the night shifts. All she knew was that it was dark when she went to bed in the morning and dark when she got out of bed in the early evening. Yes, it was definitely getting darker. So the rest of the day had passed as she sat here in this basement. Just this morning she had walked out the hospital and was happily listening to her mp3 player as she walked home. It seemed like an eternity ago. She wondered if they had already pawned the player to make a few dollars. They’d probably also gone through her backpack. So she’d never see that $50 she had in her wallet again.
Her legs were falling asleep. She shimmied her way up the pole again and leaned against it, shaking them out. They could’ve at least given her a chair or something. Maybe a pillow to sit on. And a blanket. It wasn’t exactly warm in the basement. And the chill was starting to seep deeper into her as the sun went down and it got darker. They’d taken her jacket and left her with only the thin t-shirt she had been wearing at work. And it still reeked of hospital.
She heard footsteps overhead again, followed by the murmur of voices. It sounded like a discussion. Then there were footsteps on the stairs and the door to the room opened again. Blue Eyes entered, followed closely by Chubby. Melanie shuffled around the pole to face them. Blue Eyes had the key ring in his hand, and Chubby was carrying a tray. Blue Eyes unlocked one wrist, then wrapped the other manacle around the pole, leaving one arm free. Chubby set the tray on the ground, on it was an anemic looking sandwich and a glass of water.
“Eat,” said Blue Eyes. “We’ll be back for the tray in 10 minutes.” They both turned to leave, Chubby glaring at her as they left. A man of few word, he was. Melanie tugged gently at her handcuffed wrist as soon as the door was closed behind them. Still tight. She swung her right arm, the free one, around, rotating her shoulder. It felt good to be out of that position. She sat down on the floor cross-legged and inspected what they’d brought her on the tray. A peanut butter and jam sandwich and a glass of water. Not exactly Tavern on the Green. But she decided she was hungry enough she’d settle for less than the fois gras. She pulled the tray closer to the pole and peeled the sandwich open. Since she didn’t know much about these guys, she couldn’t be too careful. Strawberry jam and chunky peanut butter. Excellent. She was five years old again. She smelled the water. Nothing. It looked just like what it was. Dinner. Mel’s stomach rumbled in anticipation of the feast.
She squished the 2 pieces of bread back together and took a bite. PB and J had never tasted so good. Her mouth was so dry she could barely swallow, so she followed that with a swig of water. Some fruit juice would have been better, but beggars can’t be choosers, after all. As she ate she idly turned the tray over, wondering if there was anything she could use that might help her escape. It was plastic, not a single metal piece on it anywhere. The glass was plastic, too. She thought briefly about trying to snap a sharp piece off the tray to use as a weapon, but quickly discounted that since a piece of plastic against 2 grown men didn’t really seem like one of her better ideas. Plus she only had one useful hand. Plus the second they walked in the room and saw the tray was broken they’d know what was going on. No, that wasn’t a good idea at all. Well, back to the drawing board.
Mel sighed and leaned back against the post, chewing silently. She heard footsteps on the stairs again, and quickly swallowed the last of the water. Chubby entered the room first this time. He grabbed her by the upper arm and hauled her to her feet, wrenching on the wrist that was still handcuffed in the process. Mel gasped at the sudden sharp pain. Chubby seemed to grin slightly at that.
“Bathroom break,” he said roughly. Blue Eyes unlocked the handcuffs and followed them into the hall, where they shoved her into the bathroom. As before, they left the door open a crack. Melanie went straight for the loose nail in the window frame. She grabbed it as best she could, but when the window frame had been painted last they had painted right overtop of the nails, so there was a layer of paint she needed to break first. She twisted with the best grip she could get to see if she could break the paint. It didn’t budge.
“I don’t hear anything,” Chubby called from outside the door. Of course they would be listening. She sat to do her business, but kept her hand on the nail, trying to wiggle it back and forth. They gave her the one minute warning, as before, and she continued to work the nail as she washed her hands. Then, suddenly, she felt the paint give underneath her fingers. Just as she managed to get it to twist easily back and forth the door moved. She snatched her hand away and began to wipe her hands dry on her pants. She hoped they hadn’t noticed what she was doing.
Blue Eyes came in and took her by the arm, pulling her out of the bathroom again. She brushed a little too close to Chubby as she was coming out of the bathroom, and he shoved her roughly against the opposite wall.
“Watch it,” he growled. Blue Eyes quickly continued pulling her down the hallway, which she was grateful for, since Chubby looked like he wanted to pound on her a lot more. Soon she was back in the empty room, one wrist handcuffed to the pole.
“We’ll be back in the morning,” Chubby said as he picked up the tray. Then they left. Well, Melanie thought, at least they left one arm free.
With one free arm, she thought, I have a longer reach. And I might be able to reach somtehing I couldn’t before. She looked hopefully around the room again. She figured, if she lay down, she might be able to get her feet to the wall. Not that it would help much, since there was nothing there to reach. And there was no way she could reach any of the walls, since the pole was almost in the direct center of the room. To top it off, she’d decided to wear a sports bra that day at work instead of the usual underwire number, so no hooks or wires to be had there. She made a mental note to never wear a sports bra to work again. She looked up. They had a dropped ceiling in the basement, like most places she’d been in. And sometimes there were wires above a dropped ceiling. She reached up with her free hand, and could almost touch the panels. She slid her handcuffed arm up the pole, but the cuffs caught on the pin that held the post at the right level, just above her waist. She jiggled the cuff, but it had been closed too small to fit around the pin.
She heard footsteps on the stairs again. She quickly sat down facing the door, trying not to look suspicious. The door opened a crack, and Blue Eyes tossed a blanket at her. Then the door closed as quickly as it had opened. It landed just out of Melanie’s reach. She stretched out her leg and used her heel to drag it towards her. While it wasn’t exactly thick, it was better than nothing.
She waited until the thumping on the stairs stopped before she stood up again. She slid the handcuff up as far as it would go and stretched her free arm up as far as she could, standing on her tiptoes. Her fingers barely brushed the tiles on the ceiling. She scrunched the blanket up as best she could into a ball and stood on top of it. Her fingers touched the panel but not enough for her to push it out of place. She jumped slightly and managed to push it out of its slot a bit. She jumped up a few more times and managed to push the tile half way out of its spot. The light didn’t reach up into the ceiling very well, but she could see a few thick wires running through the beams in the ceiling.
She grasped the pole with her handcuffed hand as high as it would go, then put her other hand higher up. Then she tried gripping the pole between her feet as if she was climbing a rope. But her shoes didn’t grip the pole well enough. Maybe she could get a better grip with bare feet. She knelt down and took off her shoes and socks, and tried again. She managed to get slightly higher, but with one hand being held back, she couldn’t get enough leverage to reach any of the wires. And when she wiggled too much her feet would slip back down the pole.
Melanie tried pushing out all the tiles she could reach, but none of them had any wires or anything she thought would help her get out of the handcuffs. And straining against her one shackled wrist was rubbing it raw. Dammit! She could feel it throb as she sat on the floor, staring at the ceiling. There had to be something somewhere! There just had to be! She got back up and slid the tiles back into place. She didn’t want Chubby and Blue Eyes knowing what she was up to. She couldn’t imagine what they might do if they found out she had been rooting around in their ceiling tiles. She slowly put her socks and shoes back on, her feet cold from standing on the bare concrete floor.
Outside the window it was dark. So dark she could no longer see the trees only a few feet away. The room was getting colder as time passed, and she wrapped the blanket around her as best she could. At least it was thick enough to take the chill off. As she warmed up a little she could feel the weariness of the day creeping into her brain. She hadn’t had nearly enough sleep to compensate for her night shift, and she had been keyed up all day. And somehow, knowing it would be at least until morning before either of the men upstairs checked in on her again was somehow comforting. She was at least safe for a few more hours.
She pulled the blankets as close as she could and leaned against the pole. She thought of her mother, probably at home, likely already sleeping. She was an early riser, and usually asleep well before 9 pm. Her mother lived alone now, long divorced and all her children having moved out. Melanie’s sister lived with a friend near the college now, and her brother had moved out just after meeting his future wife. Her family…she wondered how long it would be before they knew what had happened to her. She wondered how long it would be before they knew where she had been kept or how long she had been kept here…