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.