Chapter 2

Darkness flooded around me, embracing my body with it’s chilling fingers, it’s evil laugh echoing in my ear. Pain shot up and down my arms and legs, like electric shocks. I tried to open my eyes, but they were too heavy. I was lost in oblivion, stranded in the darkness.

I don’t know how long I lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness, memories and vague fragments of thoughts floating through my brain. At one point I thought I heard someone singing, a beautiful calming melody, cutting through the confusion like a strand of light into a dark place, a glimmer of happiness in a time of gloom. I was so delirious that I thought maybe I was dead, and this was the voice of the angels, come to take me into the next life.

I suddenly heard scraping footsteps somewhere near my face, awakening me from my stupor. Fear ran up and down my spine, making me shake. I suddenly smelt foul breath up against my face. And then I heard a voice, cutting into my heart like a dagger. “Hello there Jasmine, now you’re going to co-operate with us, aren’t you?” said the voice. It belonged to a male, I guessed, and he sounded as if he were in his mid 40′s. There was a slight cockney tinge to his accent, and mixed in with his gruff, harsh sounding tone, he sounded terrifying.

I forced my body to work. My eyes began to ease open, fighting the fear and the urge to run. I slowly sat up. Every bone in my body ached.

The first thing I noticed was that I was right – the male talking to me was male, and in his 40′s. He looked dirty and worn, with a stubbly face and a few chipped teeth. I couldn’t bring myself to look into his eyes. I noticed another male sitting on the other side of the room – he wore a suit and held a gun clasped to his chest. He sat, staring at me, unblinking. His eyes seemed to say “There is no hope for you. Give up.”

“Try anything stupid, and John here will fire that thing right into your back. He’s a good shot he is.” said the dirty man, pointing at the gunman. “So” he said “Are you going to co-operate or what?”

I was in a state of pure shock. I was lost. As I looked around the room, I became more and more frightened – the room was tall with looming walls, and only the tiniest windows, close to the celling. Another, smaller wall protruded from the furthest wall; it had three sides but no door. There was only one door, a thick metal looking thing with a small, rectangular hatch. I felt as though I was in a bad dream – the surroundings, the dimly lit room, the absurd reality – it all seemed so unreal. I blinked a few times, expecting to be suddenly lying awake in my own bed at home.

My mind was full of questions as the grubby male stared at me. I suddenly found the ability to open my mouth, and blurted out “How do you know my name?”
A horrible grin appeared upon his face.
“Let’s not worry about that now, eh? Now tell me where your parents are.”
I was bewildered. “Uhh…at home?” I said.

“Wrong answer!” snapped grubby, and he sent me sprawling backwards with a slap.

I heard myself cry out – it seemed alien to me. “What…what was that for??”
“Your parents are not at home, and until you co-operate and tell us where they are, you will be held here for questioning.”
“But I don’t KNOW where they are!” I cried.
“Well then that sucks for you” Said grubby, walking out of the room. He closed the door and shut it with a key, leaving me, my bewilderment, and John with the gun, locked inside the tiny room.

“Whats going on!!” I screamed. “John, please tell me!”
John just stared blankly at me, his gun resting on his lap. His eyes were pools of doom.

For the next few hours I cried and wailed, begging for answers without a reply. I was so worked up and frightened that I threw up, and still,John stared back at me, unblinking, expressionless, emotionless.

Eventually, once I had calmed down, I started to sort things out in my head. Number one; This was not a random abduction. These people knew my name, wanted to know about my parents, and had a room perfect for holding a victim. Number two; they were willing to hurt me, and wanted to know something about my parents. This made me think that maybe they were involved in some kind of really serious police thing. Perhaps they had pissed off some gang, and now they wanted revenge. But that didn’t explain where the hell my parents were.
Number three; they planned on keeping me here a long time – the flap was obviously for food, and I guessed that the random wall on the other side of the room was where I would find a toilet. Although I had been panicking and shrieking, I had barley moved from my spot. I investigated, and discovered that the wall was indeed concealing a toilet.

Behind the toilet wall, I lifted up my shirt and flinched when I saw the black, scary bruises. The covered my stomach, my breasts, and my arms and legs. I must have put up a fight. I gingerly touched my face, and decided that had I had a mirror, I would have looked in it to see bruises. I stared up around the room. The windows were high up and concealed by bars. They would have been just about big enough for me to crawl through, I thought, but then I remembered John and his gun. Besides, I had no idea how far down the drop on the other side was.

I slipped my hand in my pocket with low expectations which were immediately met. My phone was gone. So was my emergency money that I kept in my shoe, I discovered. Those bastards had taken every little thing I had. I swung my hand to my neck and felt immediate relief – my necklace, bought for me by Dom, was still hanging there. I held it in my hand and kissed it. I still have no idea why they didn’t take it – maybe they didn’t notice it, or maybe they thought it would attract too much attention if they tried to sell it. Maybe they even simply had some small piece of heart and didn’t want to break mine into a million shreds by taking my most treasured possession. But I’ll never know.

As I always do when I feel alone, I the small, delicate heart over and read the tiny inscription in the back. “I love you with everything. I’ll always be with you.”
I wished he was there with me more than anything.

I suddenly heard shouting from outside the room; I strained my ears but it was almost impossible to hear. I managed to catch fragments of conversation, broken and shattered like glass- “She doesn’t know anything….but she must…..her parents……how do they know then?…..Jasmine…..They wont look……twelve hours.”

I crouched into a corner and waited for sleep.

Chapter one

If you asked me today, I still couldn’t tell you why I did it. I guess it was just cold and I wanted to get home. Or maybe I was just simply stupid. Either way, I did it, and it happened, and I found out some stuff about myself I wouldn’t have even imagined. My life got turned upside down and inside out. And it certainly wasn’t for the best.

I’d had a hard day at work, idiotic customers screaming in my ears every five minutes, moaning about how much we charged for a beer, complaining about the lack of cigarette smoke, nattering on about their own bloody ignorance. I hate working in The Admirals’ Arms. Most people are jealous, they say “Gosh Jasmine, I can’t believe you work in a pub, you must get drunk all the time!”

Not quite.

Old Evan owns The Admirals’ Arms, and he is the most grumpy, stingy, old git I’ve ever met. He docked poor Mary-Ann’s wages once when she smashed a glass, and when Mel came in last month, crying her eyes out over a broken heart, he simply spat “You’d better not lose any punters. Stop blubbing and toughen up!” I only have this shit job for a few more months now, just until I go to uni. I can’t wait to hand in my resignation and skip off into the sunlight. If it wasn’t for the girls, I would have left ages ago. I’m too quiet to ever say anything back to Evan, unlike the others. My boyfriend, Dom, is always moaning at me to stand up for myself. He hates Evan even more than I do. He worked at The Admirals’ Arms for a while himself (which is how we met) until he couldn’t deal with Evan anymore. As far as I know, Dom served an underage kid after accepting a very clever fake ID. Evan, as usual gave him an earful, but Dom had had enough. I’m not really sure what went on after that, but following that night he was not only Jobless, but was banned from the Pub.

Anyway, I digress. I was walking through the park, which was an insanely stupid thing to do. Both of my parents work for the police, they are always warning me not to walk through dark places at night, especially not crappy old run down parks like this one. Strangely enough (stupidly enough?), I wasn’t scared, or worried in the slightest. The slight chill of the night was calming, in a strange way. I suppose I’m one of those people who just think “It wont happen to me. It’ll happen to someone else. I wont be brutally murdered. I wont be raped. I wont catch a horrible disease and die painfully, alone in bed.” But it has to happen to someone, doesn’t it?

The gentle, cool breeze made me shiver, and sent a thousand bits of rubbish flying into the air. I looked up above me, feeling the calmness of the sky beam right back down on me. The stars seemed to twinkle at me, teasing me with the knowledge of something I didn’t know. The sky seemed so big and open, as if it held all the secrets of humanity. The trees whispered amongst themselves, creaking and groaning from a combination of extreme heat and torrential rain – typical British weather. The grass was soft beneath my feet and I could smell the cool damp scent of a summer rainfall. I almost wanted to lie down in the grass and be at one with nature.

I could make out the shadowed shapes of the rusty old roundabout and creaky swings through the gloom. They brought back memories of being a kid, before the park became a run down mess. They took me back to the days when I used to play here, happy in the sunlight. I smiled.

In the distance, I heard a dog bark. It was comforting to know somebody else was up at this ridiculous hour. Behind me, I heard a sudden snap of a twig. All my optimism and ‘It-wont-happen-to-me’ spirit shot out of my body like a bullet from a gun.

snap, snap. pause. snapsnap. crunch. pause.

I listened carefully. “It’s nothing” I told myself “Probably the guy who owns the dog. He’s probably just looking for it.” I thought carefully about home, with my nice comfy warm bed and familiarity.

SNAP.

I froze. This time the snap had come from in front of me. I strained my eyes, trying to see through the darkness. My eyes played tricks on me and phantom creatures seemed to race towards me, teeth barred and gums drooling. Now I was scared. I shook my head, willing the demons in my head to go away. “There’s nothing there”, I told myself, but In my heart I knew it wasn’t true. The entire park seemed to brace it’s self. It knew as well as I did that something was about to happen that would change things forever.

I closed my eyes and tried to calm my breathing. I was past all the playground part now, and had a clear run to the clearing where I would finally be out of the park and onto the street, just mere steps away from my home. I was never doing this again. Eyes still closed, I started to run, figures leaping out through my fear and darkness, panic erupting within my brain.

Then suddenly, I was stopping, my feet ripped from the ground. For a moment I thought I had tripped, but then my mind registered the full shock of what was happening. Hand were grabbing my wrists, binding them together. Another hand, clasped over my mouth, stopping the panicked screams escaping my lungs. More arms, countless amounts, lifing me up. A painful sting in my arm.

Then darkness.

Hello there :)

I’m 18 years old and have wanted to write a novel for almost as long as I can remember. Here is my poor, shoddy attempt. Maybe even attempts. The title is crap, yes, but titles usually come at the end, once the story has taken shape. I hope you enjoy reading my blog