Do you ever wish you could turn back time?

Do you ever wish that you could turn back time? I did that one life altering day. I got up and showered as usual, my brother banging on the door telling me not to use all of the hot water…oops! Whilst in the shower I was trying to remember the theorem’s that I knew were coming up in my math test that I had in my last class of the day. I tried so hard to remember them, I just wished I had more time. My video game habit was catching up to me. I walked to school with them written out on a piece of paper, the paper carrying me through the rest of my classes. I knew I had to pass this exam in order to stay in the honours class. I didn’t want to be relegated to pass! Pass was basically the same as the previous three years in the school, only repeated.

Maths class loomed and I was confident on one of the theorems but not of the other two. I tried my best to regurgitate my whole day so far onto paper for that whole class. I just blanked on the middle bit of the second one, but got the ending right. Would that be enough? If only I had had more time!

I decided not to walk home with my friends as usual. I felt the need to be alone as they were all math nerds and were bragging about how easy it was to reproduce the theorem’s. I didn’t want to listen to that on the ten-minute walk to my house, so I hung back and waited until the majority of the school had exited the building. I was afraid to look at my notes and said to myself ‘fuck it, if they’re wrong, then they’re wrong!’

Halfway home, the street almost deserted, I heard the screeching of wheels and felt something or someone pull me by the waist into a vehicle.

I heard one of them say, ‘I’ve got her! Go! Go! Go!’ and the van sped off.

My eyes were darting around the vehicle, taking in only snapshots of the interior. My breathing was erratic and I was scared. My vision suddenly became dark as they put something over my eyes, and I was trying to speak but there was something over my mouth as well. I felt the full force of the fist of the person in the back of the van with me make contact with my face. An unmerciful crack reverberated through the vehicle, they had broken my jaw. I screamed in pain, but no sound came out.

I lay in the back of the vehicle, my hands and feet bound by whatever sticky substance was over my eyes and mouth and could feel the breath of my captor on my skin. I could smell cigarettes and alcohol.

Just before the van reached its destination, I felt the shift in terrain go from one that was smooth to one that was like gravel.

As quickly as they took me, they removed me from the vehicle. I heard a mans tone as he threw me over his shoulder. I tried to resist but the words ‘do and die!’ sent a shiver down my spine.

The man descended down steps, I could hear his boots on the surface of them, before he tossed me onto cold concrete. I was crying as I felt the cold blade free me from my shackles and leave me there. I took the duct tape off of my mouth and eyes myself and was met by nine other girls, all in their school uniform, all looking as broken as my jaw.

My surroundings were like that out of a horror movie. The walls dripped some sort of liquid and the concrete floor was stained with what I could only make out to be blood. Of the other nine, three had gaping wounds in their right cheeks and all of them were crying. I didn’t like to show my tears, but I couldn’t help it. I was petrified.

I removed the phone from my skirt pocket, all the girls urging me to put it away but I was determined to find a signal and call for help. Not minutes afterwards, two sets of footprints came pounding down the concrete steps and opened the door that housed us. One gave out to the other for not searching my pockets and took my new iPhone 13, throwing it onto the ground and pounded it with the heel of his boot whilst the other one frisked me. That was when the water works began. I had seen their faces. They were obviously never going to let me live now, not knowing I could identify them!

Over the course of what felt like weeks, food only came sparsely. Every now and again they would descend from on high and take one of the ten lucky contestants as they called us. Only sometimes did the girl they took return and if she did, she arrived back with a deep laceration on her right cheek and crawled into a corner of the damp room and put themselves in the foetal position and cried for days. There were other times when that lucky contestant didn’t return, a new girl joining them a couple of days later instead.

I had learnt three things from my stay in that hell hole.

1. Huddle together to conserve body heat
2. Pray you never get summoned from the men
3. Eat the food when you get it because it was every woman to themselves when it came down to it.

On the days they were feeling generous they would bring the food down on a tray and leave it in the corner just beside the door. There was never enough food to go around so when it did appear it was first come first served. I learnt that the hard way as the first couple of times I didn’t realise the rule and presumed there was enough to go around.

As the weeks went by, I witnessed some of my comrades disappear physically, and others detach from reality mentally. Yes, we had each other, but we were so cold and broken to talk to one another.

Finally it was my turn. I was the chosen one who they carried up the stairs and into a nice warm room with a sea of blue running through the décor. They told me to stand in front of them, which I did but I had to catch my filthy skirt that donned plenty of holes in its worse for wear state. ‘I must have lost a lot of weight for the skirt to do that!’ I thought.

The men took a polaroid picture of me before producing the blade. It looked as though it were made from diamonds whatever way the light shone upon its serrated edges. I was in the midst of delirium from hunger and I was sick from the dampness. I couldn’t suppress my cough which was chesty and swallowed the phlegm it brought up.

To my surprise, the two men sat me down on a proper blue plastic chair which was leaps and bounds better than the concrete floor. They offered me some food, of which I devoured and even though my stomach told me to stop when I was full, my mind told me to eat every morsel as I didn’t know when the next time I would get food would be.

One of the guys played with the serrated blade whilst the other just stared at me as I wolfed down the food. It was a happy meal from McDonald’s. Oh the irony! Upon swallowing my last chicken nugget, my stomach beginning to turn as I regretted not listening to it when it said it was full. They grew ever closer, brushing the paper bag the food came in to one side and slid their plastic blue chairs closer to me. They came so close that I could smell the cigarettes and alcohol again, something that brought me back to weeks before in the car.

‘How did a pretty little thing like you last 104 days without us noticing how beautiful you are?’ one of them asked.

‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘104 days! No wonder my jaw felt better!’

The one with the blade came at me fast and strong. He sliced my right cheek and I screamed in pain.

‘Oh, poor baby!’ the other one feigned interest and took out a vodka bottle and a blood-stained cloth that had obviously been used before. He cleaned the dripping blood from my cheek before pouring some vodka onto it. I screamed from the pain of the liquid hitting the open wound. He took a swig of the vodka when he was finished and shrugged his shoulders.

‘She’s complaining that we disinfected the wound!’ he slurred making her think it wasn’t his first drink of the day.

The other one stood up and unbuckled his belt before proceeding to try to rape me. It finally clicked why the others crawled into the foetal position when they came back after being taken. Despite my frail demeanour I was feisty enough to stand up and fight back. I had a black belt in karate and I thought that now was as best a time as any to put my skills into practice.

I kicked Mr belt with my foot right in his groin. He fell to the floor in agony, ‘I think she broke it!’ he said rolling on the floor, tears of pain in his eyes, yet not letting go of the knife. I kicked the other one in the throat, making it hard to breathe. With the pair of them subdued and a burst of energy from the food, I commandeered the serrated blade from Mr belts hand, ploughing the heel of my bare foot into his neck as he had my new iPhone. He was now gasping for air also.

I grabbed the keys from the lanyard Mr belt kept around his neck and exited the room. There must have been dozens of keys on the ring and I tried each one until I heard the satisfying click that indicated they were now my captives.

I descended the stone steps and as the girls all cried after me telling them we were free, I tried the oldest looking key on the lock for the heavy steel door. I hurried them to freedom and once they got a momentum going, each having to hold their skirts up for fear of them falling down they had quizzical looks on their faces and began to ask questions.

‘We have no time, get your asses up those steps!’ I gesticulated towards freedom. With the last girl out of the cell, I sighed with relief. Now it was just a matter of getting off the compound. Each girl must have fallen at least twice on the long-gravelled driveway, including me. And with that we were free.

And to think, I was worried about a little quiz on theorem’s, when I should have been looking at life from the bigger picture. I was alive!

Do you ever wish that you could turn back time?

picture from pixabau