hostage

Hostage

Suzanna woke with to a loud ringing sound to the right of her head then there was a thump. To her surprise she was on the floor. She had fallen out of the bed again. As she fell she must have hit the bedside locker because the alarm clock, and the Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets book she was reading the night before was on the floor beside her. It was time to get up to go to school. She is going to have to do something about that alarm. That was the third time this week that she fell out of the bed with it. She wasn't sure however if it was the biggest quiditch match in history dream, or the alarms ringtone that actually woke her.

Suzanna looked at the alarm clock, it was upside down and as she turned it she thought to herself “ shit I'm late again”, and hurried into the bathroom to have a quick shower. After she dried off she brushed her teeth, and put her school uniform on. It was an ugly uniform. It had a navy jumper with a prefect pin on it and a skirt that flowed down to her ankles. It was a red and navy check skirt and it came with a set of rules – no skirt was to be 30 centimetres above or below the ankle. Most students would fold the tops of the skirt into the top of the waist when they saw Sr. Antoinette coming. She went around with a ruler and did surprise inspections. The general style was to have the skirts trailing along the ground.

At that moment in time Suzy was happy. She was feeling great because it was Tuesday. That was an easy day for Suzy. She took art, English, maths, PE, and music. Once a week everyone had to do PE. Suzy’s class had it on a Tuesday afternoon which meant she would be off at 3. Every ‘normal’ day she was finished at 4.  She lived for Tuesday afternoons.

However, because she was a prefect she didn't get off until 5.30 no matter how early her classes finished. There was a European tour to be organised and meals on wheels and evening study. That was a supervised study opportunity for students to choose to go to after classes to do homework and study.

Suzy was in her final year in school, and like the rest of her class, had a major exam within a matter of weeks. These exams lay the path to her future career. The pressure was on so Suzy was studying as much as she could. The only reason she chose to apply for prefect was because it would look good on her cv. In honesty she didn't need the extra pressure

That day in school Suzy drew an amazing owl in art, touched up on algebra in maths, learned about Sylvia Plath in English, learned about Beethoven in music and finished the day playing football in PE. She managed to score 2 goals. She was on the school team. She was happy with how the day was going. She got all of her work for the next day done in study and before that, yet after football, she helped to book the bus that was going to take the seniors in the school on the European tour.

There were very few at evening study that day. The back door gets locked at 5 so Suzy had to go out the front gate to get home. It was dark. She was tired and decided to take a shortcut through a dodgy alley. She got creeped out. She heard footsteps behind her and felt a pinch on the back of her neck. suddenly she felt as though she was falling backwards with the world spinning in front of her.

She woke in the back of an old Opel Astra. The first thing she saw was furry black dice with white spots hanging from the mirror. Everything was blurry. She felt very spaced out. She realised that her hands were bound together with rope and when she tried to speak she felt tissue in her mouth. The retched. She tried to sit up but was pushed down by a man wearing a black balaclava that covered his face. He took out a syringe and heard a voice from the front of the car saying “ for fuck sake,  give it to her already”. There was another pinch and darkness.

She opened her eyes looking into a barrel of a gun. “ are you going to give trouble” said a well built man in a real country accent. She realised still had the tissue or whatever in her mouth when she tried to answer, so she just nodded her head. “ you'd better not or there will be consequences!” He shouted. He put the gun down and dragged her into a thick walled grey room. It was decorated like a cell. There was a bed with a very thin mattress, a blanket and a pillow. The toilet had a sink where the toilet cistern was. It was desperate. There were bars on the windows with no glass. There was no radiator or any kind of warmth from Anywhere. The man In the balaclava in the back of the car cut the ropes off her wrists and said “ welcome home bitch”. She heard the door bang shut behind her, looked around and cried.

“Where do we go from here?, where are you now?, I need you! “ Suzy pleaded. The door made a sound. Her eyes darted over expecting the door to be ajar, but there was a hole in the bottom of it and there was a tray with food on it. She ran over and grabbed it. There was a bottle of water, a piece of bread with a teal speck of mould on it, and a blob of something that looked like diarrhoea. She drank the water but left the rest.

She continue to Receive trays from the hole three times a day for three days before the door finally gave way and opened. Ppphhhh said the captor, “ it stinks in here, you need a shower bitch. What's your name anyway? “ she replied “ Suzy “ .  “Right Suzy lets go, I have fresh clothes for you for after you have a shower. You really need one”. “ well what do you expect when you lock me up for 3 days”. “ no back talk!!” The captor exploded. “ call me Carl”. Nothing else was said. even though she had all of these questions like where she was and when was she getting out, she shut her mouth and followed him around the maze she was captive in

There were doors upon doors with holes in the Bottom that could be opened for food. She heard screams from every direction. Although this Carl guy hadn't tied her up, he had his arm clenched around her elbow and was making her walk more briskly than she was comfortable with. she had to almost jog to keep up. When they stopped Suzy could see through a window in a door that she had reached the showers. It was a complete wet room. It had 5 showers against a wall and 5 toilets against the opposite wall and 10 sinks back to back in the middle. There were mirrors separating the sinks. There were no doors, windows, stalls for the toilets or anything. There was absolutely no privacy. She would have to take a shit in the open with god knows how many others. She could count 6 through the glass.

Carl said that it was the end for him and opened the door only to push her in. “ undress bitch” someone from the left screamed. Suzy was petrified. she had been in her school uniform for days now, It was filthy and dishevelled. She was handed little shampoo and shower gel bottles that you can find in the fancy hotels. All of the other women in there were naked. Suzy was embarrassed but there was a female in the room with a shot gun.

The guard pointed her gun at Suzy and the at the shower so Suzy just took everything off and showered. The water was cold and only trickled out of the shower hose. It took ages to get the shampoo out of her hair but thankfully there didn't seem to be a time limit on her. she was uncomfortable and felt as though everyone was staring at her. One of the other girls handed her a towel and smiled, it was a smile that made her feel she wasn't alone. There were about 7 in that wet room, all naked, all scared. She looked over by the guard after drying herself. The guard pointed to a pile that had white boiler suits folded in a basket. She put it on and felt a hand on her elbow. She jumped with a start not knowing where it came from, it was Carl. “ c’mon” he barked.

He next brought her to a room 2 doors down from the shower area. There was a lot of hair on the ground. Suzy’s stomach sunk – please not my hair, please not my hair she repeated in her head over and over. “ sit” Carl barked. She looked up and saw that Carl had a scissors. “head down”. She heard the blades come together and cried. Then she heard the clippers turn on and her head felt lighter all of a sudden. Suzy was still sobbing when the clippers stopped. She looked up into a mirror. She was bald. “That will keep you getting lice” exclaimed Carl.

He dragged her screaming into an area where she was given a blanket, an orange jump suit, a pillow, and a pair of work boots then dragged her into a dorm with what must have had 30 beds in it. She was shown to her bunk. Every woman in there had no hair and looked both stoned and scared. Her bunk mate just lifted her head as a gesture of hi. She lay down and cried herself to sleep.

Suzy woke up hungry and needed the toilet. She wanted to ask a captor but couldn't find one so she decided to ask her bunk mate instead. Her bunk mates name was penny, and she just pointed to the archway at the end of the room and grunted “loo is that way”. Suzy timidly put on her work boots and ventured around the dorm and through the archway. She was back in the shower room again. The female guard was still there with her shotgun but as far as Suzy could make out she was able to roam freely around the bedroom and toilet/shower area.

Later that day she was ushered, along with all of the other people in the dorm to a place with these benches lined up parallel to each other and was told to sit down and shut up. One by one then they each got up and went to a hatch covered in a woven metal sheath where a tray was pushed out of the bottom with food on it. The next person had to wait until the person who was collecting the food sat back down. After Suzy collected hers she sat down and looked at what was in front of her. She nearly got sick. It looked like vomit. Suzy tried to talk to her bunk mate who was sitting beside her but she just stared at her with wide eyes. She looked stoned.

When they had eaten all of the ‘porridge’ they all moved in unison over to the trash station. Suzy binned all of her meal apart from the apple, which she ate so fast she got indigestion, and the water she gulped down because she was parched. They all were in a line beside the wall waiting for ‘meds’. These were non avoidable. They were mandatory.

The ‘ meds’ Suzy was given made her feel as though she was floating. She felt like she was on a cloud. Voices became muffled and people looked like animals. Her bunk mate penny turned into a dinosaur with big teeth that had flesh and drool stuck in them. She got angry and started hitting this dinosaur. It was going to eat her after all, so it was self defence

Suzy was scared. She felt a massive needle go into her neck and then wasn't able to move off the bed after it. She found herself in restraints, tied to the bed with a drip in her arm in a totally different room. She was in a padded cell on her own with a camera above the door. She started screaming, within no time at all there was Carl putting a syringe into the drip and he morphed into an alien body. She screamed.

Suzy learned over time that the more she struggled the more meds they gave her so she tried to not fight it but to just go with it. In between the meds Suzy was able to remember life before this abduction. She remembered how she had saved up every cent she had over the past few months to try and buy a car for college. She then remembered school and how many classes she was missing.

Instead of Carl coming in with a syringe one day he came in with a key. He took off the restraints. She didn't know how long she was in that padded cell for. However, The next room Carl brought her into was even worse. There was a bed in it. The sheets on the bed were filthy. Suzy struggled because she could only imagine what was coming next. Carl took out the handcuffs. He handcuffed her arms to the top corners of the bed and her legs to the bottom. The penny dropped………….this was a sex ring. 

After a few ‘customers’ Suzy was hysterical. The last John that had her beat the living daylights out of her. Carl intervened. There was always a camera in the room. Carl was in the house outside of the grounds of the place she was being kept hostage in and was able to see on a monitor exactly what was happening. Carl came in with a gun and shot the John In the head. He was dead before his head hit the ground. There was blood and brain matter all over the place.

Suzy was unconscious. She didn't know how but she woke up in intensive care with a breathing tube in her mouth. She got off the breathing tube in a couple of days. The police went to speak to her when she was up to it. She was able to tell them more than any of the other girls that turned up out of the ring.

Apparently this group of people have dropped a number of girls on the hospital doorstep in a bad way. Between herself and the other victims they pieced together a case against Carl and his merry men. They found the camp she had been held hostage in and arrested all the perpetrators. All of the girls got the medical attention they needed.

Suzy had a very badly broken leg and pelvis among other things. She was wheelchair bound for months and was having physical therapy to get herself back on her feet. As she was in the wheelchair she gave evidence in court. There were 5 members of the ring and they got a life sentence each. They found bodies buried on the grounds they were using. They managed to find some of the johns also and they got criminal proceedings brought against them.

Suzy happened to know someone who knew someone who knew a major drug dealer in the prison the 5 captors became incarcerated in and he got his people to organise murders. Suzy wrote Carl a card that just said “ so long motherfucker”. Carl didn't know what she meant. At 2pm on a Saturday each and every one of the captors got murdered by the people associated with these drug dealers. Their murders were never solved.

Suzy now walks with a cane and needs counselling on a weekly basis.