Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The room was dark and cold. Elizabeth couldn't think straight let alone see straight. She sat on the floor, her jeans from three full weeks ago still sticking to her legs. Her blonde hair which used to be clean and straightened to a pin was now a filthy, greasy, wavy mess of yellow and frizz. His shirt- her favorite shirt- was now tattered and torn. Her leather jacket lay on the ground next to her along with both of her shoes. She curled her toes.
Her lightheaded dehydrated was forcing her head to pound. She looked up at the one light in the room and was instantly hit with a wave of nausea. She quickly closed her eyes and ducked her head down, bringing her fingertips up to her temples. She held her stomach with one hand, but kept those fingertips on her temples as the food she had eaten yesterday rose in her throat.
"Hey," a voice had called. Elizabeth didn't dare lift her head up again. Her ears rang out. She wanted to scream, but the very little energy she had left inside of her was being used to keep her stomach contents down now. She swallowed, hard. "Liz," the voice tried again. It registered in the back of her mind just whose voice it was, but she didn't care anymore. She wanted to die.
"Johnny," she whispered. It was all she could possibly manage. Her voice had been so cheerful and happy just two months ago, but now all she had was a raspy whisper. "Johnny, please." Tears began streaming down Elizabeth's face. She pulled her knees into her chest to avoid the embarrassment of letting the boy watch her cry. She placed her head in between her knees and the nausea seemed to subside at least a tiny bit. "Johnny, just kill me." The girl no longer chocked back her tears, but let them fall onto the blood-stricken wooden floor beneath her. "I can't do this, Johnny."
The boy felt his heart crack at the sound of his friend speaking like this. He didn't understand how he had gotten himself into this situation. Why it had gotten this far. When he let himself become the villain in someone else's story. He watched as the poor girl sobbed into her own legs, began for death. She would rather die than keep fighting and Jonathan himself was a huge part of why. He tugged at his shirt collar. He wore a band shirt today; Coldplay. Elizabeth's favorite. She had told him seven weeks ago; one before they kidnapped her. Now she was asking to die.
Johnathan dropped himself onto his knees and Elizabeth looked up hopefully. The boy grabbed her face with both of his hands. "Oh, Johnny." She had exclaimed before she closed her eyes and sobbed with every fiber of her being, realizing what he was saying. He had never heard anyone cry like that before. Eighteen full years on planet Earth and he had never heard anyone make noises like these. He dropped her face and hugged her as tight as his shaking body could manage. She dropped her head onto his shoulder and cried harder, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing to make it stop.
"Liz..." Jonathan placed one hand on the back of her head and she winced. Guilt rushed through the boy causing him to frantically pull his hand away and revert to hugging her. He was honestly doing his best to comfort and console her but he knew it was no use. He knew this was the end of the line for Elizabeth. She was the first of the girls taken and six weeks is a long time to go without any human contact other than the men who kidnapped you.
"John?" A grown man stepped into the dark room. Elizabeth cried harder. Johnathan felt himself cringe; both at the position he was sitting in and the way the man sounded. Tired, mean, angry, but most importantly of all, drunk and ready to kill. "Get up," the man demanded.
He was about twenty-four maybe twenty-six. He was six feet tall, but Johnathan was a good six foot two. The only difference was that the man was mostly muscle. Not in the huge eight-pack buff way, but he had arm muscles and a tight core. He was strong, needless to say. Whereas Johnny was eighteen and as scrawny as ever. He was a senior in high school and still growing. His doctor often informed him that he would be able to obtain a six-pack the second he stopped growing, but Johnny never really believed that. Despite all this, the boy was kind and curious, smart and funny, cute, and an amazing baseball player. The man was just a washed-up old drunk.
"I thought we talked about this?" The man asked him in a condescending, rude tone. "No more of this bullshit with the girls, especially Elizabeth."
Johnathan finally picked himself up off the floor. Elizabeth threw herself onto the floor as he did so. She longed for the hug back, even if it meant needing to endure this a little longer. As naive as she was, she was also incredibly smart like Johnny. She knew this wouldn't last much longer. The sleep deprivation, hunger, dehydration, and sadness were all in a race to kill her and it wouldn't be much longer until one succeeded. She knew this very well.
"Sorry, sir." He stood close to the man, slouching a bit to appear shorter. The height advantage usually made him feel anxious, but smelling the alcohol on the bigger man's breath right now, Johnathan wished he would stand tall. He was just too nervous to.
The man gave him a good slap across the face, causing, not the boy, but Elizabeth to scream before Johnathan was pulled out of the dark living room and into the bright kitchen. The man dragged him the right arm and into the next room over, throwing him into one of two white, leather chairs sitting patiently at a breakfast bar. Johnathan held the side of his face in pain as he glared at the man standing in front of him.
"Ryan, we had a deal." John reminded him. He slouched in the chair, refusing now to fix his posture. He knew his this was would make Ryan feel and he liked it. Johnathan understood how much good posture meant to the man in times like this. "Stop fucking hitting me."
"I'll stop hitting you when you stop trying to make Elizabeth feel better, John." The man fumed now. The boy pictured smoke exited his ears as he yelled. Johnathan rolled his eyes. He hated the way Ryan said her name. It sounded disgusting rolling off his lips. It sounded wrong from him altogether. "Are you even listening to me right now?" Ryan screamed.
This outburst caused the boy to jump in fear. He heard the dogs barking outside. The rain registered in his ears now. It was almost as if the entire surrounding world was slapping Johnathan in the face like Ryan just had. Suddenly, the pain rushed back to him. He felt his eyes water.
Johnathan watched as Ryan threw his glass bottle down onto the tile kitchen floor in anger. The glass pieces scattered across the floor; under the table under the chairs, running all over the room, and even into the other room. The boy watched as a piece landed where the wood of the living room met the tiled kitchen floor. Johnny looked to Elizabeth who was now curled in a ball on the wood facing away from him. He winced at the sight.
