From the Shadows : A Percy Jackson Fanfiction

A Goat-Man Tries to Kidnap Me - Hayley

Hayley was having a perfectly good day when it happened. Well, as good as her days got anyway. The attempted "kidnapping" as she persists on dubbing it despite firm protests.

Her parents were out so she took out the chocolate hidden under her mattress. It was terribly squashed and had melted to quite an extent but was still delicious. Then she ran about the house, singing at the top of her lungs. All of a sudden, the doorbell rang.

Hayley stiffened. Her mother had told her that they wouldn't be back by 2pm and it was just 11. Had they forgotten something? She lifted a tiny corner of the curtain covering the window she often used to spy on visitors as it was set at the perfect angle for doing so. The person she saw outside was definitely not her parents. It was a curly-haired boy who looked a bit older than her. Possibly eighteen years old. She noted that he was wearing a blue shirt, a cap and long trousers. His attire confused her. People generally did not go about wearing long trousers in the middle of summer in Florida. She also noted a very crucial detail- she did not know this boy, whoever he was.

The doorbell rang again. Hayley cursed softly and thudded down the stairs as loudly as he could. "Who is it?" she asked, putting on the loudest, gruffest voice she could. Her current ambition was to be a voice actor; she had been practicing and was scarily good at it. The strange guy was easily fooled. "Mr. Walker?" he said. "I'm supposed to be doing a group project with your daughter. Could you please let me see her?"

That confirmed Hayley's suspicions- the guy was up to no good. For one, there was no group project. She also absolutely did not know the guy and she had a very good memory for faces (and sadly, absolutely no memory for chemistry.)And how did he know the family name? She looked around wildly, searching for something she could use as a weapon. When she saw a baseball bat at the corner of the room, she felt very thankful that her mother had been clearing out the attic.

"Mr. Walker?" the boy called again. "Fine," Hayley said in her "Mr. Walker-voice". "I'm coming." She unlocked the door, letting it swing open and flattened her against the wall. As soon as the unsuspecting idiot walked in, she brought down the bat on his head. He crumpled to the floor.

Hayley stared at him. It had been easy to knock him unconscious but what on earth was she supposed to do now? After slight contemplating, she decided to pull a Rapunzel and tie him to a chair only not using her own hair obviously. She did so and looked at his tied-up body, very pleased with herself. That was when she noticed the weird tiny horn-like structures sprouting from the boy's head. "Hadn't he been wearing a cap?" she thought to herself. She saw the cap lying on the floor and concluded that it had fallen off when he had been knocked out. Slowly, she approached the unconscious figure and poked the horn-like structures. They certainly felt like horns would.

By that point in time, Hayley was utterly confused. None of the action movies she had watched specified what to do with a weird boy with horns who tried to kidnap you. She decided to just sit there and wait for him to come to. She had watched enough interrogations to know how to get information out of someone. Or at least she hoped she had.