The night sky stands streaming light through my window. The moon calls to me asking me to join it in the dark. I wander without the walls of my house, surrounded by the dark and the stars. The moon remains in the sky: beckoning. I reach for my beacon in the night, but I falter. The night collapses in. The breeze takes an unexpected chill. Leaves rustle. Twigs snap. My moon is gone as it is covered by demonic clouds. Darkness overcomes the night.
Footsteps follow after me—abrupt and unexpected. I am not expecting a visitor on my own sudden night walk. I turn back, and…. nothing. Sure, it’s just my mind, I assure myself, so I continue my stroll, but alone, without my celestial friend. The night left me exposed. No trees, just a lonely girl walking along the road. But was I alone? The footsteps still sounded on the pavement: closer and closer, louder and louder. I dared not look back in fear of what it may bring. Instead I looked forward with heart tight. Faster and faster the feet came still. I turn back and am blinded by a stranger and unable to scream.
I am too far from home to be heard. My antagonist doesn’t handle me gently and I do not go gently. Panicked. But also betrayed. The moon—my moon—lied. Left me. Exposed. Alone.
Unable to see from the combination of darkness and blindfold I sit, in silence and darkness. Tears streaming down my face as my attacker plots who knows what. I know not where our destination is to be, but I don’t look forward to it. Why, oh why did I have to answer the deceiving moon’s pleads: The very pleas that led me out of safety and into the hands of a tormentor? I’m so confused and shaken, unable to think.
I awkwardly try and struggle against the ropes that bind me, but I can’t. My efforts are fruitless and my nemesis sneers at my hopeless strains. Exhausted I give up. No one to help. Alone.
A jolt in the car awakens me from my unsettling sleep. Then I feel the heat of a flashlight against my face and the rough whisper of the man who took me hostage echoes throughout the back of the vehicle commanding me to be still and quiet. I comply.
I hear the door of the car slide open and closed. Then silence, except the creaking sounds that issue from the car—an old car I suspect. Again I squirm in effort to break the bonds that bind me, but still no results. Alone, solo, lost and in the dark. My eyes are dry now. There are no more tears to be shed, but my face is raw from the streams that fell previously from my blind-folded eyes. My chest aches from heaving and sobbing, but I exhausted those what seems like hours ago.
The door opens again and I then hear something about my size tossed carelessly into trunk alongside me. I don’t move and hold my breath. It starts to wiggle and mumble. I gasp for I discover that I have a companion now. I sense rather than see another girl, smaller than me, but I sense her fear is identical to my own. I shush her and give her useless words of hope not believing them myself. We hold each other in fear as one might grasp someone they’ve known their whole lives. We hold on for dear life.
