Dire {h.s.}

5

Ava Manakova

"Get up." His voice is cutting, filled with menace. Louis', whose name I have just learned hours ago, stands outside of my opened door, waiting patiently. My eyes try their hardest to adjust to the bright sunlight from outside. I shiver at the gust of freezing wind hitting my skin. Behind him is the landscape of pure white snow. It is snowing in Maine, but not like this. I can't believe we have driven for so long to reach the morning. I am in need of a proper sleep, in a normal bed, preferably in my own back at home. With a fuzzy mind and a body that aches from pain and tiredness, I weakly sit up from the row of leather seats I had fallen asleep on, and climb out of the car. Louis shuts the door after me, and grabs ahold of my wrists. I wince through my teeth and shoot him a look of pain. Not an ounce of sympathy in his eyes, what a monster.

"Come on, what are you waiting for?" I hear the man from earlier say, walking towards a very small cabin that seems to be in the middle of absolutely... well when I finally look around myself to take in the settings... we are indeed in the middle of nowhere. Nothing in sight but snowy mountains and millions of trees covering them. This is definitely not Maine.

Louis pulls me with a jerk to walk behind him towards the cabin, and I have no choice but to abide by his silent orders. We follow the man whose name I haven't gotten yet, and approach the front door. A keypad lock is installed next to the door, and his finger nears it, but it halts at the sense of my curious eyes watching. Without a word exchanged between them, Louis violently whips my body around to force my eyes away. I yelp at the sudden action, and nearly burst out into tears, but I don't.

I'm turned back around and find myself being led inside through the door past the stranger, where he holds it open for us. This is it, my last moment being outside. With one last glance over my shoulder and back at the snowy mountains, I say my silent goodbyes, before being pulled away further inside and watching the view leave my sight. As expected, the inside of the cabin is dark. Not a single window is left uncovered by a set of curtains. Only a few lights are on, flooding nothing but small pools––more like bowls of light against the deep brown hardwood floors. The walls are made of wood too, not like normal painted ones. The furniture looks as if it had been crafted from wood too, but the kitchen is somewhat modern-like.

Louis' grip on my hand has loosened a bit, but it still doesn't make up for the fact that every bit of pain I feel right now, is because of him. I don't know who these people are, or what they expect to do with me, but a bad feeling has stuck with my gut since the night I was taken.

I am led to a door, but there is no room behind it. Instead, a dark and deep stairwell awaits for me, the pitch black at the end stares up at me like a pit ready to devour me. My heart thuds loudly, my fears clinging onto whatever left of courage I have as I have no choice but to be pulled down the steps by Louis' forceful hand and the second kidnapper's presence behind me. Each step creeks with ever added pressure slammed against it. This place is eerie, and the farther we climb down the steps, the colder the air gets. Chills crawl up my skin and I shiver. Do they seriously expect to keep down here? In a freezer below the snowy land of god knows where. I want to ask where we are, but I'm afraid that if I ask questions like that, then I'll earn a punishment beyond my pain tolerance.

Once we make it down to the bottom, Louis reaches out to flick the lights on. At first, I expected to see something horrendous, but nothing of this was. An average looking basement, with a single treadmill set in place in the corner, a couch, and another door on the far right wall. Though to my horror, Louis begins to pull me towards the door, the second man following closely behind. Once he gets to the door, another keypad lock is set beside it like the front door above ground. Louis steps to the side with me and jolts my body to turn face away from the lock again as I feel the man from behind me move steadily towards the lock. A few seconds of waiting, and the door unlocks, and Louis hauls me through the door. To my surprise, we are met with a fourth door. Like before, I am turned around and we wait the few seconds it takes for my second kidnapper to push in the code, before walking through it. But I wish that I had seen yet a fifth door, because behind this one is such a scene that I have never in my life thought I would see before. It shocks me to my core and nearly sends my heart to beat out into a wild attack. A long and large room filled with girls, all who seem to be near my age or slightly older. They halt in their actions, surprised by my arrival. They silence their conversations and anything else, only to watch me with big eyes.

"Welcome your new roommate." The second of my kidnappers says, giving me a big shove forward. I stumble onto the ground in weakness, but two hands catch me before I can fall hard. I look up to meet the soft brown eyes of one of the girls. They are filled with concern and sadness for me.

The door shuts loudly behind me, and for the first time today, I allow every bit of emotions and fear to drain out from me as I collapse in this stranger of a girl's arms and sink to the floor with her in a desperate whaling cry of pain and helplessness. I don't know why I have immediately decided to trust this girl knowing just how afraid I really am, but I can't help it.

All of them surround me. Their eyes are filled with concern, but they seem to have an understanding of my reaction. I don't know who they are, or where they came from ,but never did I expect a room full of girls underneath this small cabin. In a brief moment, I actually allowed myself to look around. I sniffle through my tears, finding this all to be suffocating like heavy weight on my chest. On one wall, a row of mattresses. I don't even get the time to count them. Mattress after mattress, each distressed and disheveled with blankets of all colors.

"What is your name?" The girl holding me asks, snapping my attention back to her soft eyes.

I suck in a harsh breath, before stuttering my name, "A-Ava."

"Okay Ava, I'm Jade." She says calmly, but more for myself than anything.

She watches me take in the information slowly, and it's already too much for me to handle.

I was kidnapped, dragged through hell, and now I'm in a room underneath a cabin in the middle of nowhere. A girl, a stranger, is holding me. This can't be real.

My chest heaves violently, my lungs trying to grasp as much air as they can. There's no escape now. You're stuck here, and it's probably for good, my conscience tells me. My head feels fuzzy, and by the lack of water, a headache throbs at the back of it with a ringing in my ears. Along with my head, comes the fuzziness to take over my vision, and a darkness melting in my view immediately after.