Whispers: A game of Lies & Deceit

Hairy Frogs

I leaned my head against the clean car window, closing my eyes. Surprisingly, Vitali had taken my safety seriously: he had taken a security car, since his car was already known to the kidnappers, and a whole bag of weapons. Lynette helped me change, but time was too short for me to shower, causing an unpleasant stickiness to be present on my skin. My body was still aching, but I tried to hide my inner agony because I genuinely disliked Silvio.

I didn't understand why, in the moments when I lost consciousness, I saw snippets of memories from my childhood, my first abduction. I was an overly fragile six-year-old girl who played the cello and did ballet; I remembered my long silky hair that looked like wheat, so soft and beautiful, it always smelled like strawberries.

The driver didn't pick me up from the music school, but another man arrived in a car just as big and black; he said the chauffeur was ill (I didn't know the word then, but nodded confidently as if I knew what he was talking about) and I would have to go home with him.

There were soft toys in the back seat, and all the way I imagined a dog trying to make friends with a fox because he had recently moved to the woods where he had no friends, and I didn't notice how the streets of London changed to a wasteland and then to a forest. My white skirt wrinkled.

A big man took me by the hand — his palms were wet and something like the paws of a cat — but he took me to an old woman's house. She talked to me for a long time, gave me British tea and chocolates that stained my lips and cheeks, then the woman took me upstairs to a beige room where she stroked my hair for a long, long time. I didn't like the squeak of the scissors as she cut off the braid, and I didn't like the new hairstyle — that's when I started to feel uncomfortable, but the lady kept stroking my head.

I was scared when she said my daddy wasn't coming. I didn't want to stay living with that woman and the man who brought me to that house. I started to get bored, but neither of them would let me leave the room. Then this guy came and told me that my dad was not coming, even though I was waiting for him very much.

The woman kicked the man out of the room and told me to lie down on the bed. She squeezed the edges of the pink pillow with her wrinkled fingers and in a moment I could make out in her eyes something frantic, reminiscent of a wild animal, I'd seen them on TV in a jungle film.

I began to gasp as the sweet old woman pressed the cloth against my face, I started to pull away, but she was too strong.

As my lungs began to run out of oxygen I felt my head getting heavier, but there was a pop and something heavy fell on my small hand. I threw off the pillow that no one else was holding, coughing until I felt the warm liquid on my fingers, it was viscous and dark red, just like my mum's lipstick. My white skirt got dirty. My dad really didn't come then and we never spoke about the subject again.

Large raindrops hit the windscreen as I looked out at the sea in the distance. A strong wind tilting the treetops shook the water. Large waves were forming on the grey-blue surface, sending white foam to the shore, washing the wet sand from the rain.

In spite of the storm, it seemed that the sea was not disturbed at all by the wind or the downpour — it was the same as I had always seen it when I looked out of the window. It lived its own life, not changing its course under the influence of external conditions. Under the lingering grey sky, struggling against the strong wind, a lone seagull flew — sometimes it would freeze in the air, desperately trying to get against the gust — it was this that made me feel discouraged.

I was tempted to be as steadfast; as strong as the storm, as constant as the sea, and as persistent as a bird in the sky.

I rolled down the window, letting the humid air rush into the car, overpowering the unpleasant rotting meat smell coming from my body.