Beach Week

19: Remember when?*

Sara

Sara was the first one to come to after being grabbed and knocked out. A thumping in her head reminded her vaguely of being in the club they had visited during the week. Her vision slightly blurred as if she had been drinking or was experiencing a terrible hangover. If only it was something as simple of those reasons. As her eyes opened she came to meet the harsh reality that what had happened wasn't a dream. Her arms and ankles were tied down tightly to the wooden by plastic zip ties to the dining chair beneath her. She tried to break free, but they wouldn't give and she feared that she would make too much noise to attract whoever had captured them. Eventually she gave up and glanced around for another way out.

As she looked around, she came face to face with Avery and Taylor in seats next to her. Avery was slumped over in her chair, bloody and beaten to a pulp. Sara cringed at the sight of the blood pooling through her shirt and glanced toward Taylor. Taylor was tied down in a similar way, her hair had fallen from it's high bun and was hanging over her face, shielding her eyes from Sara.

"Taylor," Sara whispered, hoping not to alert their captors she was awake. "Taylor, are you awake?" she asked desperately, her voice cracking a little.

Neither Taylor nor Avery stirred. Sara's heart hammered in her chest when she realized that she couldn't tell whether her friends were even breathing or not.

"Taylor, seriously. Wake up," she demanded, the fear that her friends were dead taking over her. Sara leaned in Taylor's direction, causing her binds to rub uncomfortably against the skin on her wrist, but she ignored the pain as she leaned further, trying to reach Taylor. Sara stretched, and leaned until her chair was on two legs. She tried to reach desperately toward Taylor, but her hands were tied and she was too far. 

Suddenly, Sara's chair tottered on its two legs and she fell to the side, crashing to the ground roughly. She grit her teeth to bite back the cry of pain as her temple slammed into the ground, her skull reverberating off of it before it came down again. If she thought her head was hurting before, now it was much worse. She finally understood the meaning of the saying, "seeing stars." Her vision faded around the edges, with doubles over everything she laid her eyes on, before everything went black. She could taste blood in mouth as she lay on the floor. If I somehow survived this, I'm going to have a terrible concussion. Hopefully that's the extent of my worries.

"Sara?" came Taylor's voice from above her. She sounded groggy, and out of it like she was waking up from a daze. "What happened?"

Sara didn't even try to look up at her friend. Her vision hadn't recovered, and she knew from experience that she needed to wait it out. "I tried to wake you up and look how that turned out." She blinked hard a few times as her vision began to recover.

Taylor whipped her head around. Her voice beginning to rise as she frantically asked, "What the hell is going on? Why are we tied down?"

Sara looked up at her friend, who looked like she had a twin and they were both on the verge of having a panic attack. "I don't know," Sara answered her first question. "Someone grabbed us. I didn't see who did it, but I'm assuming that's who tied us down. I don't know why yet."

Taylor's eyes glistened and her bottom lip quivered. "D-do you think it's one of the guys messing with us?" She asked looking down at Sara. It was so obvious that she was trying to hold back her tears.

"Do you think one of the guys would have hurt Avery like that?" Her words came out harsher than she meant them to. She blamed it on her fear. She'd never felt so in danger in her life before. Life altering fear caused by a real threat of death. Things like this only happened in big cities and on television, not in small beach towns like Avalon. It was supposed to be safe, and it had been for years. Just not recently.