Kidnapped

Replay

When I return to consciousness things are different. The air smells different. The floor feels different. I feel different. The second I open my eyes, I'm met with a rocky interior. There are jagged and pointy rocks pointing down at me. The first word out of my mouth is "Rocky." My mouth is sandy dry and when I smack my lips together I can tell that they are severely cracked. It's hard to keep my eyes open, and I can feel myself fighting against closing them again.
For reasons unknown even to me, I move over to my other side. Or at least I try to move. The pain that comes a second after I slightly moved to the left stops me just as fast. "Ahhhh." The cry echoes through the jagged place, bouncing back at me from wall to wall. The cry itself sounds so animalistic that it scares me. The air around me starts to change, or at least the smell of it. Before it was a vaguely musty smell, with a tinge of this new scent. It's a familiar. Cologne. A guy's cologne with a hint of woods mixed in with the musty smell. I wasn't alone.
I stop mid-cry and wait. I'm waiting and trying to fight against closing my heavy eyes when I realize that it's everywhere. That smell. The cologne with a woodsy hint. The whole place smells like it was submerged in this one smell. My eyes close on their own.
I pull back on my memories. Where was I? And most importantly: who was with me?
It's slow but the answers do come, trailing one after another. Snow. Smoke. Running. A cave. A silhouette of a guy. Danger. Pain. Images run past in my mind, each one of them striking some part of my muted senses. Woodsy and smokey. A disgusting and obviously hated smell. A silhouette of a girl. Danger. Danger. Danger.
My senses come back really hard, forcing me to jump in my skin. Which was, once again, a horrible idea as the image of guys in white with guns ran past. The only okay thing about the jump was that it also forced me to open my eyes again, and I saw who was in front of me. A guy, anger written all over him, glaring down at me in the dark. Danger. The word whispers through my head, leaving behind a trail of doubt in its wake. Doubt. Those two words seem to go together. Doubt and danger. Or at least when it came to describing this guy. The only visible thing about him were the blue eyes that seemed to shine bright and the anger and hatred coming from him.
Blue eyes. I grasp at the color. The deepest blue that I had ever seen. Suspicion starts to creep into my mind. "What are you gasping about, Freak?"
Freak.
Lander. His name slams into my mind so fast that I lose my breath, forcing me to actually start gasping. My left side starts an ache that forces me to clamp down on my tongue, which draws blood. I swallow the metallic stuff, before another part of me throws it up. When I'm finished with that I try to lie back down, but then I noticed the outline standing in front of me.
My body is standing up before I even realize what had happened. I try for a blast, but my hand stays limp. A grunt and then I try again. Try. Nothing happens. My left hand stays at my side, hanging, and swinging back and forth. Meanwhile, in front of me, Lander was closer than ever, pointing a gun at me.
"Don't you dare," Lander mutters loud enough for the threat to bounce around this place. I look around, noticing that there are rocks everywhere. A cave, I correct myself. The threat bounced around the cave. I'm aware of Lander watching me, disgust visible in his features. His gaze travels down to my left hand that limply swung back and forth. Then as if it's completely normal, Lander's face becomes blank. He keeps on staring at my left hand, but the disgust wipes away.
A part of me starts into a panic. Watching Lander stare at my hand with a blank look scared me, and I don't know why. I moved back a step. Another step. I kept on moving until I was five steps away, but Lander's gaze never moves away from my hand. When pain travels up my back, I cough. The cough echoes through the air, but so does the click of Lander's gun when he brings it to my face again. I flinch from his blank eyes.
"I said: don't you dare move."
While I struggle to swallow Lander closes the five step gap between us, his weapon aimed at my head. I stare into the barrel of the gun, noting the silver metallic carving on the side. It's in a language that I can't decipher. I tilt my head slightly to the other side to get a better look at it, but Lander moves his weapon away. "I said not to move. What don't you--"
Ping!
Ping!
The sounds draw both of our attention away towards the right of us. It's dark, but I can make out the outline of what seems to be a large rock. I hadn't released a breath before the sound starts up again.
Ping! Ping! Ping!
"Damn it," Lander mutters, glaring at the rock. "They're still at it." He moves toward the rock, seeming to forget the intensity of our stare-down. His weapon turns away from me and I try to attack. Try being the key word. I tried to rush at Lander, but I only got a step forward before I fell. My legs collapsed on their own. The situation got worse when my head cracked on the floor. I couldn't see anything, my eyes didn't function correctly.Everything was blurry. Blood red dots swam around. I could hear the tread of Lander's walk pause. I landed on my limp hand, and the pain in my body intensified. Lander yells something that I drown out, and as fast as I can blink I drown myself out. Then I'm gone. Once Again.
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This time around I am stuck watching my mother as she sits at our table and stares off into the distance. The kettle whistles on the stove and there are exactly four dishes in the sink. At first, I'm just too happy to be near my mom again, to be sitting right next to her, trying to hold her hand even as my hand passes through hers. I tried to get her attention, in fact, I sat and screamed "Mom!" for about a good ten minutes, but then I moved to staring at her, wondering what was wrong. Her eyes were unfocused, staring at nothing, really. I am about to write it off as the normal I had been exposed to all of my life when the sound of the doorbell echoes throughout the house. Mom doesn't look up at first, her stare unbreaking with the air. But after a minute she gets up sluggishly and walks to the door.

It's Ms. Lib, and behind her, Jeremy.
I stand up and walk to the door. Jeremy doesn't seem to notice me.