Mine

Mine - 2:30 AM

'Hey, I should collect some of my stuff from my hideout, it's been a week and my stuff's still there, I'll be back in a couple of minutes.'

I wondered what was so important for her to risk her safety after not leaving the apartment for a whole week, but I didn't ask any further.

'Yeah sure, I'll order pizzas. What flavour do you want?'

'Oh, um, pepperoni will be just fine.'

'Great.'

She nodded and walked out of the apartment.

Before I called the pizza place, I went to my laptop and decided to google her name. Just her surname got hundreds of results. A lot of them missing person files and some pages with her mother begging for her to come back. On one of those pages was a phone number and an address. I wrote them down, just to be sure.

More stories came in. All of them collided with the story she told me.

Then all of a sudden she came in, obviously upset about something.

'I... I have to go. My mum and I need to have a little chat.'

'What?! Why? You just escaped from her; you said you were happy outside of that horrible tower!'

'I know...'

She said it very softly, almost like she didn't want to say it. Then she ran out crying.

I followed her out into the streets.

'Listen, I'm sorry for whatever I did to you, but please stay. You can't go back there, we both know that.'

She began to cry harder.

'Uh, I mean, are you alright?'

She laughed at my awkwardness through her tears and braced herself for the goodbye.

'You've been an amazing host and have been extremely kind to me, but my mother has threatened to hurt someone I love. I don't have many people in my life, because most of my life I have been alone. The few people that I have are important to me, so I have to do this.'

I nodded. I understood her. I've always understood her. I would go to hell and back for the people I love. We've always understood each other, and despite our differences, we are really alike. In this chaotic world, she is calming and logical. It's like she's the only thing that makes sense.

'Then go, but please be careful.'

Her tears slowly stopped streaming and she smiled softly.

'I have a feeling we will see each other again. Soon.'

She stepped into a cab and it drove away.

I went back and ordered a pizza for myself.

When I went back to my laptop to check my mail, my eye fell on one particular article that I'd read over before.

The headline was "Taylor Smith (2) missing". Above the article was a picture of a man and a woman with a baby, they looked happy. The woman looked exactly like Rapunzel, only a bit older. The article was fifteen years old, which meant the girl should be around seventeen right now, just like Rapunzel.

And I just knew it was about her, everything just fitted.

Rapunzels "mum" wasn't a sweet, overly worried mum, she was a kidnapper. She wanted to have a child just for herself, so she kidnapped one and locked her up in a tower. In order to prevent the child from trying to leave the tower she made up stories of a bad world where she wouldn't survive. When I realized all that, I decided it would be a good time to crash a mother-daughter reunion.