The Creeps! || Book of Spooky Stories (COMPLETED ✔️)

78 ~ Innocence Lost

Innocence Lost is a true story told by Alicia Kozakiewicz, who was 13-years-old at the time she fell for an online predator.

It was 2002 and I was 13 years old. I had dark blonde hair, blue-green eyes, and braces. I lived with my mom, dad, and older brother in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I was an average girl from an average middle class family. I was shy and wrote poetry. I rarely got in trouble.

Sometimes I would go outside with my friends to play in the park. Sometimes I would stay at home and play on the computer. I was on the computer a lot. Not just an hour a day, hours a day.

I had a profile on Yahoo! where I posted pictures of myself. My screen name was "goddessofall" and my profile listed my interests as, "witchcraft, hypnosis, and mythology". It said I wanted to be an astronaut and a model... Which is a really weird combination.

All I remember is starting to chat online with this person. I assumed it was a boy my age because he was interested in the same things I was...  The Spice Girls and Titanic.

We chatted online for about 8 months. He always listened to me and told me what I wanted to hear: "Your teacher is stupid," or, "Why should you tidy your room when it's your mom's job?"

On New Year's Day, I arranged to meet him in person for the first time. After dinner, I told my mom I was going to my room for a few minutes. I told her I would come back down for dessert. We were having apple-walnut pie. Instead, I sneaked out to finally meet my online friend in person.

I walked up maybe a block or so and stood there for a moment. Suddenly, the little voice in my head spoke up. It said: "Alicia, what're you doing? This is really stupid! You need to turn around and go back home!"

That moment when I went to turn around, I heard my name being called. There was no boy there, it was a man.

The next thing I knew, I was in a car with this huge monster squeezing my hand so tightly, I thought it was broken. He was barking orders at me: "Be good! Be quiet! The trunk's cleaned out for you."

I had no idea where he was taking me or what he planned to do to me.

It wasn't until we came to the toll booths that I realized he was taking me out of state. All I could think was: "I'm so far away from home. How are my parents going to find me?"

After a 5-hour drive, he took me to his home where he pulled me down a flight of steps and kept me captive in his basement dungeon. It was full of strange torture devices, including a cage.

He kept me naked with a dog collar around my neck, which was chained to a bolt in the floor. The chain was just long enough to allow me to go to the toilet.

"It's okay to cry," he said coldly. "This is going to be hard for you."

The man who abducted me then starved me, beat me, tortured me, and abused me. He even broadcasted the abuse to his friends online. I did whatever I had to do to survive. No matter how painful, humiliating, or disgusting, I did it because I wanted to live.

One day of the fourth day, he looked down at me and said, "