Finding Maisie

Finding Maisie: Chapter 1

Finding Maisie

Chapter 1:

(The present day, 10 years later)

Run. I had to run. Maisie had to run. Someone was chasing us and we had to run. I had always been the faster runner in the pair of us and so was ahead of Maisie. I screamed for her to hurry up but she was going as fast as her legs could take her. It wasn't fast enough. The men chasing us grabbed hold of Maisie's hand and she yelped. I turned around and saw the hooded strangers covering Maisie's mouth, preventing her from screaming, and they began pulling her away. The feeling of not being in control overcame me and I started to panic. Maisie fought against them but her puny eight year old body was nothing against their strong, muscular arms. She looked at me and I saw an image of heart breaking desperation on her face. Her free hand down by her side moved back and forth and I wondered as to what she was doing. It was only when she began nodding towards me that I realised what Maisie was trying to say. She was shooing me. She was telling me to abandon her and save myself. How could I do that? How could I leave my best friend? Maybe I should save myself like she told me to, or maybe I should try and fight for her. I didn't know what to do. I was helpless.

I awoke from my slumber with beads of sweat falling down my face. It was another nightmare, I told myself. I was safe in my bed in my flat with the front door locked. It was only a nightmare, I kept repeating in my head, but... It wasn't. People had taken Maisie and I hadn't saved her. Or at least I assumed that that was what had happened. Of course, I hadn't remembered anything from that day. Not waking up and going to school, not Maisie disappearing and not how she disappeared. My mind blocked out the memories, that was what the doctors and therapists had said it did. They informed me that the experience was too traumatic for my eight year old self and so my mind had gotten rid of the memories of Maisie's disappearance. They said that the memories may still be in my mind, deep down as if locked away in a filing cabinet, but that I may never find the key to unlock them. The morning after Maisie went missing I went downstairs and asked my mum whether Maisie could come and visit. She burst into tears and tried to explain that Maisie wouldn't be able to come over today or maybe never again. I cried for the rest of that day.

I had had the dream of Maisie being snatched many times in the past ten years. It was always the same, always haunting. The ending of the dream never concluded. I never made up my mind at the end whether to stay with Maisie and fight or to run because I didn't know what had really happened. Maybe I did try to fight for Maisie but failed or maybe I ran and left her. I really hoped it wasn't the latter.

The dream always came at the same time of the year; it haunted me in the days leading up to the anniversary of Maisie's disappearance. And each year for the past ten years, the dream never changed. It was as if my mind was trying to tell me something.

I pulled my duvet off of me and looked at the clock. 5 o'clock. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep so I fell out of my bed and began walking to my en suite bathroom. My footsteps sounded eerily loud in this quiet flat. I had moved out from home a couple of months ago, after saving up from the time I turned seventeen. It was a pretty basic flat. It had one bedroom, an en-suite, a kitchen and a joining living and dining room. Even though it was quite small, I loved having my own space.

Thump.

My body froze momentarily. That "thump" hadn't come from inside my flat; it had come from my front door. Except it wasn't a knock. It sounded like someone was trying to break into my flat. Even though I liked the independence, this was one negative of living alone; I had nobody to run to when I was scared.

'It was just my imagination, it was just my imagination', I whispered to my surroundings, trying to convince myself of my words even though I knew they did not ring the truth.