Gone

7.

I don't fully remember the next few days following Halloween, but I do remember a few events that happened during those two days. On November 1st, Kevin entered our room and spit in our faces to wake us up. The rest of that day was quite fuzzy, and I might've passed out a few times during the day. On November 2nd, Kevin seemed to act more like himself, which wasn't pleasant for us girls. I remember the first few hours following me waking up to be dreadful. I heard pounding coming from the basement. My immediate thought from the pounding was that Kevin was probably drunk again. Then, a sense of hope came over me; what if they were murdering each other down there? It's unlikely for that to happen, but I still wished for it.

After a few minutes of the pounding coming from the basement, the noise had discontinued. I never found out what the cause of the noise was, and frankly, I was fine to never find out. Time went by, we got our daily food and water. No decent meals, but it was food, and being picky would get me punished by Lukas or Kevin in a heartbeat.

The night of Halloween, I remember having a dream where I was in the middle of a field brimming with dead grass. I could feel a slight breeze blow around me. The sun was setting slowly and I could hear yelling in the distance. I looked to my right and noticed a dark red-colored barn sitting in the field across the road. I sprinted towards it. Wondering where the shouting was coming from. I realized the screams were inside the barn, so I continued to head towards it.

When I came upon the glass window of the barn, I noticed a man with dark blonde grimy looking hair, crouched down by the wall furthest to where I was, with his back facing me. I could tell he had his head in his palms, possibly crying. His back was shaking forcefully. Instantaneously, someone tapped me on my right shoulder. It was Taylor. Kelsey and Chloe were a couple of feet behind Taylor, sitting in the fluffy grass. Taylor handed me a dandelion, and as the wind hustled to blow, most of the seedlings flew off, except for about three or four. With the crisp air flowing all around us, Taylor told me to close my eyes and make a wish. Before I could make a wish, I turned my head back to the strange-looking man to see him rise up and turn around to face me. I realized the man was Lukas. He had no glasses on and appeared to be muted.

Tears were strolling down his face as he raised his right hand up, and pointed at me as he mouthed the words "it's your fault". Guilt had filled my body. What could he have meant by it's my fault? I turned back around toward Taylor, I closed my eyes and wished. I never told either of my friends about the dream I had that night. Or that I had made a wish. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell them, but I didn't. I guess I just didn't want to bring up Lukas' name more than we had to.

Strangely, the morning came with no one waking either of us up. I was the last one to open my eyes, not that we could see a lot, but we had a little bit of light seeping through under the room door. I turned to Taylor to speak to her, but she turned away from me at immediate eye contact. Since she turned her head away from me, I decided to gaze over at Kelsey, who was picking at a scab on her thigh. I assumed that Kevin had caused her wound. I couldn't help but wonder what he did to her that made her not want to speak anymore. Again, I respected her privacy. I watched her pick frantically at her scab, noticing she had suddenly paused and looked upward at me. We made awkward eye contact for some time. I waited for her to speak, but I gave up after about 20 seconds. Just as I broke my gaze with Kelsey, Lukas pushed the door wide open and walked in slowly, and stopped in the middle of the room.

"One of you lucky ladies will be helping me today!" His hideous raspy voice honestly made me want to throw up the sandwich I had last night.

"They're not going to answer you, Lukas," Kevin warned him from the hallway.

"Well, one of them better speak up or I'll test who will go out into town with me, by seeing who can withstand the most pain before collapsing," Lukas told us with his disgusting smirk.