The Lost and the Looking (PUBLISHED)

1

-Hannah

I wake up to my blaring alarm clock. I comb my tangled long brown hair, have my 6 am tea and toast, and head out to work. I sit down and lean over my desk ready for a long day of sorting through contracts and filing bills.

My short legs can't reach the floor from my office chair so I usually can't keep them still. To keep them busy, they swing back and forth just over the boring white tiles that make up the floor.

My stack of business folders gradually shrink as I work, but it seems like no more than the stack getting added onto them every hour. This is my extraordinary life, as exciting as it gets.

Tonight, I get home and have a quick supper, nothing fancy, just a simple canned soup with a few crackers. I slip into my pyjamas and under a warm blanket. I stay up for a few hours reading, slowly dozing off. I welcomed the sleep.

In the middle of the night, I hear a rattle and a clank. Distant as it seems, I wake up, startled. Clutching onto my covers, I scan the room. As far as I can tell, there is no one in the room.

Still wrapped in my blanket, I walk to the kitchen through my darkened home. My slippers squeak as they cross the tile and occasionally, nearly trip on my blanket trail. The phone glows on the counter. I grab it and dial my best friend, Scarlet. I wait patiently for her to pick up. As I listen to it ring, I scan the living room and kitchen.

I pick up a picture we took together. It was during a concert. She stood on the seat below me in the bleachers yet she was still taller than me, a towering 5'7 over little 5'2 me. My brown hair was in mid-flip when the picture was taken. And, Scarlet's auburn hair was neatly arranged in a fishtail braid over her shoulder.

"Hello?" She answers quietly, obviously just awakened by me.

"Hey, um, I heard something in my house. I don't see anything, but I just need to talk to someone for a bit. "I explain as I jump up onto the counter and dangle my feet over the edge.

"Okay, what do you want to talk about at 4 o'clock in the morning?" She asks with a tone of annoyance.

"How's work? Still a member of the FBI since I talked to you Wednesday?"

"Nooo, I quit my dream job because they were putting me on too many exciting cases. What do you think?" She replies sarcastically.

"Okay, okay, bad question. Um, how's your husband?" I ask as I twiddle my thumb on the wire of the phone dock.

"Unconscious, but otherwise overworked. His boss is giving him so many hours he comes home exhausted," She yawns. "Just like I am right now. Are you ready to go back to-?"

"AHHH!" I scream and drop the phone as a hand clasps around my mouth, muffling my scream. I bite it hard. The hand is removed but before I can do anything, it's back and stronger than before.

A dark bag is forced over my head and past my neck. My struggling is having no effect as my hands are tied and I'm shoved in the locked back seat of a smelly car.

I'm captured; this is where my life gets exciting.