The Drive {on going}

Sober

"Where am I?" I asked, but only the sound of the traffic responded. The question was mostly for myself, it helps push my head past the drunk haze. My hands and feet were bound, and my mouth stuffed with cloth. I was laying down on my side, and my face was brushing against something. It was coarse and fuzzy like carpet, it was clear due to the sounds of cars, I was in one. When my mind shifted focus, I started to feel a sharp pain in the back of my head. Adrenaline began to kick in, and I'm realizing my situation. As I staggered out of a lowly club some equally lowly people probably knocked me out and here I am.

This would normally be the time I start screaming and panicking, but I'm the type of person that figures out sooner than later that there's no point. I'm the type of person that thinks, 'Who's even going to hear me?' and 'Who would have the balls to even save me if they could?' I had a similar thought 'this was going to happen eventually.' I kept going to all of the trap houses, sleazy clubs, and sketchy parties, in pursuit of distracting myself from all of the other horrible things I've done to completely screw up my life. I knew the risks and I took them anyway.

I'm still drunk and dizzy, the closed space, lack of air, and constant jerking around doesn't help at all. My brain is scattered and I can't seem to get a grip on reality. I've felt this before; In the passenger of a stranger's car or in the backseat of a policeman's. Like this one time I had pushed a girl downstairs. No particular reason, but to everyone's surprise she was laughing the whole way down. She slurred "Again!" and passed out giggling. Still, I assume one of her friends called the police. I was so inebriated, they practically had to carry me to the car. I ended up throwing up and only ended up paying for cleaning since the girl wasn't injured and no one even remembered the party at all.

For the past ten years it's just been drunken stumbling until it led me into the trunk of a maniac's car. It's been so long since the last time I've been this sober though, It's been so long since the last time I've thought this clearly. I can't believe after all of this time this is the one experience I'll be conscious through, but I guess that's just my luck. It's always the bad memories that cling onto me and the good ones just keep slipping away.

The car stops.

Even after accepting my fate, my breath becomes shorter and nervousness clogs up my throat. I honestly can't think anymore but feel as my body becomes paralyzed with fear of what's to come. I stop breathing entirely; I don't even blink.
It feels like every nerve and every cell in my body came to a halt. I'm choking on my own spit and my eyes are drying out. I teach my self how to swallow and blink once more before I lose my senses completely. I gritted my teeth as I waited for a while.

The car starts moving again.

I probably flooded the space with carbon dioxide given how hard I sighed in relief. I guess I wasn't as ready to face what was coming as I thought. I have no idea what could be coming next. I don't know whether or not I'm being murdered or sold, or both. All I do know is that ignorance, is in fact, bliss. It's crazy to think that something like this is happens more than a thousand times a day, and maybe even happening somewhere else right at this moment. I'm one of those people who don't care about something seriously wrong with the world because it doesn't affect me. Like starvation, poverty, war, and disease. If i see one of those boxes that say "One dollar can feed 15 families in Africa" I don't even bother. What if someone saw me as I was being stuffed into a car but turned the other way because it "Ain't they problem?" While I'm sitting in here wishing someone could save me, I understand why they wouldn't, because I wouldn't save me either.

Waiting for something you don't want to happen just might be the worse than actually being in that moment. It's the incessant prepping that you do in your head that you just can't stop, that aching feeling in your heart and stomach, and even the longing for it to be over that compares waiting to torture. The worst part is that I don't even have a clock to constantly dart my eyes to. I'm not sure there's even a crack somewhere to tell me that it's day, I'm just left in this dark void with no sense of time. What will feel like eternity will actually only be thirty minutes, this is a version of hell. Back when I actually went to college, I lived on a budget that didn't allow a phone or watches. Lucky for me, one of my longest classes didn't have a clock for some reason. Something about kids either breaking or tampering with it, mostly because this teacher managed to piss off several vengeful young "adults." This was just one of the many things that some frat boys did that inconvenienced everyone as a whole. The entirety of the class I would fidget and wiggle around anxiously. I ended up dropping out of that class because I was most definitely going to go insane. Actually, I dropped out of college entirely because I was going insane.

The car comes to a sudden stop and skull crashes against something. Through my clenched eyelids I see light, I open them. While it's bright, to my disappointment it is not the sun. I squint to get a better idea of what I'm looking at. I see three men, all of them unmasked, but I can barely tell. The man in the middle points his flashlight at me and I see him gesture to my forehead. A shorter man on the far left examines it, he pokes at it and I cry in pain. Once I started, I was unable to force myself to stop. I knew that it would get me in trouble but i couldn't stop screaming and kicking. The men look around rapidly, and I attempt to inch myself out of the car like it would have an end goal. The shorter man kicks me further into the trunk. I start pleading for my life through the gag, and it feels like my body is doing things on its own. I know in my head that they're definitely not going to say "oh, okay sure" and let me go; but I keep trying to escape. On cue, one of them yells "No one can hear you, it's rush hour sweetie!"

A tall man smacks the backside of a much shorter dude and orders him to "Grab the kit." I finally focus on my surroundings. It's nearing towards dawn, because the night sky has become softer. The back of the car is facing a frost bitten forest but I can tell there's a road to the right of me. I'm not too sure why they had to stop so abruptly or why they even checked on me. Now that I think about it, serial killers don't have buddies right? Also, why would someone who wants to kill or torture me, want to make sure I'm okay? I'm piecing together that my fate drops me off at a fucking slave auction. God damn it. I've been a slave to drugs, alcohol, boyfriends, girlfriends, my family, and now this; when will it end?

As my eyes start to get used to the lighting, I see a smaller guy return with a first aid kit while another suggests that I stay quiet. A bearded man rummages through the beat up box, which gives me the impression this isn't the first time they've done this.
He pulls out a mysterious ointment and a dirty ace bandage. With the gentleness of a fighting bull, he smears the cream on my wound and quickly wraps my head with the bandage. He pats me as if I were a good dog and chuckles as he slammed the trunk closed.

Damn, I could really use a drink right now.