Short Stories

Fear (Part 2)

I wake up with him in my bed. What happened last night? I can't remember much after Lindsey went outside. I grab my phone off of my bedside table and check the time, "Shit."

I get out of bed and wake my boyfriend up.

He groans reluctantly, "What?"

"It's noon."

"So? It's sunday."

"Fine, be a lazy piece of shit, I'm going to get froyo."

He lets out a frustrated sigh and gets out of bed, "You are an awful person." 

"You obviously don't believe that if you are still with me." We get showered and dressed.

I go to ask Lindsey if she wants anything, but she isn't here and when I try to call her, she doesn't answer. I don't think much of it though because this isn't the first time she's disappeared, and I doubt it will be the last.

Half an hour later, we finally leave.

My boyfriend drops me off close to midnight and I go straight to bed. In the morning, I get up and get ready for class, and again I didn't see Lindsey, but again I don't think much of it, believing she was on one of her runs or she had already left for her classes.

Later that day though, as I was eating dinner, I thought that it was odd for her to be gone so long without telling me where she was going, but once again, my mind put it as one of her sporadic disappearances.

I go through the week growing increasingly worried, as Lindsey still hasn't answered the texts and calls we have been constantly sending her.

On Saturday, when she still hadn't appeared, I called the police and her parents.

Her mother dropped everything to come out and search while her father worried at home.

The police didn't find any sign of her anywhere, the only thing they found was a cloth with chloroform a few yards from the frat house we went for the party, and they're saying that it wasn't used on her.

There was no sign of a struggle, none they could find anyways.

I refuse to believe that she left on her own without telling anyone. 

I've struggled with anxiety and depression ever since my mother left me in foster care when I was eleven.

While most of my foster parents were nice, or at least somewhat bearable, some of them left me with scars that will mark me the rest of my life.

I met Lindsey during my stay at one of these homes. She was the only ray of light in the darkness that was my world. She helped me find the perfect family and we've been best friends since.

I couldn't bear it if I lost her. 

After a couple of weeks of searching without finding anything, the police give up, but her mother and I keep looking for Lindsey in the surrounding areas, but even after a month we haven't found anything else and her mother has to go home.

I drop her off at the airport and she hugged me when her gait was called. "I would stay longer, but I need to get back to work. I'll be praying for both of you."

Over the next couple of months, everybody's life gradually went back to normal and it seemed like they forgot about Lindsey; that is until I find proof she was taken.

I'm on my way to visit my adoptive parents for Thanksgiving and, halfway through the drive when I stop miles away from the nearest town to take some pictures of the beautiful mountain side, I find her shoe in a ditch.

I knew it was hers because she labels everything she owns. I take the keys out of my car and lock it and start down the side of the mountain. I walk for about a mile before coming to a dirt road that's so overgrown it doesn't look like it's been used for months.

I try to see where I am using google maps, but I don't have any service.

When I get back to the road, I'm further down than my car is and it's getting dark. As I get closer to my car, I can see a faint light moving around and I can hear whispering.

It's now completely dark so I stop and listen for a while. Finally, after what feels like forever, their car starts and drives the other way. A couple minutes later, I climb into my car and start it.

When I get into town, I check google maps and find no sign of the road, not even anything to indicate it was a driveway.

I take the shoe to the police station and tell them about the uncharted road.

They tell me they'll look into it, so I go to the nearest hotel for the night and in the morning, I finish the drive to my "parents'" house.

A couple days later, while I'm eating dinner, I get a call from the police station saying they found her.

My "father" asks what's wrong.

"They found Lindsey"

"That's good, isn't it?" my "mother" finally says.

"It's amazing, but she's in the hospital for her injuries. They told me she was tied up and malnourished."

"Go," they say in unison.

"Really?!"

My "mother" nods.

I run up to my room and grab my bags. Before I leave, I hug and kiss them and say goodbye, "I'll come back soon, I promise."

When I finally get to the hospital where they are keeping Lindsey, and get the room number from the reluctant receptionist, I find her sitting up in her hospital bed, eating her lunch with a nurse adjusting an iv drip in her arm.

She looks up at me as I enter the room and her eyes light up.

"Sayla!" her voice is course as she speaks. Both of us have tears in our eyes as I run to her and she tries to get up to hug me, the nurse gently pulls her back on the bed and glares at me. 

A few months later, as I am working on an essay, I here Lindsey screaming from her room.