Salvation

Chapter 2: Familiar Strangers

That voice, she’s heard it before. Darci looks around, trying to see where it came from. There; in the center of the crowd, close to the stage, slowly moving forward. His hand raised in the air to show that it was him that spoke.

“Ok then! We have a buyer.” Alex exclaims. “You can let her go now, hand her over to him. But keep the cuffs on her; we don’t want her trying to take you out now.” He laughs.

“Well, here’s your $20, I’ll take her and the keys to the cuffs and be out of your way. You look awfully busy there.” Marc says to Alex roughly.

“Yes, well, business as usual.” Alex responds, and then stiffly motions to the guy with a death grip on Darci to hand her and the key over. Marc grabs Darci’s arm just above the elbow and starts leading her away through the crowd. He pushed his way through, over to a big, black SUV, then pulls her around to the passenger side so that they are out of the crowd’s sight.

“Damn it Darci.” He mutters under his breath, “What did you get yourself into?” He notices Darci’s eyes widen as he said her name. He quickly opens the side door and pushes Darci inside then follows her in and sits off to her side. “It’s a good thing they taped your mouth shut when they did, otherwise this would’ve been a lot harder.” He chuckles, “Turn around, I’ll take the cuffs off.”

Darci turns around very slowly and awkwardly, exposing her wrists to him. She watches as he pulls the key out of his pocket, and as he pulls it out, an earpiece fell to the floor. Marc unlocks her cuffs and guides them off of her wrists carefully so they didn’t hit her sores.

Once both of Darci’s wrists are free, she turns to face him again and winces as she brings her arms forward. She doesn’t know how long her arms were in that position, but it was definitely more than long enough. Marc notices her wince and quickly grabs a cloth from the first aid kit under the driver’s seat.

“Here, take this.” He offers her the cloth, “Hold it to your wrists, it will sting, but it will help.”

“Mmhmmhhmm!” She yells against the tape as the cloth stings her wrists.

“Oh, right, here.” He mumbles as he reaches over, but the starts to lower them as she shies away, but then starts to nervously laugh in disbelief. His laugh is low, deep rumbling that starts in his chest and works it’s way up. “I won’t hurt you Darci, I promise. I just want to take the tape off, ok?” he asks, still laughing.

Slowly, she nods. Marc raises his hands again and grips the edge of the tape. Carefully, he starts to peel it away from her lips; his fingers gently guiding the tape off and occasionally brushing against her lips, sending a shiver down her spine. When the tape is off completely, he lowers his hands and stares at them awkwardly.

“Thank you,” she whispers, “but I need to know, who are you?” Her voice literally can’t go any louder than a whisper, mainly because it hurts to talk after that screaming. Marc looks up in shock; and she wonders if it’s because of her voice, because she thanked him, or because she doesn’t know him.

“So, you don’t remember me then.” He sighs, sounding disappointed, “My name’s Marc, my parents used to live close to you. We always played together in your backyard.” As Marc states this matter-of-factly, Darci starts to remember; staying up late as a child watching movies until the break of dawn. Then, as teenagers, sneaking out of the house to go to the spring, sometimes excluding Derrick, that way it was just the two of them. Going on their first official date, this then turned out to be their last. For their date, he took her to a picnic by the spring, but then later that week moving away to Nunavut.

“I remember,” she whispers in awe and amazement, “I remember.” Slowly, Marc raises his head to look at her, and she could see in his face that he remembered them being together as children, all the fun they had. He never forgot. “So why did I? Why can I remember nothing of my life before today? What happened to me?”