Living, Breathing Nighmare

Chapter 6 Getting Out

Another month goes by causing Ruby to lose hope of getting out and causing more tension between Scott and Tyler. Scott is up to ten and he knows that he need to tone it down, but they clash too much. This causes him to get in a lot of trouble.

Ruby falls into a pattern that the two boys notice. She'll be defiant, Tyler will punish her, and she'll be quiet and submissive for a while. She's only up to five. She tends to stay out of the way, but sometimes she can't help herself.

Ruby sits upstairs, watching TV while Scott and Tyler are downstairs, not at each other's throats. She flips through the channels, bored, but not knowing what else to do.

She stops on a news station, just to see what's going on with the world. It takes a few minutes for her to be bored again. It's the same as it was two months ago, politics and people being shitty.

She goes to turn the channel, but stops when she sees pictures of her and Scott pop up on screen. "There will be a memorial next Thursday for the two teenagers that were taken from their school. Ruby Dessen and Scott Marion were taken two months ago and are believed to be dead, but no remains have been found.

"No..." she whispers. "No, no, no, no, no!" she says getting louder until she's yelling.

"Ruby, what's wrong?" Tyler asks coming up the stairs, followed by Scott.

They both look at the TV as they continue to talk about them. "They think we're dead." She whispers.

Tyler pushes Ruby into Scott who catches her. Scott doesn't know what to say and can't form words as their parents talk to Tyler unknowingly asking for them back. Ruby holds on to Scott, slowly freaking out about everything.

The piece ends and Tyler turns towards them. "Go downstairs." He tells them. Scott takes Ruby and does as their told.

"They think we're dead." She whispers as Scott goes over to his door.

"Ruby, it'll be okay."

"No, it won't, they're going to stop looking for us."

Tyler walks downstairs and looks at the two. He's not sure that he knows how her feels about getting away with it. Everyone thinks that their dead. No one is going to be looking for them. He can basically do whatever he wants, and no one will want to be the wiser.

Ruby refuses to look at either boy. She feels sick knowing that people thinking that she was dead. Scott thinks that everything is stupid and knows that getting out will be harder now. He just hopes his brother does what he thinks he'll do.

"Both of you to your rooms." Neither of them say anything, but do as they are told. Ruby let's go of Scott and goes into her room, but sits so she's facing the door. "Both of you includes you, Scott."

Scott looks at Ruby and sighs. He goes into his room and lays on his bed. Tyler smirks as he lays on Scott's door. That was easier than expected.

He locks Ruby's door thinking nothing of it. She doesn't cause much trouble and when she does, it's pretty easy to put her in her place.

~#~

Ruby lays on her bed trying to wrap her head around the fact that no one is looking for them. She wishes she could let her parents know, or maybe it would be better off they thought she was dead. The likelihood of them getting out is low. She looks around the room. She hates everything about it, including the things that came from her house. She never wants to see any of it every again.

Scott sits down and listens for what his brother is doing. Before Tyler locked them in, Scot locked his door, hoping that his brother wouldn't notice that he was locking the door. He was kind of surprised that it actually worked. Now he is just hoping that the news cast would bother him enough, and that he's leave. That would be great.

Hid mind wanders to the girl across the hall. He wants to know why Tyler took her. He hadn't talked to her in five years, and it had probably been closer to ten since Tyler last talked to her.

He sits up violently fast when he hears the door slam upstairs. Tyler must be leaving.

Scott gets up and goes to his window where he can see Tyler drive away.

He goes over to his closet for a sweatshirt and his dresser for socks. After putting those on he opens his door and goes across the hall and unlocks Ruby's door. "Scott, how did you-"

"Hurry and grab a sweatshirt." He says going to her dresser. She gets up and grabs a sweatshirt. "Come on, let's go." He says pulling her out of her room and upstairs. "Put these on." He says handing her the socks.

She sits in the kitchen and puts on the socks that Scott handed her, while Scott goes into Tyler's room. He looks threw his closet until he finds the shoes that they were wearing when they were taken.

"Here." He says walking unto the kitchen handing them to her. She slips them on.

"What about the shock collars?"

"He keeps the key in this drawer." Scott says going to what Ruby thought was the junk drawer. He opens it and pulls out a key.

"This is what we really need." He says. He bends down and unlocks the collar. He smiles. If this wasn't the right key, he didn't know where else to look.

He goes over to Ruby and undoes hers. "Come on let's get out of here." He says putting the key on the table.

They walk out the door. Tyler thought that the bedroom doors and shock collar would be enough.

"The driveway should lead us to a road, right?" Ruby asks.

"Yeah, that's going to be easier than trying to find our way through the woods."

They head down the driveway and its long. After five minutes of walking they're nowhere near the end of the driveway. Scott stops and holds out his arm, stopping Ruby. "Shh... do you here that?" he whispers.

"That sounds like a vehicle coming up the driveway." She whispers back.