Stalked 2
A blurry luminescence light, a table, and a far image of a person that seemed to be sitting across the table, a stool at your right that held a yellow jug you prayed contained water, for some reason, your mouth felt dry.
“Wait, where am I?” you thought inwardly as you jerked up, becoming more aware of the strange room, and the duct tape that was strapped over your hands on the armrest of the wooden chair you sat on. The luminescence light became brighter than the first time you opened your eyes, you dim your eyes to shield it from the brightness, but that was useless as the light bulb was hung directly in front of your face. Gradually, your entire body begin to wake up and that was when you felt it, the sharp intense pain at the back of your head.
* Read Chapter 1 *
“Ouch!” you exclaimed.
“Oh, you’re awake” a voice came from far across the room. It was deep, and husky, but calm, whoever it was you couldn’t tell, the voice wasn’t familiar and the light in front of you concealed you from seeing farther into the room.
“Who’s that?” you inquire calmly, trying not to wince from the pain in your head and protecting your shivering heartbeat.
You hear footsteps, not one, not two, almost a dozen approaching, you’re shaking in your chair, making failed attempts to be free from the duct tape, but soon everywhere goes still as your captors come to stand still in front of you, all wearing a dark colour coat over a white shirt and sunglasses over their eyes, except one.
He stood in the middle, you couldn’t make out his face because of the blinding light, he seemed to be the leader of the pack because, unlike the rest, he wore a radiating white t-shirt with folded sleeves to reveal his huge arms. The white he wore made it even more difficult to make out what his face looked like. As if waiting for you to give the opening speech, they remained still.
“What do you want from me?” disguising your fear in the bravery of the tone of your voice.
The one in the middle clears his throat and says “I’m Edwin”, it was the same deep, calm voice that had spoken before. You search your brains for any memory of an Edwin, but you’ve never encountered anyone with the name before.
Edwin takes a step forward with his hands intertwined in front of him and says no more. He stands still watching you watch him, at least what little image you could make of him.
“You must be thirsty” Edwin suddenly said, and approaching the stool by your right with the jug on it, he poured some water into a plastic cup and walked closer to where you sat to give you the water.
You adjust on the chair and reach out your mouth to drink from the cup he puts in your mouth, and also to get a better view of what he looks like, but Edwin is coy, so he lets you see what is left of his face concealed by an eye mask. Aware of your disappointment, he smirks as he watches you drink the water.
You’re halfway done when you realize it could have been drugged, or worse poisoned. Now more than before you’ve become aware of how dangerously this could end for you, so you jerk your head away from the cup, its content spills and you spit out what little you had in your mouth.
Edwin doesn’t find your little stunt funny, especially since some parts of his shirt had to suffer from the spillage it caused. Looking over your head to the floor where you had spat out the water, Edwin tries to process the scene before him.
“What was that about?” he asked, his voice still maintaining its initial calmness.
Some questions are rhetorical no matter the situation, so you know better not to respond. Few seconds later you hear Edwin laughing, you look up at him, curious.
“Oh come on,” he said, but paused, trying to catch his breath as he laughed some more. “you didn’t…you didn’t think I was going to poison you?” it sounded more like a statement than a question, but when he saw you raise your head to look at him for the second time, he asked more intentionally, “Did you?”
“What do you want from me?” ignoring his question, you demanded.
“Who? You? nothing” he chuckled.
This surprises you. you’ve seen several movies when a person is held hostage as you were, it was either because their captors needed some ransom payment, your parents could afford that, it was not a problem. Or because they had a personal vendetta against you, you hoped this wasn’t the case, because usually, the price for that costs more than any cash ransom, sometimes it costs intense excruciating pain, a few broken bones, spilled blood, and sometimes it could cost a life.
You swallow hard, fighting off the tears that well up your eyes with the images that flash through your mind.
“Perhaps I asked the wrong question,” you thought to yourself, but to him, you said, “Why am I here?”
Edwin places his hands behind the chair you sat on for support as he bends to have a closer view of your face when he says “What? He didn’t tell you? You broke the store's policy” he could see in your eyes as you search through your memories, “You drank…water…before…paying” he urges you to remember. He smiles, stands upright, and with a snap of his fingers he says “Right!” when he noticed your eyes widen.
“That’s it?” you asked in disbelief.
Edwin paced about the room laughing “Of course not, that’ll be crazy” he laughed more.
“Then why?” you yelled.
Edwin stops in his steps for a few seconds, and suddenly, he hastily walks back to you, but he says nothing, at least not out loud, he seemed contemplative, as if wanting to say something but stopping, as if the words couldn’t come out, or he couldn’t find them.
“Let me show you something” he finally says, and with a clap of his hands the room goes dark, few seconds later a blue light comes up from your right, the stool that once had a jug on it now has a projector. Two of the men with sunglasses on come to you, one on each side, as they lift you, still duct taped to your chair.
You’re now facing a wall where the projector was directed to. Edwin comes to squat beside you, “I don’t know how to explain this” he says, “but here’s the truth, you’ve been watched”.
The muscles in your face relaxes, and your eyes widen as you keep looking at him for further explanation. He offers none, instead directs your gaze to the projected wall, and there you are.
A collage of pictures you never knew were taken from months ago, maybe years even, and videos of you walking, casually talking with friends, attending church with your family, or simply hanging out at any of the spots in Outback Street were displayed. As you watched, your heart picked up its pace, suddenly you felt cold and your eyes poured out.
You’ve seen movies like this, where the captors know everything about their captives. You’ll be blackmailed to do something unlawful or they expose something you’ve done, but from the display so far, Edwin had nothing substantial, so he might threaten to hurt the ones you love if you don’t accept to do something unlawful. Either way, it would not be a beautiful ending for you. If you give in to whatever his demand would be, you might be caught and end up in jail, and if you refuse, he could order the men on sunglasses to torture you until you can’t breathe anymore, and later they’ll go for the people you love.
All the movies you’ve seen if only one showed you how to get free from a duct tape and escape a dozen men… you kept watching the display with your tears-clouded eyes while you roamed about your thoughts inwardly, but soon you get distracted by the images that follow.
They were recent, images of you in the dark alley earlier this evening before you entered Yokos, images of you turning back, and of you running. It dawned on you. You were not in your head, you were followed, and you did hear that second footstep. Again your heart rate picked up, and fresh tears ran down your cheeks.
The display was over and the room went dark for some seconds before the luminescence light came back on. Edwin was squatting in front of you, with a fixed smile that disappeared when he saw your tears.
“No! Why are you crying?” he asked with a hint of concern that you would have noticed if you weren’t in tears.
“What do you want from me?” you cried.
“No…nothing” he stutters, “I don’t want anything”.
Feeling frustrated you yelled “Then what is all these about? Why are you following me and taking pictures? Why have you brought me here? what do you want?”
“Shhh, I didn’t mean you any harm” he touches your hands in an attempt to calm you down.
“Please don’t kill me,” you say.
“I wouldn’t! I have your best interest at heart. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, it’s why I brought you here, to see this. I don’t want to hurt you, I can’t hurt you. I only want to protect you, to look after you”.
You’ve become distracted by his speech, none of which made any sense to you, so calmly you proceed to ask “Why?”
“Because…” Edwin stands up from his squat, and takes a deep breath before saying “Because I love you”.
