When morning came, as the air started to warm up and the songbirds awoke, a man walked into the room. Huffing, grunting, sighing, with the eagerness of a depressed accountant stepping into a subway wagon on a Monday morning, he dragged his feet around the basement. He pulled a metal chair across the concrete floor, and the horrible, loud, nails-on-a-chalkboard sound shook us all awake. Walking into rooms filled with hostages seemed to be a routine exercise for him, almost a chore. He let himself fall onto the chair with a loud thump, and slapped his thighs as he began to speak to us:

“Good morning, ladies!” he said with a falsely enthusiastic voice, “First of all, I would like to wish you all a warm welcome. As you–”

“Who the fuck are you?” shouted Kait.

“You– shut up,” he answered aggressively, ”I’m doing all the talking, alright? You listen, I talk. It’s simple. Don’t make this last any longer than it should. Okay?”

Kait didn’t answer, which I assume meant she understood. The man sighed loudly and paused for an instant as the tension in the air died down. His tone softened back just as fast as it had sharpened, as he continued:

“Where was I? Ah, yes– as you may have figured out by now, you’re our hostages. This may be a scary and unfamiliar situation for all of you, but do not worry, if you cooperate with us, it won’t last very long. Our motivations are purely economic. Once your ransom is paid, you will be liberated. So far so good?”

I nodded my head up and down, and quietly whispered ”I told you so“. I don’t know if any of the other girls heard me, but just telling those words to myself was satisfying enough.

“Perfect. All we’ll need you to do right now is tell us a bit about you - now, I don’t want you to rant on and on about your life, because no one cares about that. I just need enough information to be able to contact your family, or anyone who cares enough to pay your ransom. Let’s start with the ginger one on the right.”

“Strawberry blonde, actually,” June said

“No one cares,” he answered, “What’s your name?”

“June. June Corfield,” she hastily responded.

“Where do you live?”

“Johns Island, South Carolina.”

“Who will bail you out?”

“Bail me–” she stuttered, “Uhh, my dad, I guess.”

As she gave out her father’s phone number, it dawned upon me that there wasn’t anyone out there who would bail me out. I was the single child of a brain-dead mother and a dead-dead father. I had no grandparents left, and my aunts and uncles had been estranged for so long that I couldn’t even recall their names. I had no current boyfriend, and although I wasn’t on bad terms with my ex, it seemed unlikely he’d pocket out anything to pay for my ransom. The only friend I had was by my side, and she was in the same exact predicament as I was.

“Kaitlyn Johansson, twenty-three years old,” said she as her turn came to speak, “Listen, I don’t know my parent’s phone number, but my mother owns a dental clinic in Charleston, you should just call them and ask to speak to her.”

Oh, how I envied Kait, her peace of mind and the assurance in her voice as she spelled out the name of the clinic. She sounded proud, almost cheeky, like you do when you slam down a “Get out of jail free” card in a heated game of Monopoly. With the promise of dental clinic amounts of money, it was as if the ransom was already paid for. Ana, however, was a little less confident. Her voice trembled as she timidly told the man her name.

“Ana Perez?” he repeated, “Are you from here?”

“No,” she answered, “My parents are from the Dominican Republic.”

“Ah, I see,” as he scribbled down a few words onto some paper. “Lovely place.”

She then proceeded to tell him her parent’s address and phone number, and my lower lip started to tremble as I still struggled to find someone’s name I could give out. For a brief moment, it had crossed my mind that maybe Ana’s parents could pay for me too - they had been, for the better part of my childhood and teenage years, the closest thing I had to parents. But I knew them, I knew how they lived, and I knew that not many people who lived in our neighborhood in Goose Creek could afford to pay for one ransom, let alone two. I had relied on them too much already, and I didn’t want to burden them with this responsibility, or with the guilt that would come if they couldn’t afford it. Even worse, there was a small chance that asking for this would reduce Ana’s chances of getting out of here.

My time was up anyway. It was already my turn.

“Name?” the man asked.

“Sarah Kennedy,” I answered quietly.

Yet again, a deep silence hung in the air for a few seconds, meanwhile, I desperately ran through a mental list of all the people I knew, hoping for the name of a possible savior to miraculously pop up. The man coughed, showing his impatience.

“Sorry, I would have thought you’d know the drill by now,” he mumbled, “Where do you live?”

“Goose Creek,” I said, and my voice cracked, “Excuse me–”

“What?”

“What happens if no one can bail me out?”

No answer from the man. I cringed at the thought of what could happen to me now. Ana whimpered quietly beside me, and I could feel the atmosphere of the room fill up with pity and hopelessness. Our captor, after a few seconds that felt like hours, said:

“We’ll find a solution.”

I could almost hear a hint of empathy in his voice, too. While his concern perhaps should have warmed my heart, it only ticked off my anger. All my life, until my last day on Earth, I will have only inspired condolence and sorrow. Never will I ever inspire anyone, nor would anyone admire me.

“Poor thing,” people would say as they learned about my untimely death. “She was unlucky from the start. Her mother’s a vegetable and her dad is already compost. She lived in a tiny studio apartment with a cockroach in her bathroom as her only pet. She became a burden to the only people who cared about her. All she would ever do was sit on the bus and talk to herself. She was doomed anyway. Maybe she’s better off dead.”

And they would be right. For when I died, I’d join my dad, who was more of a parent to me than my still-living mother ever was. For, while I had a crippling phobia of cockroaches that made me pee and shower at the gym for several days to avoid the one who lived in my bathroom, none of the creepy crawlies I’d come across while laying six feet underground would particularly bother me. For I would no longer be a burden to Ana and her family, just a distant memory of a childhood friend who came to pass. For when my face rotted off from my skull, maybe it would stop twitching every time I got lost in my thoughts.

“I’ll be back in a minute. See you later, ladies,” he sighed.

He stood up, rattling the chair a little, and walked up the stairs. As his footsteps echoed in the stairwell, Ana whispered:

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Are they going to kill you?” cried June.

“Why the fuck would you say that?” said Kait.

“Shut up,” said a deep voice somewhere in the room, notifying us that we weren’t alone this time.

It wasn’t long before the door to the room creaked open again, and the man walked back in.

“Right,” he said. “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to make little videos of you, so your friends and families know you’re fine and alive. Don’t hesitate to throw in a little pathos, so they can pay faster and you can get out of here as soon as possible. Whine a little, tell them you’re scared and cold and hungry, and tell them how much you miss them. Tell them we’re a bunch of mean, scary men and you’re afraid for your life. It works wonders, trust me.”

“What about me?” I asked.

“We’ll figure that out later. Just do a video like the others for the moment,” he sighed. “So, does everyone understand? It’ll be quick and easy, and when we’re done you’ll have a lunch break and I’ll leave you alone for the day. Alright?”

I nodded quietly. There was a little bit of shuffling around, which I assumed was the camera being set up.

“It’s hot in here,” said the man in the midst of the preparations. “You ladies sweat a lot.”

“Compa, abreme esta puerta,” he ordered to who I assumed was one of the other men surrounding us.

Buddy, open that door for me.

A cool draft of air filled the room. It smelled like trees, like a forest after the rain. You could even hear the birds sing. To me, it almost felt like a last whiff of liberty. Maybe if I ran upstairs, following the breeze, and then in a straight line through the forest, I could make it far enough to escape.

The idea crossed my mind and seemed good enough that I felt a jolt through my legs, as if they had a mind of their own, and that that mind was determined to run away. I quickly reasoned that I probably wouldn’t make it very far with my hands tied and a hood on my head. Either I’d hit a tree within the first few seconds, or I’d end up just sprinting off the side of one of the big cliffs we had driven by just a day earlier.

“Let’s do it in the same order. June, let’s start with you,” announced the man.

Immediately after the man spoke, June started shrieking uncontrollably. I heard her trash around, kicking and screaming, bumping into walls, chairs, and whatever else was in her way. Amidst the sudden chaos, the man yelled.

“What the fuck is wrong with her?”

“Please,” she sobbed June. “Don’t take off my hood, I don’t want to die!”

“You fucking idiot,” huffed the man, “How the fuck are we supposed to make a video proving you’re alive if your face is covered?”

“Please sir,” she pleaded again, “I don’t want to see your face. Sarah said if we did you would kill–”

“Sarah doesn’t decide shit over here,” he grumbled, “I do. Sit still and shut up.”

My cheeks reddened at the mention of my name– although, technically, I hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Right,” he said in a calmer tone, “Action.”

June mumbled and stuttered quietly for a few seconds, before starting.

“Hi, I’m June Corfield. Hi Mom, Dad, I’m okay. The girls are okay too. I–... we need you to send the money as soon as possible. I just want to go home. I miss you guys. I’m– I’m scared. Please get me home. I love you.”

Her voice cracked during the last sentence. The man clapped.

“Bravo! See, it isn’t that hard. Next one, Kathryn.”

“It’s Kaitlyn, actually,” she corrected him

“No one cares. Ready when you are, Kathryn.”

“Hey Mommy, it’s Kait. We’ve, uh, been kidnapped. I don’t know who has us, I don’t know where we are, all I know is they want money. Just do what they tell you to do. They haven’t hurt me, but we have no food, no water, and we’re sleeping on concrete. It’s hell here. Please get me out.”

“Amazing,” commented the man. “Straight to the point, clear instructions - you’re a natural.”

Ana’s turn came next. Her parents barely spoke English, so she spoke to them in Spanish. I understood quite a bit of it since I had spent most of my childhood in her house. From what I could tell, she told them our trip had gone wrong, and that she should have listened to them. As she choked back her tears, she said she was fine, and I was next to her.

She said that she needed them to pay for her ransom, that she didn’t know how much they were asking for, and suggested maybe the family could pool some money together. These men are bad people, she said, and she’s scared for us all. She asked them to pray that everything would be alright, and whatever happened she loved them so much.

When she stopped speaking, I heard a split second of sneaky whispers coming from the area where June and Kait sat. Something flew across the room, whizzing through the air, and hit the wall behind us.

“Next one who speaks without being asked to,” shouted the man, “I’ll kick her face in.”

Someone moved close to me and grabbed my hood. He slowly peeled it off, as the copious amounts of blood that had poured from my brow had stuck the fabric to my skin. Then, I was blinded by the searing white light of a projector shining straight in my face.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Okay, we’ll have to fix that.”

He was wearing a balaclava to cover his face, and the only feature I could make out was his big, dark eyes. However, I noticed he had a mole on his right hand, in the exact same spot as I did. Just at the base of my fingers, between his thumb and his index.

When I was a kid, I used that mole to tell apart my right side and my left –and to be honest, I still caught myself doing it as an adult. He must have noticed me staring, as he quickly crossed his arms and hid his hands under his armpits.

The guy who had taken off my hood walked back towards me with a dirty-looking sponge that was laying in a bucket in the corner of the room, and he used it to clean the dried blood off of my face. Within seconds, it turned a darker shade of brown.

I caught a glimpse of the room. It was indeed a dark basement, with a concrete floor and concrete wall, and an old, moldy-looking ceiling made of wooden beams covered in cobwebs. The girls were kneeling beside me, their hoods still on their heads and their hands tied in their backs.

“Okay, let’s get on with it,” huffed the man, grabbing an old video recorder which he settled on his knees, “We don’t have all day.”

“Who am I talking to?” I asked.

“What?” he replied, startled by my question.

“Like, who am I asking to bail me out?”

The man grumbled, checked his watch, and wiggled his finger at the guy who had cleaned my face. They exchanged a few whispered words and paused to think.

“Maybe I could ask my mother?” I said timidly, “She’s... a bit ill, but she might remember me somehow.”

Behind me, Ana let out a long, shaky sigh, almost like a muffled cry.

“Remember you?” the man snorted. “Is she dumb? Who forgets their kids?”

“It’s just that...” I said with a trembling voice, “The doctors said...”

He waved his hand and cut me off. “Nevermind. Yeah, just talk to your Mommy. Action.”

I took a deep breath, and tried to concentrate on the right words to say - she barely even understood me when I asked her how she was. I wondered what was worse–her being so out of it that she wouldn’t recognize me? At least she wouldn’t have to suffer through another loss. It would just be another day of blankly staring at a TV screen in a dark room. But I would be left alone, with no help and no escape. If she, by some miracle, did indeed recognize her daughter...

“Fucking get on with it,” groaned the man. “We’re on a tight schedule here.”

“Sorry,” I whispered, before continuing, “Hi Angela, I mean, Mom. It’s me, your daughter, Sarah. I’ve–”

Suddenly, June screamed. “Now!”

She and Kait bolted up and started running for their lives. Their escapes were however quickly cut short, as June almost immediately tripped over Ana and fell face-first to the floor.

Kaitlyn barely made it any further. She almost reached the staircase, yet missed it by a foot or two. She ran straight on into the open door instead, hitting the poor old piece of plywood so hard she knocked it out of its hinges.

The loud, deafening bang of both of their defeating falls echoed through the basement like a gunshot.

We –as in me, the man with the mole on his hand, and the kid with the sponge– stared in disbelief as we watched the three girls, blinded and bound, writhing on the floor in pain. Ana, the collateral victim of this botched attempt at a run for life, started wailing in fear and confusion.

The sponge guy, after a brief moment spent trying to process what had happened, stood up and started to drag Kait away from the now-broken door. The other man seemed frozen, as he stared at the wall behind me.

I turned my head around to take a peek over my shoulder. In the back of the room, projected on the wall, was a bright white rectangle, drawn by sunlight peeking down the stairwell. And in this rectangle was a shadow –a pair of legs, walking down the stairs, growing larger and larger as it approached.

Kerning

Ransoms and Mayhem

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