Kidnapped in the Dark

The engine of Elena’s beat-up sedan clicked into silence as she cut the ignition, leaving her surrounded by the heavy, suffocating quiet of the night. She shoved the car door open, dragging herself out with a bone-deep groan that felt like it had been building in her chest all day. Reaching into the backseat, she hauled out the heavy grocery bags, the plastic handles immediately biting into her red, calloused palms. She couldn’t stifle the massive yawn that stretched her jaw. After clocking in at seven in the morning, and with the dashboard clock now glowing a harsh neon green that read well past ten in the evening, she was thoroughly, utterly exhausted. The ER at the hospital had been an absolute nightmare today, severely short-staffed and overflowing with patients. When the charge nurse had desperately asked for volunteers to pull an extra shift, Elena had caved. They desperately needed the extra overtime money, and more than that, she always felt a gnawing guilt whenever she left her overwhelmed colleagues drowning in the trenches. It wasn't like she had a screaming toddler or a loving husband waiting eagerly for her return anyway.

She slammed the car door shut with her hip and turned to face her residence. Elena paused on the cracked concrete of the driveway, her brow furrowing in confusion. The house presented an unsettling facade tonight; it was cloaked in an ominous, suffocating darkness that immediately struck her as abnormal. Usually, by this time of night, her deadbeat relatives—her aunt Larissa and her uncle Janko—would be firmly planted in the living room, their eyes glued to whatever trashy reality show was playing on the television. But the large front window was a pitch-black void. There was no familiar, flickering blue light dancing against the glass. A knot of unease began to form in her stomach. Maybe they had gone out. Every once in a while, Uncle Janko would scrounge up enough cash to take Aunt Larissa out to a local dive bar for the evening. Elena honestly dreaded those nights. Without fail, the pair of them would stumble back home in the middle of the night, obnoxiously loud, reeking of cheap liquor, and aggressively drunk. Aunt Larissa was a mean, overly honest drunk who never shied away from cornering Elena and loudly listing everything she needed to change about herself. Elena's weight always seemed to take the top spot on her aunt’s venomous list, closely followed by her supposed lack of help around the house. Elena didn’t think she was overweight in the slightest, and she ran herself ragged trying to keep the crumbling house clean while working full-time. But no matter how hard she tried, her aunt's cruel, slurred words always managed to find her deepest weak spots and twist the knife.

Pushing aside her growing anxiety, Elena sighed heavily, the sound pluming in the chilly night air, and started toward the front porch. She carefully navigated the three decaying wooden steps. They desperately needed to be completely torn out and replaced. The first step bowed dangerously as she placed her weight on it, giving off a loud, treacherous moaning sound that echoed in the silent yard. It was a glaring, daily symbol of her endless financial struggles. She automatically did the depressing math in her head: she simply couldn’t afford to hire a professional handyman to come out and fix the rot. Maybe, if she had any energy left on her next day off, she could scrape together enough cash for the raw materials at the hardware store and attempt to rebuild it herself. She was reasonably sure she could find a step-by-step tutorial on the internet that would show her how to do it without collapsing the entire porch.

Balancing the groceries on her knee, she fished her tangled keyring out of her scrub pockets to unlock the front door. Her hand froze. The brass knob turned effortlessly in her grip. The door was completely unlocked.

Elena frowned, a cold prickle of alarm rushing down her spine. Had her uncle and aunt been so drunk or careless that they forgot to lock up before they left? She pushed the door open, the hinges whining in protest, and stepped into the pitch-black hallway. Her hand slapped against the wall, finding the familiar switch and flooding the narrow corridor with a dull, yellow light. She scanned the area quickly. Nothing looked overtly out of place. The coats were hanging on the rack, the muddy boots were kicked into the corner. But the air felt wrong. It was too still.

She took a few tentative steps forward and crossed the threshold into the living room.

The illusion of her mundane, exhausted reality was violently and instantly shattered.

Elena’s fingers went entirely numb. The grocery bags slipped from her grasp, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Cans of soup and bruised apples rolled wildly across the carpet, but she didn't hear them. Her wide, terrified eyes were locked entirely on the scene in the center of the room.

Splayed awkwardly across the stained carpet were her aunt and uncle. Both of them were tightly bound with thick, industrial nylon ropes. It took Elena’s exhausted, overworked brain a full, agonizing second to actually process the sheer brutality of what she was looking at. When the reality finally registered, a massive spike of adrenaline flooded her system, obliterating her fatigue. She rushed forward, dropping to her knees beside her relatives. As she got closer, the dim light spilling in from the hallway illuminated their horrific injuries. Aunt Larissa’s eyes were wide and wild with absolute terror, tears streaming down her face. She was brutally gagged with a filthy rag, a nasty split lip weeping fresh, bright crimson blood down her chin and dripping onto her shirt. Uncle Janko looked like he had been put through a meat grinder. His face was a bloated, grotesque mask of black, purple, and blue, far more bruised than skin-colored, and he was lying completely unconscious on the floor in a puddle of his own blood. Thick, dark blood oozed continuously from several deep lacerations on his face, his shattered nose, and his slack mouth.

“Aunt Larissa, my god, what happened?” Elena gasped, her voice cracking with panic. Driven by pure familial duty and her medical instincts, her hands darted forward, her only thought to loosen the agonizing, blood-soaked gag cutting into her aunt's mouth.

But before her trembling fingers could even graze the wet fabric, a chilling, coarse voice sliced through the tense silence of the room.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you, doll,” the unseen intruder warned.

Elena jumped, a violently sharp gasp tearing from her throat. Her head whipped around, but before her brain could even process the imminent threat, a sudden, vicious force grabbed a massive fistful of her ponytail. The attacker yanks her violently backward with terrifying strength, the sheer momentum throwing her entirely off balance. Elena cried out, a raw scream of pain and sheer terror as the sudden motion strained her neck and sent fire across her scalp. Panic flooded her nervous system like battery acid. She thrashed wildly, bringing her hands up to desperately grab and claw at the thick, unforgiving hand that was tangled in her hair, trying to pry the iron grip loose. *What the hell is going on?* Her mind screamed in pure, unadulterated chaos as she kicked her legs, trying to break free.

“Now, now, don’t be a stupid bitch,” a second voice sneered.

Elena stopped struggling for a fraction of a second, snapping her head to the side. A second man stepped into her peripheral vision, moving out from the shadows of the dining room. He was a skinny, sinewy figure, but the way he moved suggested a coiled violence that could easily handle a brutal street fight. But it was his face that truly terrified her. He possessed cold, dead, ruthless eyes that looked down at her struggling form without a single ounce of remorse, pity, or hesitation. They were the eyes of a killer who promised absolutely no mercy.

“Please, what do you want?!” Elena shouted at him, her voice trembling violently as she attempted to negotiate. Desperation made her words spill out in a frantic rush. “Please, we don’t have much, but I can show you exactly where the household silver is! I have a collection of jewelry upstairs, you can take all of it! Have whatever you want, just please, don't hurt us!”

Her pathetic pleas were abruptly and viciously silenced. The skinny man—whom her panicked brain would later dub Mr Pips—didn't say a word. He simply drew his arm back and delivered a brutal, lightning-fast backhand slap directly across her face.

The sheer, concussive force of the strike sounded like a gunshot in the living room. It snapped Elena's head violently to the side. A blinding flash of white light exploded behind her eyes. Her teeth clashed together, biting deeply into the soft flesh of her inner cheek. The sharp, hot, metallic taste of copper instantly flooded her mouth, pooling under her tongue.

“Shut up and do as you're told, bitch,” Mr Pips snapped at her, his voice dripping with absolute venom.

A dark, cruel laugh rumbled from the chest of the unseen man standing directly behind her, the one still holding her hair in a vice grip. Before Elena could spit the blood out of her mouth, she was violently yanked up to her feet. The man behind her released her hair only to instantly grab her right wrist, wrenching her arm up high behind her back in a brutal hammerlock. Elena cried out in breathless agony as she felt the delicate ligaments in her shoulder joint straining and burning, right on the absolute verge of popping out of the socket.

“Fucking whining bitch, can’t even stand a little pain. We’ll see exactly how long that lasts,” the short, skinny man standing in front of her laughed coldly.

Through her blurry, tear-filled vision, Elena realized he barely came up to her nose. She looked down at him, a fresh wave of paralyzing, pure fear washing over her as she met those dead eyes again. She was in massive, unimaginable trouble, and she knew it down to her very marrow. The horrifying realization hit her: this wasn't a random break-in. This wasn't a burglary gone wrong.

“I told you to shut up. Fucking bitch, we don’t want your tacky jewelry or your fucking silver,” Mr Pips hissed at her, stepping closer so she could smell the stale cigarette smoke clinging to his clothes.

Elena let out a broken sob, the sound catching painfully in her throat. Her left cheek was already on fire, radiating a deep, throbbing ache as it rapidly began to swell up. Her lip was split wide open from her teeth, and the blood was mixing with her tears. If they didn't want the silver, if they were actively rejecting the only valuables in the house, what the hell did they want? The horrifying answer was screaming in her mind: *They want me.*

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” the rough voice of the man behind her suddenly ordered.

For a fraction of a second, a foolish, desperate wave of relief washed over Elena. They were going to leave. If they just walked out that front door right now, she could scramble over to the kitchen, grab a knife, untie her aunt and uncle, and immediately call an ambulance to get Janko to the hospital before he bled out.

Mr Pips merely shrugged his bony shoulders and turned, starting to walk with purpose toward the heavy door that led to the attached garage.

Elena’s brief, pathetic surge of relief was mercilessly crushed into dust. The man behind her didn't let go of her arm. Instead, he shoved her hard, dragging her forcefully in the exact same direction.

“W-what are you doing? Where are we going?” she asked, her voice hitching with absolute desperation as her worn sneakers dragged against the carpet.

A burst of cold, sadistic laughter erupted from the man restraining her.

“You didn’t think that we would leave a pretty little doll like you behind, did you?” the voice whispered directly into her ear.

Elena physically recoiled as the man's hot, wet breath ghosted against the sensitive skin of her neck. A full-body shiver of pure, unfiltered revulsion violently shook her frame.

“Please, oh god, please don't take me. Please, I'm begging you, please!” she sobbed, planting her feet and starting to violently struggle against the massive man who was relentlessly pushing her forward toward the dark garage.

“Stop that, or I’ll let my friend violently fuck you right here on the carpet in front of your bleeding aunt and uncle,” the man behind her growled, the threat dripping with absolute, terrifying sincerity.

Elena instantly froze. She stopped struggling immediately, all the fight draining out of her muscles as her insides turned to solid ice. The sheer horror of the graphic threat paralyzed her lungs.

“That got your undivided attention, didn't it?” the man chuckled darkly, clearly enjoying the absolute power he held over her terrified body. “Don't bother trying to tell me you are a virgin, not with a fuckable ass like yours.”

To emphasize his vile point, he suddenly let go of her wrist with his free hand, reaching down to aggressively grab and squeeze a harsh handful of her ass. Elena let out a muffled whimper of disgust. She actually was a virgin, but there was absolutely no way in hell she was going to admit that to the psychotic monster currently holding her hostage. She squeezed her eyes shut and just frantically shook her head.

“Didn't think so,” he mocked softly, pushing her forward again. “My friend over there wouldn't mind giving you a quick fuck right now just to shut your whining mouth up. Me? I'm not into that quick and dirty shit. No, I would want to drag you somewhere nice and private, far away from any nosy ears. The horrific things I would do to you with my knife... you would be a beautiful piece of art by the time I was finally done carving you up.” he promised her in a graphic, breathy whisper.

Elena’s heart was hammering against her ribs like the frantic wings of a trapped hummingbird. A cold sweat broke out across her entire body. Her mind, usually so sharp and capable in the ER, had entirely collapsed into a black hole of nothingness. Pure, unadulterated fear was pumping through her veins, replacing her blood.

As the massive man roughly shoved her through the open door and out into the freezing, drafty garage, Elena's primal survival instincts violently flared back to life. She saw the three wooden steps leading down to the concrete floor. In a desperate, split-second move, she threw her weight to the side and hooked both of her legs firmly through the sturdy wooden banister of the stairs. She wrapped her thighs and calves tightly around one of the thick posts, locking her ankles together in a vice.

“Let go, you stupid bitch,” the man behind her growled furiously, violently tugging on her arm, trying to rip her off the wood.

Elena squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, tears flying from her face. She clung desperately to the banister, the rough wood splintering against her bare skin. She wasn't letting go. Her very life depended on holding onto this single piece of wood.

In the corner of her blurry vision, she saw Mr Pips stop walking. He turned around, his dead eyes narrowing in deep annoyance as he marched aggressively back over to the stairs. He didn't yell. He didn't scream. He simply reached into his jacket.

Elena heard the sharp, terrifying metallic *click* of a hammer being pulled back. A second later, the freezing steel barrel of a heavy handgun was pressed directly and forcefully against her sweaty temple.

“Let the fuck go right now, or I will put a hollow-point bullet straight in your fucking brain,” the skinny man told her in a low, terrifyingly calm voice.

Time seemed to freeze in the damp garage. For a split second, Elena genuinely contemplated keeping her grip. She considered just closing her eyes and letting him pull the trigger. Whatever depraved, sadistic torture these monsters were actively planning on subjecting her to once they dragged her away from the house, she knew with absolute certainty it wouldn’t be anything quick or painless. Would it be better to just die right here on the stairs? Would a bullet to the brain be a mercy compared to the knife?

But as the cold steel bit into her skin, her mind violently rebelled. She changed her mind. No matter how horrific the circumstances, life was always better than death. Death was final. Death was an empty void. If she stayed alive, if they took her somewhere else in the city, there was still a tiny, microscopic sliver of hope. She could scream. She could fight. She could find a way to escape and get help from a stranger. There was absolutely no hope to be found in death; only life offered that luxury.

Elena let out a broken, shuddering breath. Her legs went completely limp, sliding off the wooden banister.

The exact moment she surrendered, the two men grabbed her like a ragdoll. She started sobbing uncontrollably, the loud, wretched sounds echoing in the garage as they forcefully dragged her down the steps and across the cold concrete floor toward a massive, idling black SUV parked half inside the bay.

The man holding her twisted her violently around, slamming her chest against the side of the vehicle. He grabbed her left hand, painfully wrenching it behind her back to meet her right. She felt the thick, rigid plastic of heavy-duty zip ties slide around her wrists. He pulled the plastic tab with a sharp, vicious yank. The zip ties tightened instantly, biting viciously into her delicate skin and cutting off her circulation.

Mr Pips forcefully yanked open the heavy back door of the SUV. Without a single word of warning, Elena was roughly shoved inside. She tumbled awkwardly, landing hard on her stomach across the premium leather seats. Before she could even attempt to adjust her bruised body, someone grabbed her thrashing legs. They bent her knees upward, and she felt the unmistakable scratch of another thick zip tie being looped securely around her ankles. It was pulled brutally tight, locking her legs together.

The heavy car door was violently slammed shut, sealing her in the dark.

Elena was lying completely trapped, face down against the cold leather, with endless tears rapidly streaming down her swollen, bloody face. She could actually feel the seat getting wet beneath her cheek as she continued sobbing, her chest heaving with every panicked breath.

“Stop that. That crying shit is fucking annoying,” Mr Pips snapped from the front seat as he climbed into the passenger side and slammed his door.

Through her blurry, tear-soaked vision, Elena managed to lift her head just an inch to look toward the front of the cabin. The second man had already slid into the driver’s seat and was shifting the massive vehicle into gear. From what Elena could see illuminated by the faint glow of the dashboard, their driver was an absolute giant. He was a massive, intimidating man with thick, corded muscles that aggressively bulged and strained underneath his tight black t-shirt. His head was completely bald, catching the faint light, and every visible inch of the skin that stretched over his massive muscles, all the way up his thick neck, was entirely covered in a chaotic, vibrant sleeve of colorful tattoos.