Sharing Sunday – Stolen

 

Today’s Sharing Sunday piece is by Mikki, a darling friend of mine who is stronger than she looks and so intellectually beautiful it’s breath taking. Her piece, like most of what she pumps out, is gorgeous and flawless. I know she’ll think otherwise, as all of us writer’s do, but it’s the truth. I hope you enjoy it!

 

Stolen

Siobhan strides from the supermarket toward her car, her dark face clenched with embarrassment. She doesn’t notice the keys until they crunch under her shoe.

“Jasmine?” she whispers, staring at the keys and a pink and white leather shoe lying discarded nearer to the car. Her daughter, whom she had only moments ago ordered out to the car to fetch her purse, was nowhere in sight. “Jasmine, you get out here now!”

It happened in under ten minutes. Fifty metres. Eighty small ten-year old steps.

*

“You have to find her,” Siobhan says as calmly as she can. “Now. You have to go now and find her.” She stares hard at the officer.

Officer Ryan Woodgate turns to his partner for the case. Detective Belinda Doyle gives a tiny nod and moves toward the door.

“We’ll be back in just a moment, Mrs Carew,” he says, following Belinda out.

“Third girl this month, right?” He observes, standing in the hall.

“That’s right. We have reported missing Kara Highland; age fourteen, Rebecca Lane; age six and now Jasmine Carew; age ten.” Belinda shakes her head. “We will have to have someone, you, probably, question that parents, family friends but I don’t think we will find anything there.”

“Serial sex offender, you’re thinking? Some pervert…” Ryan asks, sighing. They both know. “Sick bastard,” he mutters, “but we’ll find him.”

*

Jasmine struggles to open her eyes. She tries to move her arms but they’re stuck, tied behind her back. The rope is biting into her skin. The skin around her eyes is itchy and immobile.

“Mummy?” she whispers. Her first thought is of a hospital. Her mum’s forgotten purse, the car-park. Was she hit by a car? Her stomach rolls and groans.

“Muuummy,” she moans again. “Am I… hospital?”

There is the stinging sensation of metal on skin followed by searing pain in her head as she flips over backwards. As she hits the floor she feels the wooden back of a chair digging into her shoulder blades. Her ears start to ring and she is gone again.

“You have to keep quiet.”

Jasmine can feel the hard, cold floor beneath her head. The back of the chair digs hard into her neck and shoulders. Her head is throbbing.

“I can’t see you,” Jasmine whispers back.

“They’ve taped your eyes shut probably,” the other girl says. “They’ve done it to me too. I’m Kara…”

“The doctor’s?” Jasmine rasps “Do you know what happened?”

“They’re not doctors.” Kara’s voice is flat, resigned. “I guess, I think they’re kidnappers. Or worse.”

“What worse?”

“I don’t know…” she hesitates. “There was another girl here, young. She was six. She wouldn’t stop crying.”

Jasmine’s stomach clenches painfully. She turns her head and starts to heave. Her nose and throat sting as she vomits onto the floor. She tries to move her head back and it smears across her cheek.

“Mummy!” She screams again the endearment she hadn’t used in two years. “Mum,” she would say and roll her eyes in front of her friends.

“Shut up,” Kara hisses. “Listen; you’ve got to keep quiet and you can hear them coming and when they go. I tried to teach the other girl but she wouldn’t listen.”

“How long will I be here?” Jasmine asks between gritted teeth.

“I don’t know.” Kara says. “I’ve been here a long, long time.”

 

About the Dreamer

Michaela Joiner is in her fourt and final year at NMIT studying a Bachelor of Writing and Publishing. She adores nonfiction, the more taboo the tale, the better. She believes that real stories make a real difference. While she doesn’t as much enjoy fiction as much as she once did she likes to stretch herself out of her comfort zones. See more of her here, on her blog.