Prescient

Chapter 19

She might have been there a few days, a week, or two.

Time was lost on her now.

Everything was just darkness and waiting.

It was agony trapped alone with nothing but her thoughts. She had so many memories to draw on and each one seemed more painful than the last. Not because they were bad memories but because they were the exact opposite. Happy memories. Each one stabbing her like a blunt knife. Memories of things she may never do again, of people she probably would never see again.

She thought of her mother. How kind she was. How much she loved her daughters. She remembered how hard it was on her mum when Maggie left and could hardly bear the thought of what she'd be going through right now. This was the Maggie situation times a hundred. At least she knew her eldest daughter was most likely alive, even if that might change with her lifestyle choices.

She thought of Maggie too. How close they had been. Kaylah use to follow her big sister around like she had nothing better to do with her time. It bugged Maggie sometimes, especially when Kaylah was trying to copy her; how she talked, how she dressed, the things she liked. Kaylah wondered whether her mother had been worried as time went on, that Kaylah would start to copy some not so great things her eldest daughter was doing.

Maggie was mostly kind to Kaylah though. Sure, they fought like all siblings did. But it was never anything too serious. The worst fights came when Maggie started staying out after school and became distant. Because Kaylah started realizing then something was wrong and her sister didn't seem to want her around her so much anymore but she continued to try and get close to Maggie. Sometimes that just set the older sister off.

Here now, trapped in this awful predicament with no idea what was to come next, Kaylah could be pretty sure of one thing. She probably would never see her sister again and the last time they'd spoken Maggie was angry Kaylah used her make-up and dropped her favourite eyeshadow, causing it to shatter all over the carpet. Kaylah had got upset and yelled at Maggie, accusing her of caring more about her stupid make-up and her dumb friends than she did about her little sister.

Kaylah had no idea later that day her big sister would pack her bags and leave. If she did she wouldn't have touched her things and yelled at her. Maybe if she hadn't been so clingy Maggie wouldn't have gone.

Those were the things she wondered back then. Now she knew differently. Now she knew that Maggie was leaving no matter what Kaylah did because she wasn't the issue. It was Michael. Maggie had never been able to accept him into their lives as Kaylah had.

But there were so many good times to remember too. Maggie always doing her little sister's hair in beautiful styles for school, teaching her how to do cool drawings and write block and bubble letters which then became the norm for all her titles in her school books and diary. Watching movies and eating chips and lollies they pooled their pocket money for at the corner store up the road from their house.

Then of course there were her friends, Marcy, Tyler, Claire. Marcy and Tyler would be taking her disappearance the hardest as they were who she was closest with. And poor Tyler, the last time they were together was awful for him. He had embarrassed himself so badly and Kaylah never had the chance to make things right.

She never would get the chance and that would be his last memory of her.

She also thought about the party she was supposed to have. She thought about Cam and how he probably would find another girl to hang out with and get over Kaylah easily. It was not okay. He was the first guy she'd liked more than a friend. He might very well of ended up being her first boyfriend if what Marcy said about him liking her was correct.

That wasn't going to happen now. That had been taken from her as surely as she had been taken from everyone else.

Kaylah remembered all these things and how the memories she had might very well be all she would ever have. That she might never have another moment to remember again.

She just wanted this all to end and had given up caring how that might happen.

So she'd been refusing food for four meals now. She was on a hunger strike. Her logic being that if whoever had her didn't want her dead, they would have to let her go. Because as long as she was here – wherever here was – she wouldn't eat another bite.

And if her captor didn't care if she died, then she would starve to death and it would all finally be over of her own accord. Instead of waiting out the seemingly perpetual days for whatever they had in store for her to come.

She just wanted it all to end.

Every time that door opened, she wondered if it was time. She waited for the blunt thump against her head, of a fist or a bat. The sharp sting of a knife in her belly, or her heart. The loud crack of a gun going off before true darkness enveloped her world forever. The smothering feeling of her airways covered over and her last breath trapped inside her forever.

She waited for vile hands exploring her body in places they had no right being. Touching and grasping and tearing at her clothes.

But none of these things happened and the not knowing was the biggest torture.

And all the while that voice kept playing over and over in her head.

"Hey, Kaylah. Kaylah come here."

The voice that had lured her out into the loading dock.

The voice that seemed so familiar, but she just could not place it.

Kaylah was pretty sure it was a male, but she couldn't exactly be certain. Her kidnapper had masked their voice, changed it somehow and they hadn't spoken to her again in their own voice since.

So she sat there in the darkness.

Replaying the voice in her head.

Waiting.

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This was a short chapter but I hope you liked it and if so please vote. Ta-ta for now, but not for long!