The Adventures of Soap Boy

Part 3: Abduction

I was trapped. Stuck in an enclosed space, hands tied behind my back, and hitting hard against the walls of my prison every time the truck hit a bump in the road. Thanks to the prolonged assault on my city, there were a lot of bumps in the road. It made for an extremely uncomfortable ride. Not that I'd ever intended on staying long enough to see the end of the journey. Already, I was thinking of ways to escape.

The first step was easy. They had tied my hands with zip ties when they kidnapped me. Zip ties were made of smooth plastic, and thus, were easily escapable by soaping up my wrists. I scraped my hands up a bit while sliding them out, and was a bit surprised that the cuts didn't sting all that much. I clearly had soap all over my wounds, but they didn't sting. That must have been yet another additional aspect of my power. Not that I had much time to consider that. I had bigger fish to fry.

Once out of my bindings, it should've been easy to escape the trunk, but there was a problem. Unlike what I was taught by my parents, there were no internal latches, light accesses, or escape hatches in the trunk. It was almost as though the vehicle was specifically made for kidnapping people.

That meant it was time for plan B. I needed to arm myself and catch them by surprise when they opened the trunk. If I could hit them really hard in the legs before running, it may have been possible to escape. Blinding them, staggering them, or simply slipping past would also be good ideas. I began to search the trunk.

After a brief search, I found a wrench. Not one of the big ones used on tires, but a regular one. It was still better than nothing, so I took it. I also found a few bolts that the wrench fit, so I unscrewed them. I tried to pull up the panel that the bolts had held down, but was unable. It must've been glued or welded as well. Now I could use the wrench to hit my captures, and the bolts to maybe distract them. Soap could also be used to blind them.

As I was thinking up the rest of my plan, I felt the car coming to a stop. It didn't turn off, and I could hear talking outside. We must have been at a checkpoint.

Perfect.

All I had to do was make some noise, and the army would free me. I started banging my hands against the trunk and screaming, but the tone of the conversation outside didn't change at all. I knew the trunk wasn't soundproof since I could hear them, so that could only mean one thing. The checkpoint guards knew I was in there and had no intention of helping. My kidnapping was some kind of inside job by the government. After another minute, the conversation ended and we continued down the path.

I decided that I was going to have to escape by myself, so I stretched a little and started saving my energy. I ran through my escape plan dozens of times, and tried to visualize how things would go once the trunk opened.

Once the car came to a stop a second time, I leaped into action. I maneuvered myself into a lunging position. Placing my feet below me, my hands in front, and bending over forward. Almost like one would expect to see at the start of a race, but far more compact due to the small space I was occupying. The wrench was in my left hand, the bolts in the right. I had taken off my shirt, and tied it around my waist. I coated all of my now exposed skin in soap to make myself as hard to grab as possible.

A few extremely tense moments passed, and I heard the latch pop. The second I saw light, I lunged.

My back opened the trunk far faster than the men expected, and they all took a step back. This divided them into two distinct groups. Two men on the left, three on the right.

I flung the handful of bolts at the larger group of men as I darted through the middle. The three on my right threw their hands up to defend themselves and continued to step backward. Their reaction would buy me precious seconds to escape.