Teenage Baby

Chapter 5

Chapter 5:

Sunlight filtered through the curtains, creating a soft glow across the room. Aaron blinked as he slowly recovered from the effect of the sleeping drug. Every muscle in him felt stiff and sore like he'd slept for years. He looked around through bleary eyes, something in his depth hoping that maybe, just maybe, everything that had happened before was not true. But the wooden bars around him said otherwise.

He was in the crib, he realized, his heart beats suddenly picking up. He tried to think of how they even kidnapped him, but nothing came to mind—no random images of someone attacking him or trying to drug him. The last thing he remembered was being at home, then any attempt to think of what happened next made his mind haze. How was that even possible?

With an elbow propped against the mattress for support, Aaron pulled his upper-body forward, cringing when he felt his shoulder pop. He clutched a bar with a shaky hand and began shifting to his knees, but he froze when a flash of shining metal caught the edge of his vision.

There was a fitting bracelet around his wrist, one he hadn't noticed before. It  was silver—the pure, expensive kind that shined delectably beneath the light.

He neared his wrist to his eyes, squinting when he noticed that there was something carved onto it. It read, to his horror: Mommy, Daddy, Uncle Lou, Aaron, and Leo, written with a relatively small and cursive font, a dash between each name and an infinity sign at the end of the chain.

The hair on the back of Aaron's neck bristled. His stomach tensed against the contents. He desperately swallowed down the bile, the acidity searing the base of his throat. He couldn't put it in words how creepy he'd found it—how far were they drowning in their fantasy, that they bought him an expensive silver bracelet with all names on it?

He knew he was panicking too much when he ran out of breath even though he wasn't even exerting the slightest physical effort. His compressed lungs screamed for a proper intake of air; he breathed out, shoulders relaxing along.

Stay calm.

He clutched the bars again with both his hands and forced himself to his feet, staggering at the dizziness that knocked his vision momentarily. As soon as he recovered, he studied the room, relaxing slightly when he realized the captors weren't currently there. His eyes fell upon the veiled window. For a second he wondered if he could jump out through it, but then he quickly dismissed the idea.

  Impossible. What kind of captor would make it so easy for the captive to flee? The window had to be locked or something, he realized, but he still wanted to take a look, because he needed to figure out where he was. He could try to climb out of the crib, and just take a peek, but he hesitated, because he knew the captors might enter any second—

Aaron flinched when the door suddenly creaked open and Daddy appeared, his face bright and welcoming as he stalked closer to the crib. Smiling like a creep, he bent down and brought Aaron up to his hip, running his free hand through the messy black locks and neatening them along. Daddy realized his baby needed a bath, but he decided to do that later.

"Good morning, love. Somebody was staring at the window, huh?" Daddy asked, one eyebrow cocked in mock accusation. He walked with him to it and pulled the curtains aside, revealing along metallic bars through which Aaron could see a large landscape thickly strewn with long trees. He didn't recognize the place, but he knew that there wasn't somewhere similar anywhere near where he'd been living. "It's locked too. I know what you were thinking, baby, but we're smarter than letting you run out of a window."

Aaron was suddenly glad he never even tried to get out of the crib. He would've gotten caught red handed—if he'd managed to climb over the long bars of his crib, that was—and perhaps undergone another punishment. He shuddered at the thought; the spanking might have been tolerable, but he really never wanted to go through it again.