Mona: Date: Unknown. Place: Unknown.
My head pounded as my mind slowly swam its way back into consciousnesses.
Where am I? I thought to myself.
Darkness surrounded me- alerting me to the fact that I still had my eyes closed.
But did I want to open them? Did I want to know where I was?
I could remember everything that had happened.
I was kidnapped.
My chest seized with fear and I held my breath.
Was my kidnapper here? Was he next to me?
I barely opened my eyes in an attempt to take in my surroundings.
Black.
That's all I saw. I saw black. No shadows. No outlines like I would in the dark. Just black. I saw nothing.
Confused, I sat up right and widened my eyes.
Still, there was nothing.
Am I blind? I thought in fear.
"H-hello?" I called out weakly. My voice was raspy, almost as though I hadn't used it in weeks.
"Don't speak." A voice to my left hushed me.
I looked around, but there wasn't a sign of the voice.
Was it a boy or girl? Was it my kidnapper?
"Who are you?" I asked the dark lamely.
There was a pause and a shift of body weight on a hard surface.
"I'm Kaila." she answered. A girl.
"What do you want?" I asked quietly, moving away from her voice.
"Nothing. I don't want anything except to get out of here alive." Kaila responded.
I squinted through the black veil of my vision. Still nothing.
I closed my eyes and took in a deep and shaky breath. "May I ask you something, Kaila?"
"Quietly."
I nodded and asked in a such a hushed whisper that I wasn't sure I was even making any sound. "Do you see any light?"
I waited for what seemed like very long minutes, though her answer only came in a few short seconds.
"No."
I let out a relieved sigh. "Ok. So I'm not blind?"
"No."
I nodded, though I knew she couldn't see me.
It was then that I felt something brush across the top of my hand- causing me to jump and throw myself away from it with a gasp.
My body collided into another's with a loud smack.
A girl cried out in pain and moved away from me, though she didn't need to. I was already back-crawling away from her. However, my hand crunched down on four fingers- possibly toes as I moved away, causing another girlish cry of pain.
Panicking now, I stopped moving and began to cry as quietly as possible.
"Kaila..." I whispered into the dark between my sobs.
"Yeah?" her voice sounded calm.
"How m-many- how many people are down here?" I hiccuped.
She didn't answer right away. She seemed to be thinking.
"Counting you and I?" she asked suddenly.
"Yeah." I said in a hushed cry.
"5." She answered bluntly.
My heart skipped a beat. Five. There were five people down here.
Unable to stop myself from asking the question that had been on my mind, I blurted it out. "Have you all been kidnapped too?"
"Yes." Her answer was immediate this time. There was no hesitation.
"Why?" I asked, blinking away more tears that threatened to spill over.
"The game." A timid voice I didn't recognize answered.
I was silent a moment. A game? I asked myself bizarrely. A man kidnapped 5 people to play a game with them? What could he possibly want to play? Hide and seek?
"What type of game?" I asked the timid voice.
"We don't know." another voice spoke up. This one was feminine as well, but sounded more like a younger version of Betty DeVill from the Rugrats.
At her response, I stayed quiet. No one else spoke. Not for hours.
Slowly, small amounts of morning light filtered beneath the door, casting the room we had all been inhabiting in a soft blue light.
It was still too dark in the room to make out any tell tale features on the girls faces, but I could see their figures now as the darkness slowly lifted from the room.
We were in a basment of some kind. I almost rolled my eyes. How cliché.
A few minutes passed before I heard movement above us. Almost like shuffling. I began to wonder if they were dancing.
Until the door open.
Light from an incredibly bright lightbulb awakened the remaining darkness in the room. It disappeared much like I did beneath my blankets when my alarm would wake me up in the mornings.
I squinted up at the figure in the doorway.
"Rise and shine, beauties!" a deep, masculine voice boomed.
The other girls stirred, causing me to turn my attention to them.
I gasped and jumped a little in surprise. Their wrists and ankles were bound together, completely different from mine. I was able to freely move. But this wasn't what surprised me. What surprised me were their physical traits.
They all looked almost exactly like me.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Brenton: September 2, 2014
I sat in the Symone's living room on their small, stiff couch, my head in my hands and my elbows on my knees.
I hadn't gotten any sleep last night. Not when I found out Mona was missing.
My phone rang loudly, jerking me out of my illness induced slumber. I grumpily searched my bed sheets for my phone, the song playing annoyingly as it continued to ring. No one ever called me, so I was a little peeved that I was getting a call and not a text message.
When I found it wrapped within my comforter, I checked the caller I.D. and saw it was Mona's mom.
I swiped the "answer" icon and lifted my phone to my ear.
"Hello?" I asked, my voice groggy.
"Brenton! What took you so long? Are you ok? Is she with you?"
I sat up in bed, suddenly wide awake. "What?" I inquired, confusion clouding my mind.
"Is Mona with you? Neither of you were at school today! Did you ditch together?"
My eyebrows knit together, still confused. "No, she's not with me. I stayed home sick. I have the flu."
There was a sigh on her end. "I do too. Do you know where Mona is? She isn't at school!"
My train of thought was suddenly thrown off and I was silent as I tried to search my mind for an answer. I could have sworn Mona had told me she was walking to school this morning.
"No. I don't know where she could be. She told me she was going to school."
I heard a frustrated cry come from her end. "Impossible! The school called me a few minutes ago and told me she wasn't in any of her classes. Do you think she ditched?"
I almost laughed. Mona ditching? She would never do that. She'd be too afraid of the consequences.
"No, I don't think she'd ditch." I answered honestly.
As I answered her questions, I suddenly realized the reality of the situation. Where was Mona, then?
"I need to find her. Can you text her for me? She's not answering me." she asked, her words rushed together in her worry.
"Yeah. No problem."
"Brenton?" her worried voice suddenly asked.
"Yeah?"
There was a pause. "Do you think she ran away?"
This time, I laughed. I couldn't help it. Mona would never run away. Not in a million years. "No. She would never do that."
There was a muffled cry on her end and a crackling sound as the phone was moved. "What could have happened to her?" her voice was full of emotion and husky.
I tried to think of an answer that wouldn't be too worrying, but nothing came to mind. In all honesty, my stomach was in knots now and I knew for a fact it wasn't the flu causing it. A bad feeling was growing in the pit. We were both thinking of the answer, but neither of us said it aloud.
"Mrs. Symone?" I whispered into the phone.
She didn't reply, so I continued. "Mrs. Symone, you need to call the police."
She did as I told her. Now, I sat in her home with my head in my hands as police officers question everyone and were firm believers that she had only run away.
"Did any of you say anything that could have upset her? Did you do anything?" one officer questioned all of us at once this time.
I looked up and noted all the shaking of heads as her family denied the possibility.
The officer looked to me. "And you're the boyfriend?" he grumbled.
I nodded, but didn't say a word.
"Was there anything you could have said that would have upset her?"
I shook my head and stared at the floor. "We keep telling you people this." I hissed at him rudely.
"Usually teen disappearances are caused by situations that make them want to run away."
"Mona wouldn't run away." I replied firmly.
"We've heard that before." was his only response.
I looked up at him with a look of disbelief. "Officer, why aren't you looking for her? Why are you here questioning the family as if we're the bad guys?"
"Those who run away usually return not long after. No use searching for someone who will more than likely come back. It hasn't even been an hour."
I stood up and ground my teeth in anger. "Are you listening at all?" I shouted at him. "Mona wouldn't run away. Did any of you bother to mention the black car that's been parked across the street that has now suddenly disappeared along with Mona? The same car she was repeatedly worried about?" I yelled at her family.
Only silence followed my angry words.
The officer turned to look at my family. "Is this true?"
Mrs. Symone began to stutter. "I-I-I must have fo-forgotten. I didn't even think of the black car."
The officer sighed and rubbed his bald head. "Did anyone report the car?"
Mr. Symone spoke up then. "Our neighbor did. Many times. It was gone before your officers could arrive."
The officer nodded. "We'll look into it. There is no proof that the owner of the car kidnapped your daughter."
I shook my head then. "She has been missing since yesterday morning. She texted me and told me she was going to school! She wouldn't lie to me."
"Stop." the officer held up his hand. "You said she was worried about the car?"
"Yes! repeatedly. She was really worked up about it. So much that she asked me to pick her up at her house instead of meeting up to get to school."
"And where were you yesterday morning? Why didn't you pick her up in the morning?"
I hesitated. Did he think I did something to Mona? "I was sick. I had the flu. Just like Mrs. Symone." I nodded to Mona's mom.
The officer rubbed his face in thought. "If Miss Symone was so afraid of this...this...creepy...car, then why did she leave the house yesterday? Assuming she knew you weren't going to pick her up," he paused, allowing me to confirm this with a nod. He nodded back and continued. "If she was so worried and she knew you wouldn't be there to protect her, why didn't she just stay home?"
I looked him over and tried t understand what he was trying to say. "What are you getting at?" I finally asked.
The officer looked around the living room. He looked at her father, her mother, her sister, than at me. "I'm saying that it doesn't add up. I'm saying that perhaps Mona staged her worry so people would believe she was kidnapped. So people wouldn't look for her alone. They would be checking basements and abandoned buildings. I'm saying I think it was a cover up."