Black Heart

Groveling in the pitch dark, she desperately reaches out for the thing she needs the most at this time. Her eyes are filled with tears as she continuously cries. Whenever a tear falls, she tries to wipe it away with her hands, but the tears persist. After checking wherever she can reach in the dark, she sits down where she is chained. Then, the door opens, and three men approach her. They are wearing black dresses and are quite tall, with a height of at least 6 feet. With a trembling voice, she asks who they are and what she is doing here.

One of the men replies furiously, "You are our guest, so enjoy yourself to the fullest while you are here." He seems to be the boss of the other two men as he is the one doing the talking. Another man politely asks the boss if they should cover her eyes so she won't recognize them. The boss laughs loudly and says, "Don't worry, she can't see our faces. She can't see clearly without her power glasses, and since I broke them, she couldn't recognize any of us from this distance." The other man then asks how it is possible that she couldn't see their faces. The boss confidently replies, "She has negative 3.57 glasses number, and with this number, she couldn't recognize faces. She is as blind as a bat."

The men leave the room, leaving her sitting there, shocked and terrified by what she heard. Fear encircles her, as she realizes she can never know her culprit. The pain she feels is overwhelming, burning her heart and smothering her soul. There is no one there to listen to her, sympathize with her, or comfort her. She feels all kinds of pain and then loses consciousness.

It was almost 4 am in the morning when she regained consciousness, but she lay there, trying to find the courage to acknowledge that she was all by herself. Then, she reached back into her memories, and the reel started playing. She recalled walking with her sister around 6:30 pm, discussing their plans for a vacation. Harle said they needed to buy some things as they were short on supplies – they needed at least 6 pairs of jeans, three for herself and three for Zabel. They talked about the places they should visit and estimated the cost of the trip.

Suddenly, a car stopped near them, and the door slid open. Two masked men appeared, and one of them grabbed Zabel while using chloroform spray on her face. She felt herself losing consciousness and tried to stop them. Meanwhile, Harle intervened, trying to stop them, but they pushed her aside and took Zabel with them. As they rushed to the end of the road, she vividly remembered her sister crying and shouting, pleading for them not to take her. She said they needed money and could take their phones, but not her.

She opened her eyes and sat down, struggling to catch her breath and process the harrowing events. There was just one warm light hanging ahead of her, barely enough to illuminate the small area of the pole where she is chained.

The thought of being kidnapped seared her heart, and she spoke to herself in a low voice, "Am I really kidnapped? Who are these people? Why did they kidnap me? Am I stuck in a human trafficking racket, or do they want to videotape me? Or maybe they belong to some human organ racket? All kinds of worst possibilities one can think of," she thought.

Leaning her head against the wall, her head was spinning, and she couldn't think straight. Then, suddenly, a door creaked open, and a man appeared, holding a tray in his hand. He put the tray aside and asked her to eat. She stopped him, saying, "I need to use the washroom." He turned back and said, "Then use it. You don't need to be unchained. The chain is quite long, and you can go to the washroom while wearing it." He turned back to where he arrived, and after he left, she stood and kept walking. She bumped into his knee, then again, she tried to move, and her elbow touched some old stuff, hurting her badly. Despite the collisions, she managed to reach the washroom.

She opened the door, turned on the light, and saw herself in the mirror. Her face was pale like a corpse, and her eyes were swollen from constant crying. Upon seeing her reflection, she started crying again, but this time more quietly. She kept staring at her pale face and teary eyes for a while, then moved toward the commode.

After using the washroom, she didn't turn off the light as it would provide a bit of illumination to the room. When she reached her spot, she looked at the food on the tray. There was spaghetti pasta on the plate, exactly the way she liked it. She froze for a moment, then picked up the tray and started eating. She had been hungry for like 24 hours and devoured the food. She thought to herself that the food could be poisoned or drugged, but then she shrugged off the thought and continued eating.

After she drank water from the bottle and sat peacefully, her head began spinning. She said to herself, "Is it really drugged?" But she had already eaten it. Then, she lay down, her vision becoming blurred. She saw the image of a man, someone else, not the regular man who had visited her earlier. This man was nothing more than 5 feet 10 inches tall. Then she lost consciousness.

(to be Continued)