Interlude
Never in the nineteen years of her young life had Samantha Grayson known the experience, or felt the chilling, desolate sensation, of being completely helpless.
Blessed of limitless self-confidence, the natural gift of graceful poise garnered for Samantha admission to the prestigious, and highly selective, Randall School of Journalism and Communications at Great Northern University, helped her earn a coveted reputation as the top reporter at The Daily Northern, the campus newspaper. Always in control of events swirling relentlessly about her, able to overcome any obstacle or navigate whatever tempestuous situation life placed squarely in the path towards a bright, shining future.
Now that unbridled confidence betrayed her. Samantha believed in her ability to handle the lead obtained earlier that afternoon; an anxious freshman seeking her assistance locating a roommate she’d last seen the previous afternoon in the dorm room they shared.
The innocent assumption proved horribly wrong.
Helpless...
The darkness of the cramped closet where Samantha lay on her side, broken only by a sliver of pale light seeping underneath the pencil-thin crack at the bottom of the door, smothered her in a suffocating grasp like the tentacles of an octopus. The bare wood floor, cold and hard against her body, induced a tremulous shiver as if suddenly caught outside in a biting winter wind, sent unending waves of goose bumps prickling the tender skin of her arms and legs.
Helpless...
The meager light enough to illuminate the horrifying magnitude of her peril. Samantha could barely move, bound excruciatingly tight with white cotton rope. Hands pulled behind her back, bonds cutting deep into her wrists producing a warm, numbing sensation deadening her fingers. An intricate network of rope wound about her torso, twisted around her limbs like the pressing coils of a python, bands of cord looped above and below her breasts, arms pinned uselessly to her sides, holding her slender form in an obscene lover’s embrace. Samantha peered down; with shamed dismay saw her white silk blouse torn, folds of shimmering fabric pulled aside, revealing the black satin bra with a floral print worn underneath.
Helpless…
Her ankles tied, black skirt pushed up with more white rope, in stark contrast to the black microfiber tights sheathing her legs, cinched taut about her knees and thighs. A million aches vibrated ceaselessly through her body in a constant, steady thrum of pain. The stringent bondage secure and unyielding, every knot positioned out of reach of straining fingers, chances of escape reduced to the faintest of elusive hopes.
Helpless…
Samantha couldn’t scream, not that it mattered, no one able to hear her plaintive cries. The cloth wadding jammed deep in her mouth, held firmly in place by a thick strip of soft white cotton knotted behind her head, fabric pulled cruelly back between her lips, muffled completely any sound she uttered, rendering useless her pleas for help. Samantha tried to suppress, but to no avail, the shiver of fear coursing through her with the crackling intensity of an electric current.
Helpless…
She heard footsteps approach her cramped cell, head lifting at the sound. Unsettling questions rattled around her mind like a handful of coins shaken in an empty glass jar. What now? What is he going to do with me? How much time do I have left? Each possible answer, along with violent visions accompanying every outcome, threatened to shatter into tiny shards a psyche already teetering on the edge of uncontrollable panic.
Tousled strands of auburn hair fell over brown eyes wide and moist with suffocating dread. He can’t let me go, not with what I know, a rising tide of terror crept through her thoughts like the relentless march of vines crawling up a wall. He has to do something with me. But what? Samantha sobbed, chest aching with every ragged breath.
She understood exactly what her captor had to do.
Get rid of me.
Samantha struggled to rise from the floor, groaning with strenuous effort to heave her bound body into a kneeling position in the confined space, then slumping against the corner as the simple effort exhausted her stamina, drained her will. Wished she possessed a mystical gift, a sacred talisman, to turn back time, replay the day from the start and return to the safe, secure environs of the Great Northern campus, be with her cherished friends and the young man she loved with heart and soul. Wished she never chased the lead bringing her to this now uncertain fate.
The door opened and Samantha whined, blinked as bright light pierced her eyes with the sharpness of a dagger. The gauzy glow outlined the slim figure looming over her in the doorway; one Samantha only knew as a nameless captor now holding in his hands her precious life. “Are we having fun yet?” His tone deceptively soothing, yet oozed with cunning sarcasm. “It’s only begun.”
Samantha Grayson moaned in fearful protest, chest heaving as her breathing quickened, a fresh surge of adrenaline infused with fear injected in her veins by his terrifying presence, flowed through her body with the unleashed fury of a raging river. What have I gotten myself into? Worse still, she didn’t fully comprehend the reason why she held captive, bound and gagged, locked in a closet, or the fate of the missing girl she set off in search of earlier that afternoon.
There was one more thing Samantha Grayson didn’t know.
How am I going to get out of this?
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