Chapter One
Zinnia
“MOMMY!”
Cold sweat dripped down the back of my neck as I sat upright in bed. I’d had a... What was it called? Someone had told me it was a nightmare... but who would tell me that? Certainly not the men in the other room. They only talked if they were telling me to do something.
I had been kidnapped. The men stole me from the toy section in Wal-Mart. Said they’d buy me a Barbie. They just had to find my mother, is all, so she could give them permission. I told them she was shopping and that I knew exactly where she was. When I realized they weren’t wanting to go in that direction, I grew scared and tried to run. But they were strong. They grabbed me a pulled me and told me they’d kill my mom if I screamed. Their grips on my wrists tightened as I began to call out, but they silenced me with their gruff hands. The Wal-Mart was almost empty on this side, and no one looked in our direction, afraid of confrontation and being in the wrong.
And so they took me. My mother lived, and they locked me in a room with only a bed. They kept saying I was the bridge to something... but to what?
But that nightmare, the one that made me wake to the blackened room again, the one that began with the boy in the striped pants sitting on his red chair, that wasn’t a nightmare at all compared to what I had to face when the sun came up in the morning.
Cold sweat dripped down the back of my neck as I sat upright in bed. I’d had a... What was it called? Someone had told me it was a nightmare... but who would tell me that? Certainly not the men in the other room. They only talked if they were telling me to do something.
I had been kidnapped. The men stole me from the toy section in Wal-Mart. Said they’d buy me a Barbie. They just had to find my mother, is all, so she could give them permission. I told them she was shopping and that I knew exactly where she was. When I realized they weren’t wanting to go in that direction, I grew scared and tried to run. But they were strong. They grabbed me a pulled me and told me they’d kill my mom if I screamed. Their grips on my wrists tightened as I began to call out, but they silenced me with their gruff hands. The Wal-Mart was almost empty on this side, and no one looked in our direction, afraid of confrontation and being in the wrong.
And so they took me. My mother lived, and they locked me in a room with only a bed. They kept saying I was the bridge to something... but to what?
But that nightmare, the one that made me wake to the blackened room again, the one that began with the boy in the striped pants sitting on his red chair, that wasn’t a nightmare at all compared to what I had to face when the sun came up in the morning.
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