Chapter Text
As the fly screen door wobbly clacked its way shut as the stars shone down upon a night any Australian would consider a bit chilly after such a hot ass summer the peace first broken by the fragile sounding but sturdy door was broken once again by the clicking and clacking of a key chain with too many keys and ornaments attached to one main loop being held by a young person who wondered if their neighbours thought they were a vampire because if their neighbour only left the house at night and never during the day she would also start to get suspicious, she didn’t mind vampires but she just didn’t want to accidentally kill them if they actually existed. As she stuffed her keys into her pocket she grabbed out a hot pink set of wired earbuds and plugged them into her phone as she began to wander the streets listening to music, it was the only thing she could use to ground herself during times of stress and anxiety, which was almost always, especially after her new medication didn’t work, it was just like old times just with a new panic related to medication. She continued to wander down the dark street like she would always do mouthing and swaying to the music of Delta Goodrem, she found her night walks to be a moment of peace, no one could see her and no one could judge her, she just looked like a cloaked figure at night, though she was a bit more cautious when passing a nearby primary school because the last thing she wanted was to be the tall stocky hooded figure that was acting weird around primary schools after 8pm.
As she walked down the end of her street and crossed a road that was used mainly by buses she arrived at a park, luckily the football game played by the children had just finished and everyone was starting to leave. She didn’t enter the park just at that moment and just focused on her music as the children tiredly ran to their parents car and the refs were pulling down the goal posts that were temporarily placed to create two half sized ovals. As the playground became empty she wandered over to the swing and sat on it for a bit, she tried to do an hour a day to get fresh air but tonight she felt like sitting there a bit longer. It had been a hard day for her with a rent inspection up and coming her dad decided to do his version of helping, which involved yelling at her, calling her a disappointment and threating to send her to her neglectful mothers house that was over 2 hours away from where her life was. She needed peace and calmness in her life to try and put things into perspective so that her anxiety wouldn’t consume her.
As the swing squeaked its age through the quite night music was still blaring into her ears, it distracted her from any negative thoughts that she didn’t need especially as she was feeling like this day was beautiful enough as is, she didn’t need to wonder how much of her world was a lie and how much was true based on hints of why both parents pushed their anger onto her, even though she was constantly yelled at she never really did belive in a bad day and it’s just all how you see it, yes bad things could happen but there was plenty of good, maybe? Gaslighting has never failed before so why would it now? At least the house is cleaner than it was yesterday and someone was able to help her, she didn’t get a free lunch but hey that’s ok, she wasn’t hungry anyway free food would of been the cherry on top. She knew she can’t change this day if she tried but if she could highlight the correct parts it would ease her depression and anxiety a bit. As her playlist changed from Delta singing about kindness and love and started playing Megan Trainer singing more about herself, the lights on dog collars started racing around the darken oval as the stadium lights erected into the bushlands dramatically shut off showing the stars in the sky and the planes leaving Australia to who knows where in the distance as both brilliant lights danced and intermingled with each other she continued to swing into the night
As the night went on people began to leave and as her night began to wrap up in the now empty park she laid back on the circular swing and let whatever force of nature was required to slow the swing in motion she began to looking sideways at the once empty car park as a car was speeding down, this happened every so often, there was a roundabout at the end of the car park so people who got lost would typically speed down the car park at a slightly alarming rate to pull a quick u-ie. This car didn’t really seem to care about pulling a u turn, it instead parked itself diagonally across 3 carpark bays and was directly facing her. Again this was normal as teens and rev heads also came here, couldn’t forget the ‘fun’ experience from about 3 months ago when 4 cars were parked diagonally across the painted roundabout and playing with any light they had on the front of their car with some flashing constantly and the brightness making her question if her highly depressive episode was over and that she accidentally consumed something that killed her. Luckily this car didn’t have a full set of highway headlights and bar lights it was just your standard set on lights that were legally required to come with a car. The car wasn’t extremely flashy either as she lived a 15 minute bus trip from the state capital, every now and again you would see a Lamborghini or a Porsche get lost down this way or drive though the Main Street but this car wasn’t that, it was just a typical car, it was a bit flashy but nothing too spectacular about it. The car looked new as if it was plucked straight out of a Lexus commercial with your stereotypical American nuclear family and a golden retriever with long luscious locks was about to leap out of the car at any moment followed by two weirdly twin like kids with a 5 year age gap and your happy go lucky parents who acted like they didn’t just spend their life savings on a family car and probably didn’t lock it. But this car didn’t do that it just stayed put, almost like it was staring at her with intent.
As the swing came to a slight rocking motion she slipped her thongs on and walked off into the car park as it was her typical route, she loved walking on the one sandstone high brick wall that had slowly began tilting and wobbling over the years. As she was walking back the daily thoughts of anxiety crept back in making her wonder if she had lost her mind even though there was nothing to lose her mind over. They walked past the car, which quickly turned on its lights which made her quickly open up her eyes in shock. Sometimes if the situation was just right she could be overstimulated quite easily. This was that time. Her mind went blank and she started to feel light headed as what she could only describe as feeling like she was loosing her identity and personality as it felt like it was draining from her skull and into a void. She became confused and slightly disoriented after each breath she made a “t” or “ah” sound as if she was trying to block herself from physically saying ‘don’t think about it’ or ‘you’ll be fine’ which is what she would typically do if she felt suicidal or when she was having a panic attack in a location where she couldn’t just have a hot bath and watch a comedy special. Her music was still playing as it was the only thing that could keep her grounded at that point.
She heard a mechanical sound come from the car which melted between the Interrupters singing She’s Kerosene, she couldn’t focus on her music as her mind began to split into two and arguing over which sound to follow. The music was the obvious choice here but the mechanical was intriguing and new almost like spotting a gemstone amongst polished pebbles, suddenly she felt like she was being lifted from the ground. She shut her eyes trying to focus on the music, but she began to feel like she was being violently shook as she curled into a ball to protect her head, she didn’t want to die but if it happened she wouldn’t be pissed, she had kind of lowkey been hoping for the bus system to take her out for months now, fortunately the busses were never on time. As the shaking quickly stopped along with the mechanical sounds it was her turn to shake and she began to shake her hand and flick her wrists still breathing out “t” and “ah” under her breath her heart began to beat faster and every now and again her head would flick, all she could feel was stress as she tried to hold back her tears as she remembered getting yelled at for showing negative emotion in her youth. She always did when she cried publicly she couldn’t deal with people yelling at her and sometimes she would go nonverbal which made it hard to communicate with those who tried to help, just not crying or showing others that she was crying made her life slightly easier as hard of a task it was sometimes.
She then felt slight comfort as she felt her body moving and the tires of a car go over small bumps and uneven road, nothing too violent like potholes but small stones or dents in roads that had been slightly melted from heat and constant use. The feeling of car rides was also good for her anxiety, it was hard to do this often as she didn’t have a car licence, as well as not trusting herself driving, she would think she would have to be in a very bad spot to use public transport to calm herself as being in public just wasn’t her thing. As the driving continued her hands still shaking, she began to calm on the flicking action and her head started to politely jolt back every now and again as she began to focus on the words of Xanadu and allowed her body to sway with the movement of the vehicle, she began to collect her thoughts and refused to open her eyes as she didn’t remember planning going on a car ride, so this was most likely a kidnapping which did put obvious fear into her as she just wanted to deny a stranger was driving and tried to gaslight herself into believing it was a prank from one of her more stupider friends, she began trying to think of any occasion that could be coming up but the last birthday she had was last week and there wasn’t another one for 4 months at least, The last holiday was ANZAC day about a week ago and that didn’t really seem like they day friends go around and kidnap each other unless they really wanted to go to a dawn service and couldn’t wake up their friend? Maybe that requires kidnapping? You just take your sleeping friend and pray to god they wake up on the car trip? Pulling at straws seemed to be the only way to get through this. Maybe her psycho mother kidnapped her? It wouldn’t be the first time she’s question if she was kidnapped or held hostage by her mother so maybe it was a surprise attack for mothers day which was about a week away? Maybe it’s best to keep her eyes shut so that she doesn’t have to see or talk to a mother that lost her mind over a decade ago. The car is driving with no regard for stop lights, seems like something her mother would do, she was so predictable and most likely kept the doors unlocked again as well.
As she went to find the door handle the car began to shake, she knew immediately from travelling to work with her dad that they had gone off road which was strange because it was a pretty urban area unless they went out down the freeway for about 30 minutes where construction of a new road met the bush, yep, this was most likely her mother as her grandmother lived in a retirement village near an area like that. She couldn’t really keep track of time so an estimated 30 minutes could have been 15 minutes or even 2 hours, time and direction was not her strong suit. But still the retirement village would be a hard one to escape from especially at night when it’s locked down with a surprising amount of security for the area, but hey, rich people are old so who knows how much that place was making, maybe being held hostage in a retirement village wouldn’t be so bad, maybe once this whole ordeals over she can try a get a job at one.
As the car began to vibrate more and more from the uneven terrain it was very clearly on it suddenly and violently swerved. Maybe this wasn’t her mother? She knew her mother was a terrible driver but she wasn’t this cool, she wouldn’t know how to do a move like that unless it was a failed attempt at rolling her car down a ditch.
The mechanical sound from earlier started up again as the car violently shook her as she felt the cold air touch her harshly but became more gentle with her over time she felt and even colder harsh metal piece on her back and a janky feeling metal beam holding her to it across her stomach
“Ok unless mums an alien or has had time to do a Saturday morning cartoon level of robot work just to see me I doubt this is her” the girl thought with music still blasting in her ears, she tried to squirm to take her earbuds out or turn her phone down but she was pinned pretty well against the metal she heard booms of something she couldn’t make it out over Stop playing , ironic, but she could try to pick up on tone.
Another voice joined the conversation sounding more robotic but boomed just as much. The then felt the lower half of whatever was pinning her down sway forwards and backwards, it was taking her somewhere, she went limp thinking if she played dead they wouldn’t do anything to her….. right? Clearly if they’re going around and kidnapping without consent, they probably needed living people. It was obvious they weren’t up to anything good so maybe playing dead will get her whatever their equivalent of flushing a goldfish down the toilet is.