Excerpt: The Domino Effect

Excerpt #5:

She felt the uncomfortable hardness first. Then the cold that seeped into her muscles. She wondered why she couldn’t roll over and stretch out. Perhaps she was still dreaming. Her joints ached and she longed to change position but something was stopping her. OK, this was a really bad dream and now she just wanted to wake up.
She could feel the warmth of her breath on her own face. Her eyes wouldn’t open. OK. This was seriously weird. This wasn’t a dream. This was real and she tried to concentrate on moving something, anything, just to convince herself she really was awake. She felt the harshness of something rough on her face as she tilted her head. Something was wrapped around her and it wasn’t the softness of a cotton duvet cover or a pillow case. This was rough, like sacking, and it stank of a musty and unidentifiable smell.
This discovery made her scared. If this was real and she wasn’t laying in her bed surrounded by the comfort of the duvet, where the hell was she? She tried to blink her eyes but there was something stopping them. She realised she was blind folded. She tried turning her head again. The Hessian fabric scratched at her ears and she felt it gathered around her neck. OK. She was blind folded and hooded. What about the other senses? She could hear. Well, she thought she could hear, when she concentrated beyond the pulsing, hissing, in her ears as her blood pounded its way around her body.
She could definitely hear a scuffling noise. Now it stopped. She felt a movement near her head and heard a scratching noise and a high pitched squeak. The scuffling continued and she froze, realising it was a rat. It was at this point she noticed her lips wouldn’t open. Even though her whole body ached to scream, her lips remained closed. Each time she tried to open them, there was a smarting sensation across her face and she realised some sort of tape had been stretched across her mouth.
The rat moved on, scuttling away until the noise disappeared. Just the ever increasing pounding in her chest remained and the hot sweaty sensation of her breath, contained within the hood.
So, it wasn’t a dream. It was all very real. She tried to move again, but her brain was beginning to function properly now and she now realised that both her legs and her wrists were tied. Ok, Judy Lord, she thought, how come you’re blindfolded, hooded, gagged and tied up?
She tried to control her breathing, slowing the respirations, seeking to drop her heart rate, and think. She tried to remember what had happened before she woke up but her brain wasn’t quite caught up yet. She remembered hearing Jonathan’s voice but she couldn’t recall seeing him. So, that must have been a phone call then. Yes. She remembered he’d said something about Bristol. Or was it Birmingham? Then what? Come on brain, help me out here, she thought.
The Hessian smelt oily or greasy. It made her want to wretch, but the gag would give her no opportunity for that. She tried to swallow and get rid of the feeling of the bile rising in her throat. She didn’t want to risk vomiting up through her nose and then aspirating the vile concoction down into her lungs, or suffocating.
Smells. Why was that word important? What smell? Slowly, she recalled the cold sensation of something evaporating on her skin. The smell on the cloth that had been forced over her face, a heavy, pungent, clinical smell. Now an image shared centre stage with the sense of smell in her brain. She was inside a car. Not her car, or Jonathan’s. And she wasn’t alone. She tried to focus on the grainy image in her mind, like trying to recapture a fading dream - the harder you tried the more the dream receded until there was nothing left and it had evaporated.
She forced herself to breathe evenly, slowing down her metabolism, slowing down her thought processes. What happened before she was in the car? Think girl, think. She knew she’d been asleep, so what happened between that and being in the car?
She found herself thinking about the paving on the drive, saw herself walking down towards the road, stopping at the kerb. OK. Look around you, she told herself. Nothing. Just a black void of nothing. OK. You can’t define shapes, what about colours, or sounds or…wait a minute. Blue and yellow patterns. Flourescent yellow, and a word. Slowly she focussed in her mind and let the picture appear. A van. No, a car. A particular kind of car.
For a split second her breath froze in her throat. She saw, in her minds eye, the car she’d stepped into, covered with stripes and logos and lights on top. She felt the same sense of disbelief she recalled at the time as a new panic filled her, one which tried to back away from the realisation that she’d been kidnapped. But you were supposed to trust the Police, weren’t you?