by Callee Raye
SNATCHED
Callee Raye
Snatched
Copyright 2013 by Callee Raye.
All rights reserved.
Snatched is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, incidents and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.
THANK YOU
To those who encouraged me, when I stepped out and faced my fears.
Cover design by Victoria Davies
“THE GREATEST PLEASURE IN LIFE
IS DOING THINGS THAT OTHERS SAY YOU CANNOT.”
-anonymous
THE BEGINNING
Nursery rhymes were playing in the background.
Moira was still quite groggy. At first she thought she was still asleep and the music was just a part of her dream. Upon realizing that she was not still asleep, she tried to focus her eyes in the surrounding darkness of the room. The music she heard was a familiar tune. She knew she had heard it before, but long ago. Suddenly it came to her, it was the nursery rhyme tune from the musical mobile toy that hung over her little sister’s crib. She remembered how her sister Lexi would laugh and be fascinated with the musical toy all day long. Through the darkness she could see that there was something in the opposite corner of the room. She squinted trying to focus her eyes. It looked like a white baby bed. Even though her balance and footing was still off due to her grogginess, she tried to stand up and walk over to the crib. Falling to her knees onto the concrete floor, made her realize rather quickly, that something was preventing her from moving more than just a few feet away. There was something metal wrapped around her ankle. A piece of the metal had dug into her skin when she fell, causing it to bleed. She was shackled to the floor. Who would do something like this, she thought. She was trying hard not to panic, but it was beginning to be too much for her to grasp.
“Help, somebody please help me,” she bellowed as loud as she possibly could.
Her mouth was open, and she knew that she was screaming at the top of her lungs, but she heard nothing. She screamed again and again, but still no sound escaped from her throat. Tears were welling up in her eyes making her vision blurry. Just great, she thought, I can’t speak and now I can’t see. Self-pity was really starting to sink in pretty fast. Something moved in the darkness across the room, where the white crib was.
“Hello, is someone there?” Still no voice emerged.
What is wrong with my voice, she thought rubbing at her throat. There was a dull sore achy feeling in her throat, as if she had a cold or something, but she hadn’t been sick. There it was again, she knew her eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on her. Something had moved in the corner. There was someone else in the room. Moira was not alone, but she certainly felt alone. Who would leave their baby unattended and why shackled her to the floor? Questions were steadily popping into her head, but she had no answers. The blood from the gash was dripping down her ankle and soaking the sock she wore. Moira sat down on the floor and rolled the sock down. Immediately she noticed that these were not her socks. These socks had lace along the top edge. They felt like ankle socks, the kind a little girl would wear, not a grown woman of twenty-five. Moira’s ears perked up to the sound of someone walking across the floor upstairs. The footsteps filled her with mixed emotions. A part of her felt glad knowing that someone was up there, maybe they would release her from the metal shackles that confined her movements. The other part of her was deadly afraid of whoever could do something like this and what their ultimate intention was. She could hear the baby in the crib squirming around. She probably needed to be changed or wanted to be fed. No one had come to even check on the poor little thing all night long. Clearly this was a case of child neglect. Moira sat on the floor waiting for the person moving about upstairs to come. She waited and waited and waited. She really needed to go to the bathroom and the cold clamminess of the cement floor didn’t help any. She felt as if her bladder was about to burst at any moment. Moira hoped someone would come down soon and release her. She heard the sound of a blender going upstairs and footsteps walking back and forth across the floor. Finally it sounded as if the footsteps were coming towards the basement door. Her body tensed up in anticipation.
Moira could hear the door being unlocked and something being dragged across the floor. The old wooden door squeaked as it opened and light flooded the room like a burst of sunshine through the darkness. She quickly closed her eyes as the light hit her face. Trying to adjust her vision, she slowly squinted through the brightness filling the room. A silhouette of a man stood in the door at the top of the stairs. The light surrounded his body making him appear angelic as he slowly walked down the rickety old staircase.
“Good morning, my little sleepy heads” the man said.
Moira had been right, there was a white baby bed in the corner of the room. Moira didn’t say anything, she just stared at the middle aged man with the long brown ponytail, as he shuffled over to the baby’s crib.
“Hello Moira. I know you are probably a little confused about where you are and who I am. I am your new daddy and when you are allowed to talk again you can call me daddy Joe. Welcome to your new home and your new family.”
Moira just stared at him in disbelief, at what she had just heard him say. Her thoughts were whirling a mile a minute. What is going on here, just kept playing over and over in her head. This has got to be a joke. She looked around the room hoping someone was about to jump out and scream “April fool” even though it wasn’t April. This didn’t make any sense. The vein on the side of Moira’s head was throbbing from all the confusion and her head ached like never before. Her stomach was all knotted up and tense. That salty feeling kept creeping in and out of her mouth. She just kept swallowing, hoping not to throw up.
“How is daddy’s little angel?” he said reaching into the crib.
Moira had worried all night about the little baby. Now she could finally see the little one, who had been her only company throughout the night. Moira didn’t have a clue as to how long she had been shackled in the musty old cellar. She waited in anticipation, yelling for him to hurry up and feed the little darling, but knowing all the time that he couldn’t hear her. She couldn’t even hear herself. She heard the baby sucking on the bottle the man supplied. The poor thing must have been starving by the sucking sound it was making. Hey you, daddy Joe, okay the baby has her bottle, now come see about me, Moira thought. She shifted from leg to leg, squeezing her thighs together trying to keep from peeing on herself.”
“Hey I really have to go… “, just as urine flowed down her legs, into her shoes, spilling out and making a puddle on the floor at her feet. She dropped to her knees and lowered her head, like an old rag doll silently crying, while fixating on the cemented floor riddled with small cracks.
“That’s okay baby girl, don’t you cry, daddy will fix it and make it all better.”
Moira slowly lifted her head up, blinking the tears away. Everything in the room seemed to be moving in slow motion, as if she was floating in gravity. She stared at his mouth, as it moved back and forth when he spoke. Moira looked on, as if part of her brain had stopped functioning for a moment and she was frozen in time. She looked from his face to the baby draped across his shoulder. He was patting the baby softly on the back. The baby was a girl, just as Moira had thought. Their eyes met as in some silent comfort to one another. However the baby, on his shoulder wasn’t exactly a baby at all. She was a grown woman with a pacifier in her mouth. Moira felt an overwhelming sense of defeat and disgust wash over her body as she looked
on. The young woman had a look of both fear and a sense of loss in her eyes, as they looked directly at Moira. Moira dropped her head unable to comprehend what had just taken place in front of her very eyes. Something yellow caught her eye as she lowered her head. She was wearing yellow sun dress. A sun dress made for a two year old child. She slowly lifted her hand and touched her hair. Her red hair was in two pigtails and underneath the sun dress she wore a cloth diaper.
“Daddy Joe will get you all cleaned up in a minute baby girl. Just let me take care of your little sister first,” he said scooting an adult-sized changing table across the floor beside the crib.
She rubbed her hands together, which she often did out of habit whenever she was trying to think. Moira’s eyes quickly darted around surveying the nauseating Pepto-Bismol pink colored room. This was truly a color that only a deranged baby lover would pick, she thought. She felt sick just looking at that color surrounding her. The room was equipped with everything. It was a baby’s dream room except for one thing or should she say two things. Neither one of them were actually babies. She noticed that there was only one way in and one way out of their room in that part of the basement, except for two small windows. Panic was surging through her body, like little electric bolts. Just play along until you can figure something out, Moira kept repeating in her head.
He cleaned and changed the baby’s diaper. Moira wondered how long the baby had been held there, playing this real live game of survival. He carefully propped the baby up in the white baby bed and gave her the rest of her bottle.
“Do you like your new big sister? Her name is Moira.”
The baby nodded her head up in down, looking at Moira with those big sorrowful chestnut brown eyes. She reached out her arms towards Moira, just like a baby does when they want to be picked up.
“Moira do you like your new little sister Abby?”
Moira nodded her head up and down in response. The other person being held captive was named Abby.
“Good, you two are going to get along perfectly,” he said while grinning from ear to ear, just like a proud papa.
“We are all going to be just one big happy family.”
That comment made Moira really want to throw-up right then and there on the spot, but she knew she would have to learn to control her emotions. That is if she ever planned on getting out of there alive.
When daddy Joe changed Abby’s diaper she turned her back to Moira. She probably was humiliated for being placed in such a compromising position. Moira looked on, not out of pity for her, but because she was trying to figure out what kind of man daddy Joe was, and what was his angle. Moira had to get into this man’s head if she was going to out think him at his own sick game. Moira knew in order for anything to work she would have to get to Abby, but she was already showing signs that her morale and hope had long been shattered. Her brown eyes were blank, dead and empty. The expression she wore on her face, looked as if she had just about given up on freedom and any prospects of living a normal life again. Somehow Moira already knew that everything would depend on her.
Daddy Joe was extraordinarily careful in his handling of Moira. He really thinks in his distorted mind that they were his little girls, she thought. Moira wanted so badly to kick and scratch his eyes out as he wiped between her legs, powdered her bottom and placed a fresh clean diaper on her. She cringed and her flesh crawled with each touch of his hands on her body, especially when he touched her private parts. This was twisted and sick on all sorts of levels. Moira did what she felt was her only way out. She played the part of baby girl when in his presence, but in her mind, she was always thinking, Game on, you twisted freak!
She motioned towards Abby while daddy Joe was dressing her. She was trying to make grunting sounds to get his attention. Moira knew that she had to gain his trust in order for him to let his guard down, even for just a minute. Whenever daddy Joe entered the room, she turned the charm on. Moira deserved an academy award for her performance, as daddy’s little darling. Unfortunately daddy Joe was the only one that could tell her where she was, what had happened and why. Every day she motioned that she wanted to play with baby Abby and he would leave them to play in the giant size playpen together. They would grunt at one another as their own unique form of communication. They had practically developed their own secret language, which they only used when they were alone. Abby was not able to speak either. She had been held captive here for two months prior to Moira being brought in. Abby’s will may be weakening now, but at one point she was smart enough to have scratched lines along the inside of the crib. She used one of the toys daddy Joe had given her, so she could keep track of the number of days she had been held in the confines of this damp musty basement. She had been a primary education student working as an intern at one of the local daycare centers before being snatched. Abby was a couple of years younger than Moira and had just celebrated her 21st birthday the night she was taken. They tried to communicate with each other, as much as possible but it was still very difficult at times. Especially when Abby sunk into a depression and shut Moira out. This seemed to happen practically every other day. Moira couldn’t blame her because this situation was getting harder and harder to bear as the days went on for her too. Abby didn’t open up much about what had happened before Moira was brought into the picture. Moira really wanted to know, not because she was being nosey but because she wanted to know what to expect and if she could possibly prepare for what was to come. She also wanted to help Abby, because she knew Abby needed her. Actually in order to survive this living horror, they would need to rely on each other, because each other was all they had left.
After a few weeks daddy Joe started showing Moira some signs of trust. One day daddy Joe carelessly forgot and left them unshackled. Moira grunted at daddy Joe as he was leaving the room, to let him know that they were still loose. She needed to show him that she was loyal and that he could trust her. Having him believe that they loved him and that he could trust them was how she was going to win this game and their freedom. He turned near the stairs and saw that he had absent-mindedly left them unchained.
“That’s okay Moira, you two can play for a while. Be careful with your little sister, she is still a little baby.”
Moira ran up to him and threw her arms around him and grunted “Thank you daddy.”
Daddy Joe kissed her on her forehead and off he went dragging his leg up the stairs and locking the door behind him.
Right then, Moira knew she had him just where she wanted him. In order for them to ever escape she would have to gain his trust and make him think that they were loyal only to him, otherwise he would never let his guard down enough to slip up. That would be their only option for freedom. Moira thought how glad she was that she had taken a few acting classes in college. They were certainly coming in handy right now. At times she even thought she had Abby fooled by some of the strange looks she would give her, especially when she was buttering up to daddy Joe. Every day she would try and think of something more that she could do to weave her charming adorable web around him. He was playing with their lives and she felt as if freedom was dangling just above the surface. It was up to them to grab it and run for their lives. Moira was learning how to control the old puppet master and he didn’t have a clue.
One day in late summer, she could tell it was late summer because it was beyond warm and when the hot days came in, it was a string of days together. It was like that old saying the “hot days of summer” and it definitely was upon them. Daddy Joe had not been there for a whole day, so by the time he arrived to feed and change them, the room in the basement where they were kept had become rather fragrant. They heard footsteps upstairs, this time there were two sets of footsteps. Daddy Joe’s voice echoed through the vents. Although his voice was somewhat muffled, they could tell by his tone of voice, that he was not happy with whoever it was he was talking with. There was a lot of walking back and forth going on upstairs. Finally the door to the basement opened and Daddy Joe came dow
n the stairs apologizing for not coming earlier. The stench of the room hit him in the face, before his foot hit the last step. He immediately stood up on one of the folded chairs from the other room and cranked open the two little windows to let in some fresh air. Moira could hear the birds chirping outside the window as an early summer breeze blew in. It was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. She just sat there on the floor with a smile on her face. She took the birds outside the window as a sign that it was time to push the envelope just a little further with daddy Joe. Moira flapped her arms like a bird and pointed to her ears with the biggest fake smile plastered across her face. Daddy Joe came back into the nursery area, after returning the chair and locking the door to the other room and noticed Moira’s great big smile.
“You like the sound of the birds chirping baby girl? They are singing good morning to daddy’s two favorite girls. His two favorite girls in the whole wide world.”
She nodded her head.
“Daddy likes birds too, baby girl,” then he turned to look over at Abby.
Abby was sitting up looking over the rail of the baby bed, jumping up and down in excitement. After getting a quick wink from Moira to play along. Moira hoped that daddy Joe would take the hint in a day or two and offer to take them outside to see and hear the birds up close. Her plan ultimately was to get them upstairs and outside the house. Eventually they would be able to make a run for it and escape. The first thing however, was to get a look at their surroundings before she could put the whole escape plan into action. She often heard daddy Joe talking to someone in the other part of the house, but she had never seen an actual person. Occasionally she would hear someone in the other part of the basement doing laundry. They could hear the machines going and that smell of freshly washed clothes would drift through the wall. The unseen helper never entered the nursery area where they were being kept. That told her that there must be another way into the basement on the other side of the wall. That gave her hope, because if there was a way in, then there most certainly had to be a way out. Who else was here in this house, if it was a house? Moira didn’t know if they were being kept in a building or a house, but soon she would find out. She could endure daddy Joe touching her, if she could just have a little more information to work with.
