Taken By Surprise

by Jessica Frances

  ***

  I doze on and off; never quite falling into a deep sleep, yet never quite being awake, either. When I do finally open my eyes, my body complains of being stiff from being on the ground and my stomach grumbles for food. I sit up and groan at the creaks and cracks my aching body makes. Over the hunger I have an overwhelming urge to go to the toilet. I force all my energy into moving toward the bathroom and have to grip the door handle to keep myself standing. As much as my legs still feel unstable holding my weight, I do feel like I’m a little stronger than I was last time.

  After I’m finished, I wash my hands before I then dip my head under the running tap and drink hungrily at the nice, cold water shooting out of it. I drink until my stomach aches and I start to feel sick. I turn off the tap and make my way back out and over to the bed where I collapse on top of it.

  I take another look around the room and see nothing much different from what I’d seen last time I was awake. My eyes move to the side table next to the bed and I notice it has a large, open shelf where I spy my handbag resting innocently. An instant rush of hope fills me at the thought that maybe I can get my cell and call for help.

  I search it and everything appears to still be in there. As I continue digging into it, I find my cell at the bottom and for the first time since waking up here I feel excitement grow inside me. I flip the cover over and turn it on. The screen lights up and I hold in a cry of joy. There still is a way out of this. I’ll call for help and someone will come and save me.

  I impatiently wait for the welcome message to load and my heart sinks when a message comes up saying ‘sim card missing.’ My cell is on, but there is no signal. I turn it over in my hands and pull the back off to find that the sim card has indeed been removed. The cell is useless. I can’t call anyone for help.

  I flip it back over and look at the background behind the menu screen. It’s a photo of Dana and me from when we were only ten. I had taken a photo of an old photo because it made me smile seeing it. Tears well up in my eyes and the image of us blurs until I can no longer see. Wiping the tears away, I look through the photo album. Most of the ones I had on here are missing, but some have obviously saved to the cell. These are the only ones I have left now.

  I painstakingly go through each photo of Dana and cry over every one of them. The last photo I have is from the day she died. The day of my birthday. I had taken it while she drank her root beer float. She is pulling a face at me as she drinks from the straw. She is so beautiful.

  I lose myself in memories, not returning to the present until my hands are shaking from the cold. My whole body is freezing and I take my eyes off my cell to move under the covers to warm up. I clear out of the photo album, but with no sim card my cell doesn’t have anything more on it. The one thing it does have is a time and date.

  04:00 April 10th.

  It’s four in the morning on Tuesday. It’s been two days since I was taken and three days since my birthday. Three days ago my life was normal, boring and my best friend was alive. Now Dana is gone, I don’t know where I am or what’s going to happen to me. Feeling a sense of dread, I turn my cell off and shove it back into my bag. Closing my eyes, I hope to sleep and drift away from this unknown situation I’m stuck in.

  One thought keeps repeating in my mind over and over. I will never have a future that includes Dana now. That’s unacceptable to me. Dana died on my birthday and so did I.