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She had trouble waking up, reaching for consciousness was so hard, it felt as if she had to drag herself through a thick dark haze to see any light. Finally she managed to open her eyes, her mouth felt so dry, as if she hadn’t anything to drink in a long time. What happened? The last thing she remembered was going home from school. The room she was in was blindingly white. Was this a hospital? NO! No hospital lays its patients on the floor. Her mind struggling to explain her current situation, she began looking around frantically. What she saw puzzled her enormously. The room was square, maybe 5 x 5 meters, what was strange was the absence of any kind of door or window, just stark white walls and floor. The ceiling looked to be made of a giant light fixture; it glowed literally everywhere she looked. There was nothing else in the room except her; nothing broke the surrounding white except the colors of her school uniform.
Where was she? What was happening? She kept repeating those questions to the empty room. At first she shouted, but her parched throat couldn’t keep it up for long. As time went by she grew quieter and quieter. Her fear grew. Why wasn’t anyone responding? Why this eerie silence?
Time went by. She checked the watch she got from her mother for her twelfth birthday. Even now she remembered her mom’s loving face as she told her that she had reached the age when she should seriously start keeping track of time. Was that really only four years ago? In this white room she wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Nothing made sense, nobody responded to her frantic pleas, so in the absence of anything else to do she did the only thing she could, she did just as her mother told her all those years ago, she kept track of time. Minutes went by in slow motion, each second drawn out to the maximum. One… Two… Three… So slow. Finally an hour went by, then the second and so on. She started pacing anxious for anything to do, anything that would keep her from staring at her watch all the time. She started shouting for help once more. Still no answer.
Why? Why her? Her thoughts whirled in circles. She forced herself to stop, to think. Everybody said she was smart, her mom, her teachers. If she was so smart she should try to think it out. Was this a kidnapping? If so there was hope for her. She remembered the TV shows, if the kidnapper didn’t show his face she had a chance to live. But her family wasn’t that rich. It didn’t make any sense! Suddenly some stray memory brought her to a standstill. A horrible sickening theory struck her. Maybe it was a sex thing? She remembered a big news story from a year ago, a young boy was found raped. The police caught the man responsible, but after the fact. This possibility terrified her. With dread she recalled her last shopping spree, she recalled all those shop assistants telling her how pretty she was. Of course she knew that this was all part of their sales pitch, but she also heard the whispered comments behind her back, about her generous ‘development’. She thought they were jealous then, now she desperately wanted to be ugly so that she’d never wound up in this predicament. She started shouting again, but stopped very quickly due to the dryness of her mouth. Exhausted first of all mentally, but also physically she laid down. Her mind was working in overdrive presenting one improbable but scary answer after another. The room became a cell. She fell asleep.
Continued in Part 2.
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