TRAPPED

Gracie woke up with a start. She felt pain in a thousand places, of and something hard was pressed against her back. It hurt like crazy. But of all the pains, her head topped the charts.Then she remembered being struck on her head and falling to the ground. Her last thought had been her baby. She had been on her way to the day care, to pick her up. She tried to move, but her body felt heavy. She couldn’t move any of her limbs.




She was on the ground, in pitch darkness and the smell of petrol filled the place. She tried to calm herself, she didn’t need to panic, she tried saying the alphabets really slowly. She wondered what the time was, and what exactly was going on. She was dizzy, and soon went unconscious.


She heard her baby crying.Without thinking she rushed towards the sound, but she was going deeper and deeper into slime, which made her progress slow. She went deeper and deeper, then jerked awake again. Her breathing was labored and the pains had doubled. She heard a muffled sound, and stayed still wondering what it was. The sound came again, distinctly human. Gracie turned her head towards the sounds, realizing that she could move. A few feet from her, was the huddled form of person. A very small person.


 She tried to make out more of her surroundings, and her eyes adjusted better to the light. Her legs were cramped, slowly she stretched her body, trying not to make a sound. She felt relief, but she was still in so much pain.


“Help me!” a voice said startling both of them.


“Is anybody there?” the voice called again, still softly but clear enough.


“Yes” yet another voice replied. “I cant move….. What is going on?”


Gracie wondered who all these people where, and what was happening to them. She tried sitting up, and her head spun from the trial, so instead she rolled over, turning towards the other voices. A woman lay facing her with her knees folded towards her chin. It was the woman’s knee that had been poking her back.


She reached out and touched the woman, and her skin felt really cold. She shook her, trying to rouse her and then it occurred to her that the woman was dead. Gracie screamed and someone else screamed with her.


“Shut up! Shut up please…. Or they would come back”


An ethereal silence came over them, but Gracie continued shivering. “This one is dead” Gracie said softly, struggling to sit up and moving away from the body.


A shadow walked towards Gracie and squatted by the corpse.  Taking a closer look, Gracie could make out the profile of a woman in her thirties. The woman felt the corpse, then sat down slowly.


“I have to leave , I don’t know what's going on…… I woke up and found myself here.” She said.


“Me too. I was hit on my head, I'm in so much pain….. My my baby needs me” Gracie said, as she felt milk flow out of her engorged breasts.


“We should wait……it would be bright soon….”


  The woman responded.


“No way I would sit here and wait for whoever to come and kill me…. That seems to be their plan.” With that Gracie stood up and tested her limbs. She felt much better, and all her instincts screamed for flight.


She walked slowly to the right, feeling her way with her legs. She didn’t know where she was going, but she just chose to go right.


“Wait for me” the person that had been by her side said sitting up. It was a girl . It was too dark to know anything more.


Gracie stopped and the girl struggled to get up. She was bent almost double and walked really slowly. A few steps from Gracie, the girl slipped and fell with a thud. Gracie noticed the other person huddled on the floor. She helped the girl up, and they walked towards a cluster of trees that were barely visible. They walked a few minutes, when they heard footsteps behind them, turning around, they realized the other two were behind, trying to keep up.


As soon as they got to the trees, they heard a chilling scream. Immediately the other woman began screaming, just as she had done when Gracie screamed. Gracie tagged her, "Screamer".


“Shut up… stop screaming stupid” the other woman said, holding her hand over the screamer’s mouth. Gracie tagged her, 'Bossy'.


Gracie breathed a sigh when Screamer stopped. The silence was broken by the sounds of their footsteps on dried grass. Sounds of gunfire filled the night air. Gracie fell flat to the floor pulling the girl down with her, Screamer and Bossy crashed into them.



The gunfire stopped for a while, and Gracie struggled to get the other women off her, when she heard the howl of an unrecognizable animal. The sound seemed very close by and the others heard it too.


“We have to get out of here!” Bossy screamed just as a shadow fell across them. Gracie was on her feet and made a wild dash away from the chaos. She didn’t look back, she just ran because her life depended on it. She heard footsteps behind her, and she hoped it was the girl, but she didn’t stop to check.


Ten minutes later, she was alone. She sat down resting her back on a tree, panting hard with her lungs on fire. Her legs were burning with exhaustion. She drew her knees up under her chin, and rested her head on them.
She sat as quietly as she could, then she felt a cold had grip her neck. She screamed, and woke up. She had been dreaming, but she was still in the forest alone. She looked around, hoping her scream had not been too loud. Her stomach rumbled, she had not had anything to eat and her breasts still felt like they were going to explode. Then she heard the cry of a baby.




.......to be continued




LIFE IS A CHOICE MY FRIENDS
SO CHOOSE WISELY
ENOUGH SAID