The other day, I found the notes I made, after I was kidnapped a couple of years ago. Reading through them, I relived it all, for some strange reason almost wishing it would happen again. But how could it? I now lived hundreds of miles away from it all, in a new town and with new friends. There was NO WAY it would. But still, there was the nagging feeling in the back of my mind, I was being watched. Everywhere I went and everything I did, I had that feeling. You know the one; it’s the one where you are almost certain, you are being followed by somebody, but you can’t quite make out by whom? You just catch a glimpse of the same persons, over and over again, in the corner of your eye.
Suddenly the doorbell rings and when the door opens, a male voice asks if I’m home. My father, who apparently opened tells the man, I’m upstairs along with my sister, Chloë. I can hear their voices coming up the stairs, the man telling my father he’s a policeman, wanting to have a word with me at the police-station. He adds that there is no reason for my parents to come along, and that I’d be home as soon as they had finished talking to me. They come in to the room where I sleep along with my 13 year old sister. The policeman flashes a badge in our faces and tells us his name is John Douh (he pronounced it as a Homer Simpson cry, almost making it sound like “John DOUWâ€). He asks me to come down to the car with him. My sister asks if she can come along as well, and Mr. Douh says “Sure! I don’t see why not?â€
We are escorted out of the house, to an unmarked car and told to sit in the back seat. There is already a man sitting there and we climb in either side of him. Mr. Douw climbs in the driver’s seat, he locks the doors from where he sits and we speed off. Suddenly the car stops again, Mr. Douw turns around and says “So you are Lana, are you? I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time. Now, both you girls put your hands behind your backs, so this nice gentleman can put handcuffs on you.â€
We obviously have no choice and within a minute, our hands are secured in handcuffs. After that come the obligatory blindfold, both fabric and tape, and our knees are tied together. Then the car speeds off again. When it stops the next time, we are taken out and we hobble along in to a house.
When we come inside, I hear a familiar, but half forgotten, voice say: “So you got both of them this time? Never mind, the more, the merrier as they say! Put them in the room! I’ll come and talk to them in a little while.â€
We are shoved in to a room and told to stand up against the wall. Our handcuffs are taken off, only to be refastened in front of us. Then we are told to put our hands in the air, and the cuffs are locked to chains hanging from somewhere above us. The chain is so short we can’t even bend our elbows. Then our boots are taken away and our feet, for whatever reason, are tied together with rope. When our kidnappers are done, we are left alone. My sister, obviously, is too scared to speak, and I’m wondering what is going on. Here I thought I would be safe from kidnappers, but apparently, I wasn’t.
Now would be a good time, to tell you what we are wearing. Gone are the days of the all grey school uniform. We are both wearing heavy, home-made cotton skirts. Chloë is wearing a red skirt and I’m wearing a navy-blue one. They come all the way down to our ankles and we both wear thick, white tights. Mine are ribboned, Chloë’s are plain. We both wear pale-pink sweaters with Cinderella pictures. I know it’s a bit childish for a teenager to be wearing something like that, but when you’re as short as I am, there aren’t a whore lot of clothes for you to wear that aren’t. My sister and I are about the same height, so it makes buying clothes that much easier, according to our mother. You get two for the price of one, so to speak.
After a while, I can hear the door open and my sister being asked if she wants to use the bathroom. She says she does, and I can hear her being released from the chain on the wall. After a while, she comes back, and I can hear her being told to sit down. I can hear her cuffs being closed and then, it’s my turn. As I don’t want to use the bathroom, I’m loosened from the wall and told to sit down. My hands are brought behind me and are cuffed. I can feel ropes being tied around my waist and chest, effectively pinning me to the chair. My feet are tied to the legs of the chair.
Then the man, whom I presume is the leader, says: “I bet you are wondering why this is happening? I guess, especially you, Lana. You see, your dad is the president of a large oil-company, which we are trying to get out of business. This seems to be the best way of doing that. You see, they pollute the worlds’ oceans, and we don’t like that! So we will keep you here, until we get a guarantee they’ll stop pumping up oil from the ocean.â€
We both start protesting, saying he was wrong. That wasn’t our father, he was talking about! It couldn’t be! Mid-sentence, I get a ball shoved in my mouth, tied in place by some sort of cloth, and by the sound of, so is Chloë. Then, the men leave us, and a string of monotonous days begins. We are never free of our chairs, except when we go to the bathroom a few times a day. Our handcuffs are taken off just before we go in there and when we eat, our blindfolds never are.
Some days later, we are again gagged; our knees are tied together and taken back to the car, put in the back-seat, our feet are tied together and we are driven back home. There, we are dumped on the driveway and the car speeds off. I can hear our parents coming out of the house and run up to us, releasing first Chloë then me.
The kidnappers are caught a couple of days later, trying to leave the country.
It seems to be a happy ending, but I’ve learned not to take anything for granted any more.