The door-bell rang.
15-year old Charlaine, dressed in a pair of homemade, beige, three-quarter length plush-trousers with an elastic-band sewn into the waist and leg-openings, and a white, frilly short-sleeved blouse, opened.
It was her best friend Sandra, whom looked quite a bit worried. In fact, it looked as if she was close to panic. She was dressed in a white knee-length, short-sleeved cotton frilly dress, with strawberries. Both girls had waist-long, dirty-blonde hair, for the moment held back from their faces with pink silk-ribbons, tied together with large bow-ties on top of their heads, ankle-socks and sandals.
Charlaine invited her in, but before she had the chance to close the door, a man burst in, the lower part of his face hidden by a scarf. He held what looked like a very large knife in his hand. It was only then, that Charlaine noticed that Sandra had her hands behind her back; she was handcuffed.
“Put your hands behind your back, and don’t say a word,” the man hissed.
Terrified of the knife, she did as she was told, and he cuffed her hands.
Then he put the knife away in an easy-to-reach place, grabbed her arm, and pulled her out of the apartment.
“We are going on a little trip!” he said, still hissing.
Charlaine had instantly recognized the man as being her boyfriend John; what she for the life of her couldn’t work out though, was what he thought he was doing!
“What do you mean by ‘going on a trip,’” she wanted to know. “You’re way too young to have a drivers’ licence, and you know it, John Farnham!”
Sandra looked at her, with eyes the size of saucers. “You know this guy?”
“’Cause I do; and so do you.” Charlaine snorted. “And don’t you dare tell me, you couldn’t even recognize your own brother straight away?”
The siblings looked at each other, and John took out a key, which he used to unlock the cuffs around Sandra’s wrists.
“Hey! What about me, dafty? Aren’t you going to take my cuffs off?” Charlaine hollered.
He gave her a sceptical look. “Not if you keep hollering and giving me names like that, I’m not,” he said. “Not any time soon, anyway!”
He and his sister grabbed Charlaines’ arms and led her outside to a waiting car. They pushed her, kicking and screaming, into the back-seat, and Sandra opened the opposite door, climbed in and sat beside her.
“I’m so sorry about all of this!” she said, looking not at all sorry, but instead grinning widely as she inserted a rag into her best friends mouth, and tied a scarf around her head. She tied another scarf around the head as a blindfold.
Charlaine could only growl in response.
When the car stopped, the door opened and she was pushed outside. She tried to identify any sounds which might give a clue as to where she was, but there was nothing except the wind blowing, and the occasional twitter of birds.
After having been forced to walk a couple of steps, she was pushed to the ground. She leaned back and found she had a pole or the trunk of a smooth tree behind her back. A chain was wound a couple of times around her waist, and whatever it was she had behind her. A closer inspection with her hands revealed it was some kind of metallic-pole. She could hear it being locked together in front of her. Her ankles were cuffed, and when she tried to pull them towards her, and found she couldn’t, she realized they had also been cuffed to some sort of pole.
She was still furious. Yes; she and John liked to play TUG: s as much as any kids their age, but she had never known him to be this mean! And making his sister a part of it, (albeit an unwilling part) was almost too much to handle. These games should be played in the safety of your own home, not in the middle of the flipping forest!
She heard John tell Sandra to tell the driver of whatever vehicle they had arrived in, that everything was under control, that he could leave and come back a couple of hours later.
Suddenly, Charlaine remembered it was the one-year anniversary of them being girlfriend/boyfriend.
Slowly the anger gave way to excitement. O.K, so it still didn’t explain everything, like what they were doing out in the forest, and Sandra’s involvement in all of it, but she didn’t really care anymore; her wonderfully lovely boyfriend John had a surprise for her, and she was so ready to accept it!
When it finally came, she found she was anything but ready to accept it.
Having been forced to sit still for so long had made her doze off. However, she quickly woke up, when she heard John and a strange man talking, the stranger having a deep voice and some sort of sluggish country-accent.
“Is this ‘er?” she heard the man saying, and her boyfriend telling him it was.
“The lass look to be on the thin side, she does.” the man complained. John told him she was as strong as a horse.
“I don’t really care ‘ow strong she is, as long as she ain’t stubborn as a mule,” the man muttered, “and as long as she can cope with what I have in mind for ‘er. And frankly, I don’t think she can.”
“Well, you don’t know what you’re missing! There are other people who are more interested than you seem to be!” John said; the disappointment clearly heard in his voice.
“Yea; well I might be interested in a few years time, but not now.”
Sometime later, John came with another man, who seemed to be the direct opposite of the first one. This one had an almost bird-like voice, in that it was high-pitched, almost shrill, and not at all sluggish, but short and crystal sharp.
“A-ha; yes; a-ha; m-hm; yes; yes, I see,” she could hear the strange man say, as he moved around her, every once in a while pinching her hard in the cheeks, on the arms, stomach and legs. Being chained to the poles, there was little she could do to escape the sleaze-bag, who in the end said he wasn’t interested in her, him too giving the reason she was too much on the thin side for his taste.
It wasn’t until then it dawned on her; the bastard was trying to sell her off like cattle!
A few more “buyers” came and went, before she heard someone saying he was actually willing to take her. By then her excitement over celebrating their anniversary had disappeared completely, and now she just wanted it to be over.
The chain round her waist was unlocked, and then reused as a lead, as one end of it was locked around her waist but not the pole. Her legs were finally released from the pole, or whatever it was they had been attached to, and her wrists uncuffed and recuffed behind her back. She was told to stand up, her ankles were cuffed again and she was led outside and into the back-seat of a much smaller car, than the one she had arrived in.
She slumped back in the seat, as much as her cuffed hands and the seat-belt allowed, and sighed. Whatever the future had in store for her, one thing was certain; she would never, ever, go back to John again!