
Part two
Lola remained - hooded and scared. Her upper body had been secured tightly by this metal ring suspended from the high ceiling, her legs dangling a little from the platform which was raised from the floor. Petrified, part of her think she wouldn't have been able to move whether she had been restrained or not, her body paralysed from fear. She had taken to flinching... here she was in this disused warehouse, immobilised and with three men. Unfortunately, her ordeal had barely begun.
Her fears had seemed to have frozen her in time. Everything seemed to be still, and even the captor had appeared to have grown silent for a brief time. Unfortunately, this unusual moment did not last long for Lola Smith. Soon enough, she was back to reality.
"Let me go! You won't get away with this!", she had heard herself say a few moments ago.
"Oh - I think we will..." replied the ringleader of her three captors, with a sly smirk painted across his taut face. Reaching beneath the platform, he produced what looked to be a rectangular, digital sign. He turned it on and the board momentarily flashed red, before six digits appeared, each of the two digits seperated by a colon. "This..." he sighed, "...this is a detonator. I am going to set it for 24 hours. Your parents have this time to pay a $1 million ransom - they have been emailed the details. Once they pay, an Internet connection will disable the detonator. If not... well, they lose their precious daughter!"
"Please don't do this! You don't know my parents!"
"I know they're wealthy - that's all I need to know."
With that, the man turned against Lola, now trying to ease her arms gently out of the aura of metal without alerting any of the three men. As much as she shrugged her shoulders in order for her arms to move upwards, she had no luck. Lola froze and stopped in her efforts when the man returned to face in her direction, the digital sign now counting down from 24 hours. There were 23 hours and 59 minutes now remaining on the clock. 54 seconds... 53 seconds... 52...
She screamed desperately. At this moment in time Lola felt she had nothing to lose. The teenage girl began thrashing her body, trying to free her arms from the metal ring that encased her. Unexpectedly, the metal ring gave way, her body crashing to the floor in a cliched and dramatic pose. Instinctively, the two sidekicks rushed to her body, now knocked out from the blow on the wood floor. Underneath her hood, they saw the tell-tale signs of blood on her face. She had fell hard.
The men re-fastened her back into the metal ring, taking extra care to ensure it was secure. They didn't usually do this, but desperate times called for desperate measures. From each of their leather coats, they produced a roll of silver duct tape. Unfortunately, they needed to tie her up so their prize would have no means of escape.
One of the three men was bald and short in stature. He took his roll of tape and found the end, pulling it so the tape extended loudly. He fastened the loose end to the bottom of Lola's leg and began to wind the roll around both of her legs, leaving nothing but silver to be seen from her feet up.
Two rolls of duct tape later, her entire lower body was covered in silver bonds, silver bonds that had practically mummified her. They had began to reach her breast, when Lola was aroused from her unconsciousness. In the time that she had managed to regain her consciousness, the captors had now duct taped her to her chest... nothing but silver visible beneath her.
She tried to free herself from this sticky cocoon, but could barely move anything. She began to wail desperately and scream. "LET ME GO!" she howled, "LET ME MMMMMMMMMMMMMMPPPPPHHHH! MMPH! MMPH!" The efforts she made to thrash herself around were no longer effective, her bonds of duct tape and her bound and gagged completely. The captor wrapped the duct tape around her mouth and behind her hooded head seven or eight times until a dull whimper could be heard. This girl was going nowhere.
The three men stood back to admire their handiwork, the teenage girl struggling against the duct tape, her wriggles reaching no avail. The main captor went back up on the platform and faced her, before pointing over to the digital sign, which had 23 hours and 40 minutes left on the clock. "Told you we would get away with it!", he smiled before summoning his two sidekicks back to the van. They left the girl to struggle and to mmmmph quietly into her gag.
The following hours were of torture to Lola Smith, barely able to move a muscle, the duct tape sealing her body into one, her cries were barely audible in the infinitely large warehouse. The room was silent only for the sound of tape as she wriggled, but in her head, the seconds ticking down were louder than anything.
After what seemed like an eternity, one hour remained on the detonator clock, Lola dismayed that her parents had not taken the action to save their little girl - hooded, bound and gagged in a warehouse. She was all alone and convinced that this hour was to be the last she had on Earth. She had almost admonished herself to the fact that this was it - nearly a day in solitude and the inability to move a finger can provide a lot of insight and thinking time.
Then, the corrugated iron doorway that shut out the warehouse from the rest of the world opened. 50 minutes to go. Two schoolkids, a boy and a girl, were giggling and holding hands as they snuck into the warehouse. They began to kiss passionately, and Lola began to "mmmmph" as loud as her lungs would allow. Soon enough, they realised that they were not alone.
"Oh my God!" cried the boy as he ran over to see Lola, wrapped in duct tape and sobbing into her gag.
"We have to get you out of this!" responded the girl in disbelief.
With that, the two went to try and unwrap the duct tape from the bottom upwards, a process that seemed to take a lot of time. The silver tape carried on breaking up continually, meaning that they had to find the loose end to continue their efforts to free her. 35 minutes remained. Lola mmmmphed pathetically - they were running out of time.
29 minutes to go and they were at her breasts, still trying desperately to unravel the teenage girl's bounds. None of them had noticed the detonator yet, Lola was beginning to struggle frantically - 'if only they knew!', she thought, 'if only they knew...'
It was only with 25 minutes remaining on the clock that they removed the gag that had silenced Lola all of this time. As soon as her mouth was freed, she wailed: "We need to get out now, there is a bomb!"
The two lovers and Lola, went to run - petrified of the bomb that was beginning to tick away to its climatic end. Lola wailed in pain and stopped behind though... the metal ring was still fastened around her sides, her arms immobile!
In desperation, the two returned, trying to unfasten the metal ring that had entombed Lola in the first place. "Come on! COME ON!" said the boy through gritted teeth as he tried to work out the mechanism that freed the metal ring for the fifteenth time - he wasn't going to leave her here. 8 minutes to go. Lola had begun to cry, the emotions of the past 24 hours leaving her after an extensive build-up of emotion. It was whilst she was reliving her trauma that she remembered how she had escaped from the metal ring nearly a day ago when she was thrashing about - she had tugged on the ring three times. She told the blonde-haired boy who tried as she said, sweating profusely with 4 minutes to go on the clock.
"Done it!" he proclaimed, "now RUN!" The trio desperately tried to run for the exit, every second mattered. They exited through the corrugated iron and ran through the nettles without a care in the world, the nettles that shielded and deterred visitors from entering the disused warehouse. They had ran deep into the brush when an explosion reverberated through the air, causing them to fall to the ground. The blast was catastrophic and the heat unbearable as the warehouse burst into flames, no more than a kilometre from where they stood.
--
Luke never found out what happened next from Lola, she had ran out of time at the Rewind Diner and had a Badminton class to go to. Even worse, she had a pang of regret for choosing a public diner to talk about her ordeal in, she couldn't help but think that people were listening. She was apologetic, but he told her not worry as he had more than enough to report on the kidnap service that had been troubling the town. As he sat at his desk in his bedroom, flicking through the events in the 24 hours of Lola's kidnapping, he couldn't help but feel an immense sense of pride that he, Luke Williams, would be the person who would break one of the biggest stories in his town's history to the world.
Swelled up so much in pride, he decided to email The New York Times with his story. He had a contact he was very pally with who could probably guarantee his presence on the front page with his shocking story, in the event that there was no trauma that day. After a brief chat and an explanation of what story he had, his contact told him that without doubt he would be able to have his story in the day after tomorrow.
Luke had adrenalin pumping through his veins. He muttered to himself: "The day after tomorrow... today is Tuesday... holy shit! I only have 24 hours to produce copy of my story! Luke began to type away frantically at his computer as he began the exhilarating process of telling his story, the story he was born to tell, the story that would go big. His excitement didn't allow him to notice a skull and crossbones flashing gently in the bottom-left hand corner of his screen.
--
Matt LeRouge sat in his plush office in a secret location not known to many, only a few of his closest associates. He needed to maintain this privacy to allow him to do his job properly and in order for him to make a lot of money. Unfortunately, there were some people who would give their front teeth to kill him - but he ran a kidnap service to make money, not to make friends.
The familiar bleep of Microsoft Outlook brought up a new email. Curious as to who would email at this late hour, he opened it. Little did he know that moments later, his jaw would drop to the floor. It said this:
To: matt_lerouge@securemail.com
From: ally.mcnamara@securemail.com
Subject: URGENT
matt m8, u r busted. u an ur company r gna be xposed for everythin u do. i was keepin an eye on tha lola girl tha we k/napped a few months ago an she told everythin 2 a young reporter who is gna tell the wrld everythin. i hacked in 2 his pc an instaled a virus so i could trak his moves. he is gna report 2 ny times in two days.
he needs 2 b stopped. permission 2 k/nap sir.
Matt re-read the message again and again in disbelief, the awful feeling that his world was crumbling around him all too imminent. He needed to take action and quick. His hands shaking in urgency and anxiety, he replied:
To: ally.mcnamara@securemail.com
From: matt_lerouge@securemail.com
Subject: Re: URGENT
Permissed granted. Get to work NOW.
It appeared the kidnap service had found their next unexpecting victim, to protect nobody but the kidnap service itself. Somewhere, an imaginary detonator began to tick. There were 24 hours ticking away until Luke had to send off his article and little did he know that he was holding three kidnappers to ransom.
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Thoughts?
