CHAPTER 5

“I keep swinging my hand through a swarm of bees

I can't understand why they're stinging me

But I'll do what I want

I'll do what I please

I'll do it again 'til I've got what I need”

- Thrice -

Sarai hadn't been having the best of days. For one, she'd gotten flak from her boss because she was two minutes late into work. Two. Oh sure, regularly expect me to finish shifts 1-2 hours late but ding me for a couple minutes? Makes sense.

Work was work and so be it, and she left, possibly (probably) slamming the door on the way out. Day done. She walked out to her car on the south side of her building, her Volvo waiting for entry of the keyless variety. But she stopped in her tracks, because there were three men surrounding her car that she didn't know.

“Who the hell are you?”, she asked, while immediately reaching for the mace in her purse. All three looked at her briefly and looked like nothing doing, status quo.

Something in her body immediately tensed, like that feeling you get when you just reach the peak of a roller coaster and are about to plummet. Things are going to change, and quickly.

She dove into her purse but was too late as two of them had flanked her each rocking guns of the taser variety. She blankly looked back at them, up at them, and then half dark almost through them, fading into tomorrow.

WAKE UP

The voice screamed in her head and all around her, but she couldn't tell if she was dreaming or what the hell was going on. She looked to her left, wall full of nothing. To her right, a door with the window blacked out, which didn't scream endless possibilities. She looked around fully once more, took a deep breath, and then looked inwards.

“I knew that this might happen”, she said to the open air around her. She looked resigned to a fate that possibly no one but her knew of. Like if she had just one more day, she could be the change that everyone needed.

The door opened with an almost comical BANG, and a sharply dressed male and female duo sauntered into the room, like it was business as usual.

“Isn't she pretty, Damien?”, the dame asked while casually strutting around the room. “I kind of like her tied up and all”.

“Calm down Valentine, that kind of fun is for another time”, drawled Damian, dressed top to bottom in a silver suit with scarlet shoes. “There's no real reason to keep her alive”.

Sarai tensed up a bit at that, and her mind flitted towards every escape option that she could think of, which were the same options she'd already thought of, none of them good.

Valentine flipped her plaid skirt and turned back towards the door with a smirk, purple highlights in full display under the UV lighting.“What do you want?”, Sarai tried to say normally, but the situation was so abnormal that it came out weird in her throat.

“Money, fortune, fame, all of it”, Valentine countered with, grabbing a knife off of the nearby table and swaying back and forth like a drunken kung fu master, waiting to pounce on an unwitting opponent.

“But what do I want from you?” she asked, abandoning the persona and stalking straight towards Sarai.

“NOTHING”, she screamed.

And slammed the knife down into one of Sarai's thighs, prompting a scream only generally heard when someone stabs a knife into your thigh.

Her consciousness began to fade, but for some reason focused on that idiot who'd jumped out in front of her bike the other day.

“Help me”, she thought, because she couldn't speak.

“Help”.