A cold draft blew across the room, moving thick dust across the bare floorboards. The room was empty, apart from a broken wooden chair in a far corner, and a dark-haired girl laying face down on the cold dusty floor. Very little light entered the room through a single boarded up window; the room was getting steadily darker.

The girl stirred as a man entered the room. She looked up, her face pale and her eyes wide with fear. She was covered with bruises and cuts, and seemed very weak. She tried to move away as he moved closer to her, but he grabbed her arm and held her still.

He knelt in front of her in the dust, still holding her arm in his pincer-like grip, and said in a soft, dangerous voice, “Hello, Erica. It seems no one is willing to pay a ransom for you…” Erica gasped. She knew what this meant… she was worthless to him now. He had no reason to keep her alive. “I hope you enjoyed your stay… it’ll be over soon.”  He stood, and left the room.

Erica began to panic. She knew that if she didn’t escape, and soon, she would die. He could come back any second and kill her… or he might wait… there was no way of knowing how long she had to live…

He’d attacked her while she was walking home a week before. He’d suddenly grabbed her from behind and pulled her into an alley. She thought he was going to kill her there and then, but he seemed to decide she was more valuable as a hostage.  He’d taken her to this dark, awful place and kept her there ever since. He hardly fed her, giving her barely enough to keep her alive. He knew that if he let her keep her strength up, she would be able to fight him, and maybe even escape and report him to the police.

As a result of this, Erica was very weak, and slipped in and out of consciousness. She could hardly support her own weight, and now spent most of her time lying helpless and injured in this spot on the bare wooden floor, in almost constant pain. He had beaten her to within an inch of her life. She couldn’t fight back; he was much stronger than her.

She lay there, waiting helplessly for him to return. Half of her wished he’d finally kill her. The other half was determined to escape. But her family had been her last hope. Had they really forgotten her? Why had they not attempted to help her? Were they even looking for her?

Her mind buzzed with hundreds of questions, until she felt like she couldn’t take it anymore. She felt almost grateful when a wave of dizziness swept over her, punishing her for using the little energy she had left. A few seconds later, she was lying unconscious on the cold dirty floor.

She awoke a few hours later, in the early hours of the morning. She struggled to sit up, the room spinning for a few seconds as she did. She pushed herself to her feet and took a few shaky steps; the muscles in her legs cramped and her injuries stung as she walked slowly across the room, her footsteps muffled by the thick layer of dust on the floor. She made her way slowly to the window, and looked out through a crack in the rotting planks of wood which were roughly nailed over most of the broken glass. It wasn’t too high… she shuffled across the room and slowly opened a wooden door into the next room as quietly as she could. It opened into another room, which was as empty as the one she just left, although not as dusty. The window here wasn’t boarded up, and opened easily with a slight creak. She panicked slightly at the noise, but soon calmed as she realised he hadn’t heard. She could hear him snoring in his room, which was to the other side of her room.  She leaned out of it, looking down. There was a ledge above the front door she could lower herself down onto, and then jump down onto the floor.  

Erica leaned a little further out of the window, and then shrank back as someone walked past. She couldn’t risk being seen, not until she was quite far away from here. Someone she knew might call out to her, and her escape would have been pointless.  She waited until the street was empty, and went back over to the window and climbed up onto the windowsill. She moved a little, then swung her legs out of the window and dropped onto the ledge above the front door.  Her feet were bare, and stung as she hit the rotting wood. It groaned a little under her weight but didn’t break. She jumped down into the dry overgrown grass as soon as she could, and ran out onto the cracked path, trying to avoid the rubbish and broken glass that littered the street.

She looked back at the house; it wasn’t very old, but it was in disrepair. All of the windows were broken apart from the one she’d climbed out of. All the rooms she’d seen were empty, and it seemed like no one lived there, are at least not comfortably. He didn’t stay there all the time, she knew; he’d locked her in that upstairs room whenever he left. She didn’t know where he went, only that he often disappeared for hours, and made sure that there was no way she could escape while he wasn’t there. He obviously hadn’t thought about her escaping right under his nose…

Erica looked away and ran as fast as she could, then realised she had no idea where she was or how to get home. She didn’t even know what direction to go in. But… did she even want to go home? If they had forgotten her, what was the point? She faltered for a minute, thinking, and suddenly noticed a stabbing pain in her foot. She stopped and sat on a low garden wall, lifting her foot to look at it.

A large piece of glass was lodged in her foot. Blood flowed heavily from the wound, and she realised with horror that she’d left bloody footprints all the way down the road. She panicked, thinking desperately of a way to stop him finding her. Eventually, her mind cleared and she ripped part off part of the hem of her torn and dirty white skirt and tied it around her foot after removing the piece of glass. It stemmed the flow of blood for a while, and she carried on running, making sure she ran in a different direction and was leaving no more foot prints.

She looked around her, wondering where she was. She hoped she was going in the right direction…