She startled herself awake the next morning. There was no way for her to tell if anyone had entered the room while she was asleep. As she pulled herself from the ground, she decided that anytime she was going to fall asleep, she would do so with her back to the door so that if anyone were to try to enter the room, she would know. Throughout the entire day, she anxiously waited for someone to open the door but no one did. By the time it was evening, she got into the shower and had her bath again, this time putting on her clean and dry underwear, washing her dress and then hanging it close to the radiator so that it would dry faster. It was already dark out when the dress was dry enough for her to wear and when she left the bathroom, she found another cup of ramen and a bottle of water.She had started to worry that there was a camera in the room that Robert used to determine when she was in the bathroom to come and drop her food. Before she could think about it too much, she realized t
Felix stumbled over the phone as he clumsily tried to pick up the phone. “Cassie. Are you hurt? Do you know where you are?” Felix asked, each word tumbling out of his mouth quicker than a response could possibly be given.He pulled his laptop closer to himself and hurriedly started to launch the software that he had been working on ever since the night of Cassie’s disappearance. He had already set his phone so that whenever Cassie's phone came online, he would be able to track it. It had a lot of flaws but it was the best he could come up with in such short time. He couldn’t just download a regular cell phone locator off the internet to locate Cassie’s phone as she had built a series of safeguards for her phone to ensure that it was heavily guarded. She had everything on it apart from a proper password; it was both ironic and amusing. He had tried launching the app multiple times but the search always came up blank, indicating that her phone had been switched off. Now, it showed that
When Felix finally awoke, he did so slowly, his vision blurry and his head heavy. Even as he was still half unconscious, he realized that he recognized the environment that he was in. It was all strangely familiar but yet, unsettlingly transformed. He was in a room in the Callahan mansion and judging from the size and layout of the room, he was in his old bedroom. The decor of the room had changed drastically since the last time he had been in the room. All of the posters of superheroes and bands had been taken down and replaced with modern art pieces. The color of the walls had been changed from a baby blue color to a dark gray one. His bedside table which had been formerly crowded with action figures and school books now spotted manila folders, stationery and a small potted cacti.The more Felix observed the room, the more it looked to him like someone had been staying there for a while. The hardwood floors had a few scuff marks on them at the points where the room’s furniture was.
The first time Cassie had woken up as a captive, she had thought that that would be the most pain she would ever be in. She remembered how much her head hurt and how she had ached all over. Waking up again, she found that she felt a thousand times worse. She owed the shitty feeling in her entire body to Robert fucking Smith. After she had been caught trying to escape, he dragged her by her hair to the very room that she had escaped from. She had tried to struggle against him but her muscles ached from running around the house and anytime she made any form of movement against him, Robert would pause along the hallway to deliver a series of kicks to her midriff.When they had finally got to the room, he had exerted the second phase of his revenge by reopening the cuts that had been made on her arm earlier that week and adding a couple of new ones with the help of his switchblade. He followed it by wrapping his gangly fingers around her neck and choking her, letting his nails dig into he
"Good morning. I’m Dorothea Sinclair and welcome to today’s session of Under the Spotlight. I am sure that some of you are wondering where I am today and why this background looks different. That’s because, for this interview, I left the studio to conduct this interview in the home of our guest who is no stranger to the spotlight.” Dorothea announced. “Some of you might know her from September last year when she and her best friend, Isabel Gomez, were held hostage by two gunmen who kidnapped them from the club they both worked in. Some of you might also know her from her interview with me on this very show in March where we talked about her revolutionary app, Care Compass which was, and still is, making waves in the medical field. However, some of you might know her from everything that went down two months ago when she was kidnapped from a supermarket and held hostage for a week. Join me to welcome, the very beautiful and very intelligent, Cassie Peters.” She said and signaled to th
For the fourth time that week, Felix Callahan sat in a meeting room bored to death by everything that was going on around him. Cool air blasted from the air conditioning system. People of all ages sat along the long oak table with laptops, papers and Styrofoam cups of coffee or porcelain cups of tea in front of them as they tried to come to an agreement on an investment deal. The office overlooked the busy city street and although they were high up on the top most floor, Felix could have sworn that if he squinted hard enough, he could just make out cars and people going about their activities. In that moment, he wished that he were just a normal man without the responsibilities of an entire company on his shoulders.One of the major problems of inheriting a successful tech company from his grandfather, Tobias Jackson, was that he was expected to keep the company successful. Under no circumstance would he be allowed to let their monthly profits showcase anything lower than six figures.
Sighing, Felix peeled off his navy suit jacket and tossed it on the couch. He didn’t bother about picking it up. That was the maid’s job not his. He took in all the details of his apartment. The walls dividing his apartment from the outside world were made out of glass, letting him see the world around him but preventing anyone outside from knowing what was going on inside his apartment. Most of the furniture in the living room were in various shades of gray, from the plush leather couches to the throw pillows on top of them. Even the coffee table in the middle of the room was a shade of gray so dark, it almost appeared to be black. The room was devoid of personal pictures. Instead, the only things framed were artworks that he had purchased and had been gifted over the years. A huge flat screen television was mounted on one of the opaque wooden walls. Briefly, he considered watching a quick movie or checking whether the game was on but he knew himself and knew that he won’t have just
Cassie stared at herself in the smudged mirror. Tired blue eyes stared back at her. The eyeliner and mascara that she had failed to wipe off from the previous night had smeared into a messy blob, making her eye bags appear more gruesome than they actually were. The appearance of her collarbones and cheekbones were heightened by the lack of a proper diet. That and her dainty wrists served as stark evidence of how little and infrequently she ate. Her brown hair hung limply over her shoulder, the tips riddled with split ends. She was in desperate need of a proper salon treatment but that was something she couldn’t afford. The only form of hair treatment she could afford were dollar store hair dye and two-in-one shampoo and conditioner. She was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes – a white sleeveless button down shirt with sparkly skin tight pants. Considering the weather, it wasn’t exactly her first choice in fashion but it was the waitress uniform at one of her three jobs - Club Indigo