Chapter 10

22nd December 2019

Cathy's POV:

My heart stopped at what I saw in front of me. For a second I thought I was in my hostel room. It was decorated just like how Renita and I wanted to. The unicorn colored princess mosquito net that we bought five days back was hanging down around the bed on which I was sitting.

The walls around me had my paintings hanging and also the pictures of Renita and me were stuck to most of the empty places around. I stepped out of the bed and looked up to see the fluorescent star stickers stuck all over the ceiling.

Which startled me the most was the five feet tall Chandramukhi painting that was neatly placed on the wall in front of the bed. One extra thing had been done to it was he had framed it behind a thick glass. I walked towards it awestruck, examining it from top to bottom.

Beside it was nailed a big green board full of pictures of me, Renita, Neha, Shahid, Vicky, and Mithra. This was not my idea but I would have called it creative and praised the idea if only Renita had done that.

A string of yellow fairy lights lined the wall randomly along the pictures stuck on the wall making them glow. The pink fairy lights were wrapped around the top of the mosquito net over my bed and the blue one was wrapped around the two wobbly balloon letters R and C which sat on a small table beside the bed.

Beside it was the ac remote that he had operated a few minutes back and along with it was the big table lamp which was an old one my mom had given me as a remembrance of my granny.

There was a magnificent black and grey TV stand with a massive television and series of movie cassettes were stacked beside it. A small cupboard adjacent to it had a few novels arranged in it. All the novels were the ones that I always had wanted to read. That stalker-son-of-a-bitch!

I searched for the window that had been shining the bright sunlight into the room all this time and found it beside the washroom. It was large enough for a person to climb out but the worst part was thick iron bars were lining it with barely ten centimeters between each.

From the upper part of the window hung our expensive dreamcatchers in a crowd, dangling and glowing against the sunlight. On the window sill was placed five small turquoise wooden pots of tiny flower plants jutting out of it and beside them sat a cute small kettle in pink filled with water.

Outside were enormous thick trees and harsh vegetation. The ground was covered by trimmed wild grasses growing everywhere. Quite far away I think I could see a water body behind all but I couldn't make out whether its a lake or a river or what it was. I could only see a small part of it.

It seemed like there was no house or human existence anywhere nearby. 'We are in the middle of nowhere' his words played again in my mind making me shudder. Maybe he was right. Were we amidst a forest or something? Dread invaded my whole body as I wondered how was I going to escape from here.

I sighed turning back and taking a big glance of the whole bedroom. Every single thing was done just like how Reny and I had planned. Even that square mirror with a black chart around on which broken cd pieces were pasted! I did that two weeks ago for a fancy mirror frame. Damn! This guy knows each and everything I had spoken and did. How? How did I fail to notice someone who was watching my life so closely?

Lost in my own world was how I was always which now made me realize how much lost I had been.

My eyes that had been roaming all over the room now fell on a small wardrobe beside the window. I walked to it and flung open the door. My jaw dropped. All my dresses were neatly folded and placed inside. At the bottom was a plastic basket with my inners. Two drawers were attached in the middle. I pulled one out to find all my cosmetics neatly arranged.

The other one had my three important diaries. I took them out and flipped through it. One was for my high school memories, one was for my college and the other one was a new diary which was completely plain from the first to the last page. Where is the one I made for Noel?

I searched below the clothes and at the bottom of the cupboard but it was nowhere. Did he throw it away purposely? Beneath all the diaries was my black manila file which had all my important documents including my passport, birth certificate, and adhar card.

I sighed. How did he manage to steal all these things from our room? Where was Renita by then? Did he hurt her? The very thought made me sick. Having her left with her best friend gone missing for days and also hurting her to steal away the things that we carefully collected to decorate our dream room, it would be very difficult for her. I wanted to hug and kiss her saying everything was going to be alright. But reality hit me hard. I was abducted! First I have to come up with a proper plan to escape from here.

I walked to the washroom and pushed the door open. It was an average-sized room with all the necessary and clean ceramic bathroom fittings. Except for the small exhaust fan fitted high on the wall, there was no other opening to the outside world. I sighed again as I realized there was no means of escaping inside the bedroom. I stepped out of the washroom and leaned over the wall beside looking around the room for like the fiftieth time already.

One thing that I had missed to notice was the bedroom door, it was not a normal one. It was made of black iron which was enormous starting from the ceiling to the floor. It looked heavy and didn't have any locks inside and just had a keyhole like he had told me earlier. Did he have latches outside?

I trod towards the door and bent down to peep into the keyhole. It showed a narrow hallway that led somewhere to the right at its end. There were no lights or windows there so it was a dark hallway. Nothing else caught my eyes before I stood up and raised my head.

At the top of the door was a surveillance camera staring dead at me. With him watching me through that camera I can't even try doing anything in this room against him.

There was a small whiteboard attached to the wall below the camera, very close to the door. It was wired to a switch beside it. I took slow steps to it and gently clicked on the switch. The board instantly emitted a bright white light and big fluorescent pink fonts appeared in the middle. It read

VICTOR'S LISA

HAPPY READING!