Abduction!!!

It was twilight by the time Jasmine and John left Hacienda Mountain Temple.

They said nothing as he continued driving through the woods. It was all too unreal. All too scary to the average person. John, who had seen everything, was spooked out of his skull.

They had barely reached the red light at the bottom of Hacienda Mountain when they were flanked by four cars. All four were of the black unmarked variety.

John's alarm bells began ringing in his head.

The light turned green but the black car in front of him did not move. Since the road was a single mountain lane, the only thing John could do was back up slightly and move past him.

He began backing up but the black unmarked car behind him drove up, hitting him in the rear bumper. He was effectively trapped in.

It was then that the unthinkable happened.

From behind every stony projection and every tree, there came a streaming horde of men, all wearing essentially the same type of scruffy jeans and tees.

Jasmine saw flashes of dull metal in their hands. They were all carrying guns and knives of various sorts, and there was a mob of them.

Before John had a chance to react, they had ascended on the car like a swarm of locusts, hell bent on inflicting serious damage to the car and its occupants.

Jasmine screamed as the glass on her side of the car splintered into thousands of square pieces that rained down on her head, tangling into her curly hair and covering her body with their harmless cold touches.

The door on her side was jerked open by a pimple-faced youth with tobacco stains on his teeth and shoulder-length limp hair dyed a deep eggplant color.

Turning away from him, she made a valiant effort to escape but was hampered by the seatbelt and the tiny space around her.

She felt hands groping her back and hands clawing at the roots of her hair. She screamed as her head was jerked back, exposing her neck and upper arms.

Tears of pain sprang from her eyes. If they were going to kill her, they would do it now.

She could hear shouts of commands uttered by a deep male voice as rough vicious hands lifted her out of the passenger side and hauled her over to the side of the road.

She struggled and lashed out with her hands and feet, clawing and kicking at the gang of males around her. But there were too many of them.

She was overpowered and held down by several of the young men.

On the other side of the car, she could hear John grunting and moaning, getting the brunt of the beatings.

Scared for her life, she intensified her struggling, but these were street-hardened boys. Her puny efforts had been anticipated.

Something wet and clammy was shoved over her nose. It was gagging in its noxious fumes. Jasmine felt a wave of blackness roll over her head.

This was it.

This was the end.

☯︎☯︎☯︎

The boys swarmed him gang-bang style. Three in front and two behind, one holding a gun at a distance. Seeing him reach for his weapon, the nearest boy knocked him over the head with the butt of a semi-automatic and another cut through his seatbelt with a sharp switchblade.

As they pulled him headfirst out of the open window, they locked his arms behind his back, leaving him unable to break his fall. He landed face-first onto the hard tarmac of the roadway.

And then all hell broke loose.

The boys descended upon him with clubs and brass knuckles, screaming obscenities in a language he did not understand.

When they got through kicking and beating him, five of the beefiest gang members bound his hands and gagged his mouth with a foul-smelling rag they had yanked off some boy with greasy hair. They dragged him to the black car in front that had blocked his way.

He was thrown into the back seat and held down as the car took off. The only thing on John's mind was the fact that Jasmine was not coming with him.

Where he was going, she would not be joining.

After driving for awhile, the car went through the gates of a fancy villa. John could see a makeshift shooting range and four or five large warehouses with guards stationed at each entrance.

The gang members spoke amongst themselves in their strange language as they dragged him through a path between the warehouses, not letting him pause to catch his breath.

The fact that they were not even trying to hide all this from his eyes meant they were not going to let him out alive. There were far too many of them and nobody knew he was missing.

John's strength was almost depleted from the brutal attacks on his body but he continued to worry at the makeshift handcuffs that they had put on his wrists.

A few minutes later, he was taken through a Japanese rock garden towards a large white southern-styled antebellum mansion and shoved through the kitchen door towards the side of the house.

They went through a covered walkway which led to a temple looking structure. As soon as the double doors opened, he could see a creamy luxurious hallway with porcelain walls and light beige carpet.

It was then that John was able to wrangle out of this handcuffs, but his wrists had been cut in the process, causing a light trickle of blood to drip from his fingertips onto the pure pale creamy floor.

He hung slightly back, hoping that the drops of blood from his hands would not be a beacon, revealing the fact that his hands were freed from their confines.

The gang members nudged him on, not noticing the drops of blood which he left behind with every step through the immaculate hallway.

He was taken into a room at the far end of the hall, where his gag was removed, leaving him in a better state to breathe. If he wanted to escape, this would be the only chance he got.

As one of the boys was fumbling with the lock on the door, John seized one dark dank kid on his left and shoved him into the bald boy standing to his right. Immediately, a pell-mell of activity ensued.

He managed to confiscate a knife from one of the boys on the floor, but the other two were able to wrestle him to the ground with a strange, half-flying tackle.

He brandished the knife in a wide arc, struggling to get up form his awkward position on the floor. The knife caught one of the boys in the arm.

Red hot blood gushed out of the boy's open wound and splattered onto the carpet and the walls. It was a glaring offensive sight made more obvious by its pristine surroundings.

He swung the knife at the bald boy who jumped back to avoid the blade. With a roar of anger, the boy launched himself at John with his own knife.

John twisted his body and pulled on the bald boy's arm with his left hand, catapulting him to one side. With his right hand, he slammed his knife into the eye socket of the one rushing up at him to the right.

"Aaaaaaaaahhhh!!!" The boy screamed, grabbing at the hilt of the knife, trying to pull it out. John slammed his hand into the hilt one more time and the boy fell to the floor in a spastic fit.

So much for his own puny drops of blood trailing down the hall. This boy was making a grand finale with a huge splash of carmine stickiness at the end of the journey.