The Abduction

She was sitting in the backseat while he was on the wheel. Her conscious hours were behind her as soon as she got on the second bottle. She wasn't the kind of girl who got wasted even before the party began and then spent the rest of the party leaning on anyone who was a little sober.

She was made for this. She had seen worse days, like the day she took a challenge to drink the most bottles empty during a house party she wasn't invited to but still drove a bunch of wasted friends home after the party. She would be calm and collected even after seeing off four rounds of gin and countless tequila shots.

She pulled out a mirror from the pink purse she held so close to her bosom and placed it on the headrest in front of her. This mirror was something she never missed in her purse since looking terrible was inexcusable even when you had spent three nightshifts without catching any sleep. Her heels were on the seat next to hers and she kept on reaching for them and feeling them like she didn't trust anybody.

She didn't know him. She only remembered him laughing at a sick joke she made and telling her that his dad was a Lawyer at some firm she forgot before he could say the last word. She was the kind of girl who made jokes at a table where half the people were full-bearded men with daddy jackets and old cigarette lighters.

She was the kind the girl who proposed a toast to the man across the table who is dealing with a nasty divorce and keeps on winking at the bartender in tights. She is a surgical resident at a top Level hospital but she would as well make an amateur hooker if she wanted to. On a night like this, she wears sunglasses and sits on those high stools in those classy motels in the heart of Parklands wishing she chose a less demanding profession.

She remembered that his last name was William. She remembered he mentioned something about his love for slightly burnt pancakes and how much he hated girls with nose piercings. She had wanted to know why but he was already engrossed in another topic she wasn't interested in.

She took a closer look at her cold face in the mirror. Half her lipstick was washed off and her hair was something akin to an overused paintbrush. She tried to convince herself that she wasn't so drunk after all even though everything suggested she had broken her own record and one more sip would take her straight to a comma. She had never been that dizzy but she was not going to admit it, well not in front of him.

They had just met earlier in the night. She wasn't intending to go home with a stranger but when she saw him at the party she thought to herself that anything about him wasn't a bad idea. He was the kind of tall guys who wore their confidence and esteem the way you wear military badges if you do.

He had a tall masculine frame that she thought was right out of some blockbuster she has watched over and over. And Dump hair. Yes, the type of dump hair that reminds you of those windy nights when you have to hold your wig if you have one.

His arms and shoulders ripped the navy-blue shirt he wore manifesting a spirited four hours a day working out with dumbbells and chest pulls. She started to wonder if he would fit in an MRI machine. She was a doctor and it is normal for doctors to see everyone in a patient-doctor situation.

And maybe she had already ordered an MRI and ran him through and known that deep down he would make a good husband to the kids they were raising together in her head. She loosened her seat, slanted it backward, touched her back and noticed the lose strap of her bra. That wasn't usual.

She had drunk a thousand nights but never had she gotten to the point of loosening her own straps. She looked out through the window. He was driving so fast, the music and the wind ganged against her ears and she needed to throw up. She felt the whole world caving in and everything blurring until all she could see was her nose.

She turned around with a lot of effort and struggling and the last things she saw were a syringe, a thick muscular arm and a hazy face. She didn't notice the car had stopped. She didn't see him coming off the steering carrying this rusty syringe with a pale yellow liquid. She had trusted him.

He had promised her a good time and heaven knows she needed it. She needed a break from darting from one patient with thermal burns to another with mild stroke wearing hugging gowns and face masks. A night out dancing to new songs she heard in the playlist of the autistic kid who brought along an iPod during a reconstruction surgery was an appealing enough idea.

But spending it with a man whose aura attracted anything feminine was an even excellent idea. Only that he wasn't who she thought he was. There are things she didn't know about him because that is normal when you meet strangers and you don't mind what they bring along as long as the night is memorable.

She would pretty much do with any man at the party but her instincts, if they have ever been right were wrong this time around. She didn't know about a troubled young man who was in a dash to clean a mess. She didn't know she was the last resort to killing a series of criminal cases that the criminal investigation department was trying to unravel.

Liana would be in the hospital taking shifts with the new male surgeon she detests if she wasn't at the party that would put her in the limelight for the bloodhounds. She would be in that white sparkling robe washing her hands from the restroom sink like all doctors do.

An old woman scheduled for spinal surgery the first thing the following day would be calling her just to ask her if she had a boyfriend and to shower her with those last gasp of air clichés that goes like "Live your life before you die daughter" And she would be crying those tiny tears that you shed to look emotional even though you've seen twins die in front of their paralyzed mother and still didn't finch a bit.

She would be sitting on the lounge annexing the ER anticipation a victim of a fatal accident with thigh bone flashing and blood rushing out. She would be doing her best to ignore his thinly veiled sexual advances and wondering why male residents on night shifts saw their female colleagues as snacks. It would be so on a normal night at Medihealth Nursing home.

But she wasn't. She was kidnapped, drugged and unconscious. She was still a doctor but this time, a doctor who had been hypnotized. She would wake up to a partially lit room with maddening stench or in a ditch between two old blocks at River Road next to a bunch of strange men chatting over glue and playing cards.

She would wake up in his room tied up in a tiny gorgeous bundle and he would be tossing a pistol and smiling cynically. Or maybe she might never wake up, ever but all that depended on the plans Mr. William had for her- if his name was ever William.

He stepped out of the car and three men were on standby waiting for his next orders. The gentleman was now fierce and ferocious hurling orders at men who he was barely half their age. Everybody was in black and the night was still heavy.

Soon the moon would swing low and you would see a dilapidated warehouse that might have been abandoned more than a decade ago. Peeling walls, mold covered rusty padlocks and long untamed tendrils snaking into the windows that seemingly never closed since the eviction.