Chapter One

The howling winds echoed throughout the quieter than normal building. Grey, foggy like light shone through the windows. The walls and outside doors were ice to the touch from the frigid north winds pounding on it. Winter was in the air; there was no doubting it either.

My school may have been quieter than normal, but conversations with plans for the winter vacations were still buzzing around like flies. Many people were still crowding the hallways, trying to avoid the cold for s long as they could. I, myself, wasn’t one of them. I just wanted to get home and lay down.

--

I managed to get myself to the heavy double doors without major injury. The doors themselves radiated cold to a good foot. I grabbed the handle and ice picks I could have sworn stabbed me in my hand. I jerked on the handle until the door itself finally unstuck and opened for me. Frozen, cold, stiff air wrapped around my entire body, sending chills up my spine. I immediately put my thick faux fur coat up to my face.

“See ya in two weeks Kelura, and get your danged car fixed. If I have to do this one more time I swear my legs are going to fall off frozen!” my best friend Jennifer yelled at me kiddingly. I gave off a light chuckle and waved back at her.

“Sadly and stupidly, my car was wrecked due to the fact that my sister-in-law’s boyfriend couldn’t comprehend the fact that it’s not exactly the brightest ideal in the world to read and drive at the same time. So, naturally the car got totaled. We were just lucky that no one got hurt.

I broke myself from my thoughts and lowered my gaze to the ground to keep aware for patches of ice. I also kept at a medium slow pace incase I happened to hit black ice.

--

Five minutes into the walk my body was almost completely numb. My face and legs were aching at every step due to the fact that they were the only parts of my body not protected my complete clothing.

At a last minutes notice I saw that the sidewalk suddenly ended. I gave a light jump and my foot no more than made contact when it slid right out from under me and into mid-air. I flailed my arms around to try and help regain my balance by shifting my center of gravity. It came to no prevail. I hit a thick patch of ice covered by about maybe a millimeter or so of snow. My elbow took the blunt of the blow.

I gritted my teeth and forced myself up. My elbow was throbbing, but was still able to be moved. I stood there for awhile trying to mentally make the pain stop and lower to a throb, which it finally did do after two to three minutes. I kept my elbow at a slightly tilted angle and then pain seemed to all but disappear completely.

Tears welled up in my eye and basically refused to go away. I took my good arm and wiped my eyes fry and let the wind dry them out to make it harder for the process to repeat.

Mist rose to my face as I sighed into the crisp air. I returned my gaze to the ground and made sure to pay extra attention and to take more caution with my steps. I didn’t exactly 

want to injure myself again. One time is plenty enough for me. Not to mentions how exactly was this going to affect my softball playing abilities?

I was pulled out of my thoughts by foreign sounding crunches in the snow. I knew basically everyone that walked this path home, even if I wasn’t friends with them. I was still able to recognize their foot pattern and crunches their shoes make. I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around, only to see nothing but air and falling snow.

“Hm, that’s just slightly odd.” I know what I had heard and that definitely was foot steps. I looked down and saw no tracks in the snow. “I’m not crazy. I just had a psych exam no more than a couple of months ago. I know for a fact that I’m not insane, I think.”

I shrugged my shoulders and went back to my cold walk home. It was probably just some bored upper-class men trying to prank me anyway. I’ve had this happen before. I was not about to fall for it again.

“Whatever, I’m not about to make myself paranoid over nothing.” My right foot made a very sudden slide to the right. “Ugh, black ice.” I hissed to myself as I looked down and saw streak marks over what seemed like invisible water. “This is not my day at all.”

The footsteps came again and got closer and closer. The sounded no more than a couple of feet max away from me. Once I felt like they were close enough for me to fight if I had to but get away I whirled around on the noise.

It was a man in what looked like his late thirties maybe early forties. He had lighter than normal brown hair, which was fluttering with the violent frigid north wind like his knee length black coat. All he did was stand there and stare at me, which was starting to make me a little bit uncomfortable.

“Uh, hi. Can I help you?” I asked the man. He just continued to stare at me. “Erm, hello?” I asked him again after a moment of silence.

“Hello.” He answered back. His voice was hardly audible thought his coat and the now howling winds.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked right after what seemed like his greeting; it sounded more like a statement. Very dull and unwelcoming; there might have been some hostility in there too.

“Right.” He hatefully replied. In a flash his hands had a firm grip on the front of my coat ripping of the buttons. My body froze for a second before deciding to fight back. I tried to rake my nails across his face but he brought one of his hands up and caught me. My free hand went over his trying to pry it off. His grip was crushing my fingers what seemed like to death.

My coat fell to my ankles. The icy north wind hit my body at thirty miles and hour, freezing it on contact. My joints refused to move. My breaths turned into short gasps of air from the searing pain and cold. He let go of my hand and shoved me down onto the ground. I hit half of my coat and my face hit the snow. I brought my elbow up to spin myself around but my elbow was in to much pain to even work with. The man was hovering above me with a death grip on my arm looking until he came across an old scar of mine.

I was playing on the old playground and accidently got shoved off, a piece of sharp metal was pointing out. Needless to say, they replaced the entire thing with plastic and woodchips instead of sharp metal and hard rocks. The scar never healed.

A smile with a hint of a sneer on it came across the man’s face. He whispered something to himself but it was lost in the wind. My body was shivering uncontrollably at this point. It was becoming harder to breathe. The cold was taking over my lungs.

He yanked me up by the front of my shirt. I heard it start to rip from all my dead weight on it. His grip slipped and I hit the ground hard. The back of head immediately started to throb with every heartbeat, which was growing faster with every beat. He bent over again by bending his knees. I threw up my knee as hard and fast as I could. He howled in pain and fell backwards. I got myself up as fast as I could without making myself to dizzy. A huge gust of wind hit. Snow blinded my vision along with my blue streaked brown hair in my face.

The man grunted and half way stood up. “Get back here you little brat!” he grunted at me. I spotted the gun on his belt and immediately bolted down the street as fast as my frozen legs would take me. Which unfortunately, wouldn’t go that fast, or as fast as they needed to be going. I heard the man start to run after me. My legs started to cramp up to the point I had to stop were I was or else I would trip and fall and it would be all over.

I looked to my right and saw a wooden fence. The footsteps behind me were growing dangerously close. My leg was cramping up even worse than before from the cold and standing in place. The man grunted as he hit a patch of black ice and fell to the ground. He wasn’t anymore than thirty feet away.

Before my brain could even get the message across my body jumped the fence. I landed on my bad elbow. Pain ravaged my entire body, even down to my toes. Distinct growling rumbled in front of me. I picked up my head and saw a fierce shiba inu giving me a look and growl from hell.

“N-n-nice doggie” I stuttered to it. The dog lunged at me. I cursed myself in my mind and threw myself back on top of the fence. The dog missed me by about one inch, but the man on the other side didn’t. A strong hand grabbed me by the ankle and began pulling me. I had a choice to make; the dog, or the kidnapped and possibly murderer.

The north wind returned at full speed, once again freezing my body. My joints locked up. The man obviously saw my body tense up ten fold for he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled full strength, locking me in his huge muscular arms.

“Jake!” the words spit out like venom from his mouth. I saw a younger man, maybe mid thirties to early forties. He had what appeared to be black hair and a black knee-length coat. The young man and pulled out a capped needle out of the coat pocket.

“Oh hell no!” I shouted even though my voice box had all but completely quit working. I cleared my throat and screamed at the top of my lungs. The scream started raspy but grew louder with every second and octave I went up.

The man let go and covered his ears; his face twisted in pain. The younger man made a jump for me. He missed me by about half an inch as I hurled myself back over the fence and made a mad dash to the other side of the yard without looking back. I hurled myself back over the fence and landed on my feet this time. I wildly looked around for anything that could attack me. A clear dog door cut out of the door revealed a sleeping wiener dog. The dog spotted me and started barking at a rapid pace.

“Ah crap.” I muttered to myself. The north wind hit again. The huge gust pushed me forward to my knees. I then realized something; the wind was pushing me in the direction that I was needing to go. I got down on one knee and hand and kicked off full force. The gust dyed down as I hopped the next two fences, but that was all I needed to reach the local park.

Woodward park was deserted; a total wasteland. This was also the place that gave me my scar. I ran my index finger across it, the raised line of a gash sent chills down my spine and soul. The cold sent another wave after it. I forced myself to move for I knew that my joints would re-lock up. They had already started the process.

“Maybe it would be better if I had just let them get me. Maybe death would be better than this.” The words staggered through my mind. The men’s footsteps echoed throughout the empty half of the neighborhood we were in. I stood there, unable to reason with myself on why I should keep running away. The footsteps grew closer, my heart beat faster. My anxiety and panic went through the roof.

My hands went up to my arms and dug into my frozen flash. A muscular hand landed on my shoulder. My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest at any moment. My entire body tensed up. The tendons in my elbow became obviously prominent.

“Very wise decision of you Kelura.” The older man basically grunted. My panic meter shattered. “This’ll only hurt for a second.” A sharp stick hit the tensed muscles in my back, right behind my heart. It wasn’t a small needle either. I grunted and moaned at the same time as he pulled it out. His hand gave my shoulder a small squeeze. “Relax; it’ll all be over soon. Just take this little white pi-” I slapped his hand away. The pill went flying across the parking lot, unable to ever be found though all the crystal white snow.

“What the hell?” the younger one shouted at me. I took a mad dash for the play equipment and used the snow coating the slide to climb up it. I immediately looked through the slits in the plastic wall and saw the men staring up at me. The oldest one raised his arm to the sky and flipped me off.

“That probably wasn’t exactly the smartest move for me to make.” I shivered to myself. The north wind blew. I scooted myself over to the beginning of the slide. There was no snow and a shield to protect me from the once again howling wind. My body seemed to rise a degree or two, though it felt like it was at thirty or forty.

Gunshots cracked the air. My body tensed up again and I put my head between my legs to protect it. The silent moments after that were deafening and long lasting. I poked my head out of the protection of my little plastic walkway and took a quick peak. The men were nowhere to be seen. My heart gave a leap of joy, but also with fear and panic. If they weren’t here, then where were they?

“I need to get home, and sooner rather than later.” I whispered to myself. My mouth practically frozen shut. I backed up and walked over to the slide down pole. My feet hit the frozen woodchips with a crack. A light breeze blew. My body went down the few degrees it had gained. I took a semi-deep breath and began my journey home. My sister-in-law was probably about to have a fit. I could already imagine my warm bed and a cup of hot chocolate. The pure thought made my mouth water.

I had made it back to the parking lot when strong hands grasped around my waist. The wrists crossed and it’s hands around my studded belt. My arms were pinned down to my side, being crushed by the grip. My legs started kicking in every direction. He only tightened his grip and pinned my closer to him. His hot breath was coating the back of my neck and racing down the back of my short-sleeved school band T-Shirt. Chills went up and down my spine, even though the heat was a great relief.

The younger man reappeared in front of me with another capped needle. He put the middle of the needle in his mouth and grabbed both of my legs. He had a grip beyond belief for his size. I let out a scream when his fingers dug into the nerves in my ankles. He dropped them and they fell lifelessly to the ground, paralyzed. He made sure that I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

The man took the needle out of his mouth and ripped the cap off. He placed it right about my heart. I gritted my teeth and grunted. It was worse than the one in my back. The man pinning me down seemed to have loosened his grip a little. My head immediately slid into a mental fog. My body relaxed, though not to my choice. A wave of relief hit me. I fell backwards onto the man. His coat was freezing and covered in light bits of snow. He took off his glove and ran his hand through my hair and traced the features of my face.

He put several chalky pills in my mouth and chased them down with water. I was too relaxed, and now to tired to care. My legs gave out. I hit the ground hard. The pain in my elbow returned after I landed on the thick ice with it. I let out a moan, but it reduced onto a whisper by the time it reached my mouth.

“How cute.” One of the men said. It sounded like the older one. He picked me up by the shoulders and put me against his open chest. His warm coat wrapped around me. I laid there for just a second and drifted off.