The realization crept up on me as soon as I saw the distant shadows nearing closer to my body. The feeling of it ran slowly up my spine and I could feel the pit in my stomach reaching up towards my chest. It felt like my heart was going to burst into a million pieces. I wanted to repair it and forget about the past, but it was too late now, as I can now feel the grasp of arms behind me. The fingertips press behind my back and before I know it darkness surrounds me in every corner of my periphery. I can feel the burlap bag scratch my face as I kick and wail for help, but I had taken the wrong path to reach home. All I had with me was my pocket knife, but that had been left behind deep into my handbag unwanted. Now that I need it, the regret only pours deep down into my veins. In an instant, I appear to be drowsy, probably the scent of the burlap bag suffocating me into an 8-hour sleep…

I wake up in a cold sweat dreaming unwanted dreams. I hear water drops falling onto the cold cement floor that I had been sleeping on. Echoes also run deep, and when I hear the first one, I begin to tremble. My hands are interlocked with a zip tie behind my back, and a sock is wrapped around my mouth. I make the effort to scream, but I can only hear the echoes of my own voice. I sit there for hours contemplating how my life will go on from here. I sit here in this damp underground room for hours.

My eyes have slowly adjusted to the darkness of the room. I thought I heard the first footsteps coming down as I could hear dragging feet on the first few steps. It turns out that I was only delusional. I haven’t been alone for this long. Long hours, turned into days when I thought someone would turn the keys, but there had only been silence and everyone including my kidnapper have forgotten me. Days turned into weeks and then months. I feel the stench slowly rise up on me, my hair is greasy, and I haven’t gone this long without brushing my teeth in my life. I manage to eat the food little each day that has been hidden on some shelves in the underground room. It has been suffocating enduring each day like it would be my last and never being able to see the light like everyone else sees so easily.

I count each day by scratching lines on the wall. Because I have no light to tell me what time of the day it is, I make my own assumptions of when it is morning, when it is the afternoon, and when it is late at night.

In the midst of a long sleep, I hear a foreign sound. I hear steps coming further down to the ground. I thought that I might have been delusional again, but the steps keep coming further down, and I hear the jingling of keys against the once locked door. A man with short brown hair came in, supposedly in his early forties. I shiver for this has been my first encounter with another human being in a long time. A little bit of light appears from the door he had just opened and my eyes hurt from looking at that direction. At first, the man is taken aback when he sees me lying on the concrete floor. The place where I have been eating, sleeping, and sitting for so many long wish full years of getting out of such a lonely place. He begins to realize when he sees me with my tattered clothes and the greasy hair.

I have yet to find out who kidnapped me and stored me here away for so long.

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