KIDNAPPED!

• Tom Clarke, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2007

An eerie fog descended as he stepped out into the night. He felt highly satisfied with the hiding place he found for his hostage.

She was a young girl with blonde locks and pretty smile. Today, she had awoken to realise she was in a cramped, dark box. Her wrists were bound with heavy rope, as were her feet and her mouth was wrapped with masking tape. She had struggled and pushed, but this made her tired and weak. She had tried to scream but her cries were muffled. She tried to stay calm and focus on breathing.

Meanwhile, Stacie Roberts was wondering where her baby had wandered off to. All was well until she stumbled across a ransom note. It read:

"Hello little sister,
I have your baby, dear.
Please let me assure you,
She's cowering in fear.

In the house or in the bush,
I'll give you this one clue.
She's inside something that is brown,
And beneath something that is blue."

Panic came but she did not allow it to engulf her. She did not call the police because she knew what her brother was capable of. She knew her enemy well.

In the coffin, the little girl could sense her time was ticking away. She could feel the air thinning and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. Sweat gathered in a pool around her and tears welled in her eyes. In her mind's eye, she could see her mother, the only person who had ever loved her. She wasn't ready to die yet.

Stacie ran frantically around the house, desperately racking her brains. She thought about the clue. The brown had to be a cupboard, she decided; but the blue? Aha, she thought, the top room. All the rooms on the second storey had blue ceilings. She sprinted upstairs and checked all the cupboards, boxes, drawers, wardrobes and chests but to no avail. She collapsed in a depressed heap and started to cry.

She knew her brother inside- out and had foiled his plans before. She tried to dismiss thoughts that the one time he could outsmart her would come at the price of her baby's life. She had to stay strong.

The binding was growing tighter and the girl was drifting in and out of consciousness. She could see the light at the end of the tunnel. She tried to scream, to move, to breathe but it was all too hard. She closed her eyes and hoped her mother could find another just like her...

That's it, thought Stacie, the brown chest in his treehouse, under the bright blue sky. She raced to the treehouse. She climbed and climbed, and when she reached the top, she lunged at the box. She pried open the lid and stole her doll right out of death's cruel arms.

"It's okay, baby. Mummy's got you now."
She cradled the doll in her loving arms before yelling to her brother,
"When mummy find's out what you did to my Barbie doll, you're gonna be in so much trouble!!"