Thank you to my husband who supports me in all my crazy endeavors and to Antagonee for some awesome and professional editing on this story!
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Waking up proved painful and challenging. My head was sore and my vision refused to focus, the lids of my eyes heavy. I thought about going to sleep again when a low-pitched voice started to speak.
"Quick! Get him gagged!" The sharp orders caused me to wince. My awareness of the sheer pain from the left side of my face was increasing with his volume. Three men dressed in black, from head to toe, hovered over me. With forceful hands they grabbed, pulled, pinched and yanked until a gag had been placed over my mouth. They didn't stop: squeezing my muscles, punching my chest as I flexed.
I tried to scream but it just came out a muffled, angry groan through the fabric over my mouth. Two of them picked me up off the wood floor and threw me like a doll onto the bed my husband and I shared for 10 years. We kept it even though it was still too big for our studio apartment.
"Alright, we got the building on lockdown. We're crawling all over, so there's no escape. Don't even think about it. And it's not just this building, but buildings all over the city. You're our prisoners now. What do you think about that, huh?" A fourth man stepped into view, his pink lips protruding from the blackness of the ski mask.
I tried to think. Think of someway to get out of this. If only Lao, my husband, was home. Maybe two could've taken on four. Too late now though, I was alone. My mind raced backtracking to see if I could remember something that might be helpful. I remember it being a normal night. I had just taken a shower and was in a pair of running shorts, my hairy chest exposed and my feet bare, as I cooked dinner. There was a knock at the door. I didn't think to even look through the peephole since we lived in a secured our building. When I opened it, there were the three men in ski masks that exclaimed "We're here!"
Now here I sat, head throbbing and unable to get any slack on these ropes. The man who initially spoke removed his black ski mask to reveal blonde, floppy hair and a square face with a strong jaw. His eerie phosphorescent blue eyes moved back and forth. The ropes clamped tighter as I tried to wiggle free, but there was nothing but chafing on my pits and nipples. It started to become hard to breathe. I looked at the blonde floppy-haired man and decided to do what I could. With a flash, I charged, knocking the blonde man over like a linebacker. I ran towards the shorter one, still masked, smashing him into our large black bookcase.
A heavy anthology of Neil Gaiman's Sandman hit him squarely on the temple sending him to the ground and the bookcase on top of him. I was able to catch my bearings and jump back from the explosion of books, knocking into the tallest and skinniest of the masked figures, our TV breaking his fall from my lunge. I turned to see if I could take down the last masked man with dark plump lips, but I was too late. The blonde man had come to. Angry, stroking his floppy hair to the back of his skull, he lunged and grabbed me tightly. My whole body writhed against his, trying to break free. The lanky one, recovering from the fall on the television, helped the shorter one from the bookcase, who now appeared to be limping.
"You little fuckers!" One of them screamed, a vein protruding from his forehead, a blue bolt of rage. I forced myself to stay calm in spite of an uncontrollable shiver of fear running through me.