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I think people, as a whole, like to create scenarios in their heads, tell themselves how they will act if or when something bad happened to them. Maybe especially us women who knew our risk of kidnapping and worse was much greater.
We sometimes sat after watching some awful true crime documentary or some survival-style show and say to ourselves "If that ever happens to me, I will do this" or that, convincing ourselves that our bravery will win out over our fear, that all those videos we'd watched about self-defense would come back to us instead of getting Etch-A-Sketch'd out of our heads, that our bodies would cooperate, that we would suddenly be stronger than we'd ever been before. Like those moms who could lift cars off of kids.
The thing was, we were mostly bullshitting ourselves, weren't we? Unless we had actual hand-to-hand training.
I had conjured up a lot of fantasies about being brave and strong and unstoppable. Especially thanks to some of the fantasy war scenes in the books I read, in the games I played.
But put to the test, I felt weaker than I ever had before. And I was scared. I was so fucking scared that my entire chest felt like it was shaking when I pulled in a breath.
But people fought through fear all the time right? If it was a matter of life-or-death? Sometimes fear made heroes and heroines out of ordinary men and women. I didn't need to take down a bank robber or stop a mugging. I just needed to save my own life.
The footsteps slowed and stopped, but still several feet away from the door. There was a clinking sound like they were putting something down on a dresser or something.
Then the strangest thing.
Humming.
Actual humming.
And the part that sent a chill through me?
I knew the song.
I knew the song because I heard it damn near every day of my life.
It was the theme music to my game.
My game.
Which only meant one thing, didn't it?
Whoever had taken me was a follower, a sub, a fan, maybe even.
Maybe that was why I was in a closet with a bottle of medicine for my migraine after they caused a seizure since they knew that happened to me after that one live stream where I'd had one.
That worked in my favor, didn't it?
If they watched me, surely they liked me. Likely too much.
That happened all the time. Some random woman got popular for one reason or another. And someone took an interest. And maybe she smiled at him once or said his name, and he thought that meant something, created some giant fantasy world in his head where he believed they were meant to be together.
It wasn't exactly a giant leap from that sort of delusional to kidnapping.
He probably wouldn't even think of it as kidnapping. He would think he was saving me or following through with some promise he thought he'd made to me.
The problem was, if you didn't know who they were and what you meant to them, they got pissed, right?
And I had done myself a disservice by mostly ignoring the loons I sometimes got in the comments section. Sure, a few of them stood out, but most of them were just background noise to me. I didn't want to give them too much thought because I was pretty sure I would have even more trouble sleeping at night if I let their twisted comments take up residence in my head.
Besides, in my mind, trying to deal with that problem was like a hydra. Take one out, several more took their place. It was a useless battle.
Except now, knowing them would have come in handy. I mean, sure, most of them didn't use their real pictures in their avatars, but even just little tidbits of information might have worked in my favor.
But I had nothing.
Unless, of course, it was Patrick.
But wasn't it true that the ones to watch out for were rarely the loudest ones?
I had no idea.
All I knew was I heard muffled humming.
Then a light flicked on over my head.
Before I could even think about reacting, the door was open, and someone was moving inside.
Not Patrick, certainly.
Everything about Patrick spoke of old school, old mindsets, patriarchal bullshit that always rubbed me the wrong way.
This guy?
This guy was young.
Maybe even younger than I was.
He was tall and lanky, just the right side of skinny with unremarkable dishwater brown hair, and eyes that matched. His face wasn't overly memorable, either, with a weak chin and round face, his narrow nose, and straight brows.
He looked like any other faceless gamer guy you came across online.
He wore a pair of worn jeans and a tank top with the wheel from the first book on it, at least confirming my suspicions about who it was, why I was taken.
