NOVEL WEB Chapter 45: 45th entry
Season: Autumn
Weather: Partly cloudy
Day of the week: Easter Monday
Date: 1st April, 2024
Deaglan and I stayed home and had a quiet day today. For some reason, he kept casting worried glances my way or asking if I needed a hug. I didn't, but I appreciated him asking.
He played his games and I watched. We made our meals together in relative silence.
The plan was to go back to work again tomorrow, but we both received calls from work telling us to take more time off. There was no need to rush or to force ourselves to go back to work after all that had happened. We were also told to check our bank accounts tomorrow. Our compensation should have arrived by then.
After lunch, Deaglan seemed to have had enough of his game because he asked if I wanted to watch a movie at home.
Why not?
While I browsed his movie DVD library, he made us big bowls of popcorn. One bowl of lightly salted butter flavour. One bowl of salted caramel flavour. He also made nachos with beans and guacamole, and mixed up some batter to make cupcakes. Then he made a jug of lemonade and a jug of cold sweetened milk tea. There was also a fruit platter and a bread bowl of thick corn, spinach and cheese soup. Toast fingers were placed to the side.
Quite the feast. Looked like we weren't going to be needing dinner.
He was also quite the catch to be able to prepare so much finger foods and drinks so quickly.
I chose what was reputed to be a lighthearted romcom which turned into a horror movie for both Deaglan and myself when the main character found herself stuck in a room with business partners who were harassing her. Deaglan couldn't take it and immediately turned the movie off while we both panted, our hearts racing and faces pale. We knew it was just a movie, but it hit just a bit too close to home for us.
"Let's watch an action movie instead," Deaglan suggested.
So we watched some intense action movie about survival in a zombie apocalypse, but once more had to stop the movie when the protagonist couple found themselves being separated at a safe base and both were about to be forced to participate in the base's human breeding program in order to boost the dwindling population.
"No more movies," Deaglan declared, putting the movies away. "Let's watch whatever's on television."
Somehow, he flicked to the Asian channel that was showing a variety show that was filled with games and team intrigue. We managed to relax while people were sent flying backwards into a swimming pool when they answered quiz questions wrongly or climbed a precarious polystyrene tower to see who could stick their sticker on the highest or furthest point that could break if they weren't careful.
Somehow, Deaglan ended up snuggling up with me on my couch. I didn't even know when he arrived. He fell asleep in a curled up position with his head on my lap. The variety show finished and then there was a series of trippy music videos who couldn't decide what genre of music they were playing. It was eye opening.
I just continued eating and sipping at my drink, while watching. Later, there was a foreign movie about children who had been captured by human traffickers and the trials their parents and the police went to in order to find and rescue them again. How nice it would have been if my parents loved me just as much as the parents in the movie loved their children.
I had been kidnapped once when I was a child. Bezel and I gone out with our mother was meeting up her girlfriends and their kids. The mothers all chatted, ate and drank at a nearby café while keeping a distant eye on us kids who played on the playground across the road.
Two children had very quickly established themselves as the leaders, ordering the rest of us about and directing our games. They had brought the entire group of us to follow a two strangers who had asked if any of us wanted their newborn puppies. They said we could have a look first and then come back to ask our mothers.
We had been led out of the playground and a distance away when our two leaders suddenly decided that there was something suspicious about the couple and where they were taking us. They whispered to us to run back to the playground on the count of three.
The couple leading us away caught wind of what was going on and quickly turned to try and catch us, a group of their friends coming out to help them at their shouts. I pulled Bezel who had been stubbornly insisting that she had to see the puppies and called to the leader kids for help. The leaders were older kids, and so they came back to pick up the smallest of the kids and to pick up Bezel as well.
Bezel was so angry with me that she pushed me so hard that I fell down and hit my head on a rock. Blood quickly obscured my vision in one eye and I was all dizzy. With the human traffickers closing in, the leaders grabbed Bezel between them and ran, shouting for someone to call the police, not knowing that I had fallen behind.
The kids who lagged behind were corralled back toward where I was getting up. That was when we heard the police sirens and so we all started screaming.
The human traffickers panicked and some of them ran away, giving us kids a gap to escape. At some point, the leaders had put Bezel down, while holding onto the youngest ones. They led the mad rush to escape, while Bezel... Bezel had given me a vicious glare that had made me step back in fright.
Then she barrelled into me, pushing me into the arms of a human trafficker who was still trying to catch us, before barely managing to make her escape. And so I was carried away by the panicking human traffickers to their getaway white tradie van that smelled of vomit. A woman with dirty fingernails had kept a hold of me in the back of the van while it careened around a corner and away.
I had been in too much pain and in too much of a dizzy daze to fight back or respond. I don't remember much about the rescue, but I do remember waking up in the hospital to hearing my parents arguing with the medical staff that Bezel was the one who needed to be treated, not me and there was no need to waste money on me.
I had been jostled out of bed, holding the wound dressing on my head and nudged to tell the medical staff that I was feeling better and wanted them to check Bezel was ok. A smug Bezel had then climbed into the bed I had just vacated for the medical staff to conduct an examination. Bezel had been found to be fine and Mum had carried her home, while I was led back home by the hand, being scolded for not walking properly or walking fast enough.
I remember some police stopped us on the way out so that Bezel and I could be questioned. Whereupon Bezel started crying and clinging to me so that they couldn't ask us anything and pinching me so hard that I cried as well. In the end, we were taken home and I was put to bed, while Bezel got to eat ice cream and lollipops that she showed off in front of me, because I wasn't allowed to eat them.
I kind of lived in a daze for a few weeks after that and still have a faint scar at my hairline. I was slow, clumsy and now that I think back, probably had a concussion. But nobody cared much what I was feeling. Bezel got all the attention and treats while I could only look on. I still had to carry Bezel's bag for her to and from school and clean up her messes at home.
At the time, I thought she indeed must have had quite the scare and deserved all the attention. I had completely forgotten that I was the one who had been kidnapped. Nobody talked about that. Perhaps in agreement. Life just went on as usual.
In the middle of the movie, I discovered that I had unconsciously crushed a fistful of caramel popcorn in my hand and now my hand was all sticky. I licked the mess off my hand, not wanting to disturb Deaglan who probably hadn't slept well last night.
Come to think of it, he had gone through something worse than me that night, and yet he was looking after me and giving me all the attention. I should do more for him.
At the end of the movie, I saw the children being reunited with their parents and thanking the police who had put their lives on the line for their rescue. Come to think of it, I had never met or thanked the selfless people who had rescued me. I hadn't been with it enough. Some time, I should make some time to visit the precinct and ask them if they could find out who those people were so that I could thank them.
Seeing the children and their parents hugging and cuddling made a sour sensation sting the back of my nose. All I had gotten from my parents were harsh scolding and a heavy spanking with the wooden spoon. First from my mother and then from my father for having put Bezel in danger.
It had been my fault, but Bezel's smirks and remarks at the side that had squarely put the blame on me and made me seem like the malicious one had made things worse. I was spanked so hard that I couldn't sit down or lie on my back for an entire week. And yet I had been forced to sit on my backside at school and didn't dare to show that I was in pain.
Bezel had also spanked me with various things during the rest of the week in order to make me jump and cry. When our parents came to see what the noise was, she would turn on the waterworks and point at me, saying I blamed her for getting kidnapped and was trying to beat her up.
For that, I got beaten up on top of my pre-existing bruises and then kept at home, locked away with two meals a day to reflect on my actions. I was sent away to live at a relative's house where I was taught to do all the house and garden chores in order to 'keep me out of trouble'. When I came home, all the chores became my work and Bezel ordered me around to make her favourite snacks and beverages.
A hand touched my face and wiped away my tears. Surprised, I flinched back and Deaglan sat up, hugging me tight.
"I'm sorry I surprised you," he said. "You're crying as if that isn't a happy ending."
He pointed at the jubilant atmosphere on the TV while I reined in my emotions and tears.
"Sorry. I was just remembering something," I shook my head, wiping my eyes.
"Something bad?" Deaglan asked, prying open my clenched fist to find the crushed remains of some nachos and bloodied semicircles where my nails had broken skin.
I hadn't felt the pain and didn't feel any pain until he led me to the bathroom to wash my hand and then dress the wounds. Then it stung, making my eyes tear up again.
Although my head hurts and I just wanted to go to bed, I still followed him out to help clean up the empty dishes and things and to dry the dishes that he washed. Only after all the chores had been done and everything was clean did I feel comfortable enough to go and hide in my room to curl up on my bed and write. And let my emotions go.