Short story: Nadia

Story is interactive : Read and you become eligible to vote how the story goes.

WARNING! Heavy language, gore and blood.

Part 1:

I come to my senses slowly. The blood slides down my left cheek and a first attempt trying to recollect what happened fails. The buzzing from my ears is better now. I can hear the rain hitting the driver's window and for some reason I feel the cold wind from outside.

I look around with clouded vision, can see we crashed into a tree, my head is still spinning. I feel pain everywhere in my body.

The thought of another person crosses my mind at lightning speed.

"Nadia!” I jump up as if I was electrocuted but something prevents me from standing up.

A big branch has broken my windshield and part of it has pierced my shoulder. I look back

in panic. The right back door is open. Nadia is nowhere to be found!

My chest is heaving as I look for my phone. While I do so, an unintended glimpse over my body tells me I am covered in blood.

I push the branch with my right hand and after some effort its finally out. I groan in pain but it’s the last thing on my mind right now.

My phone lies on the floor of passenger’s seat. I pick it up in haste and try to call 911. No signal in the middle of the woods. Of course.

Why did I listen to my ex-wife again? If she hadn’t been threatening me with losing custody of Nadia if I didn’t drop her off by tomorrow, we wouldn’t be here right now!

I hate this road, always did. Desolate and with bad reception. Then there are the rumors local folks love to fabricate. Although to allow my mind such thoughts right now was to only hasten our doom.

The car is not on fire but it’s out of business with half its front inside the tree. I get out and fall in the ground instantly. Weaker than I thought.

I cough out some blood as my thought pattern switches trying to find an explanation that it does not look as grim as the situation at hand. Brain fighting with itself. As if you put two gladiators in the same fish tank and you sit back watching the show.

Nadia is only seven, she couldn’t have gone far. Hey, she could even have gone to ask for help. Smart kid she was that one. I stand up using the car as leverage and call her name. All that comes back is an eerie creepy silence and the weather is not helping at all.

I am soaked to the bone.

I hide my phone inside my brown leather jacket trying to keep it as safe as possible. There is blood coming from my right leg but it cannot be that bad if I can still walk. The fabric of the jeans is slowly absorbing all of it.

Opening the trunk of the car I become witness to a complete mess.

Rummaging through, I find a clean cloth and barely manage to tie up my left arm. At least to slow the bleeding.

Other than some cuts and bruises I have no other serious wounds in my upper body.

I find a pack of smokes. Marlboro. Heh. The pack I was looking two days back and here it is. I know I should be looking for my daughter but the impulse to light a cigarettes greater than ever. I do and take a few deep inhales before coming back to my senses throwing it away.

I guess my paranoid wife should be thanked for. Planning ahead about everything. This was the reason we divorced anyway. Fucking paranoid OCD bitch.

A flashlight and some pain killers in the side of the trunk. Oh of course she had them all neatly stowed up but I liked it messy. I have my own way to find stuff through the mess.

I take a pain killer with no second thought. The second time I call her name I hear a girly scream deep into the forest.

The blood freezes in my veins as a waterfall of scenarios floods my brain. I tell you Niagara Falls is nothing compared to this.

I rummage through the mess again and find a crowbar. Turning on the flashlight I sprint as fast as I can towards the way the sound came. I am consumed by darkness and the damned flashlight already starts flickering. I stop for a moment trying to catch my breath and see where it came from.

Suddenly, a light appears in what seems to be a cabin not far away. My first instinct tells me to go but do I? It could be a trap!

Nadia takes up every cell in my mind by storm and the terror she must be experiencing right now alone in the woods.

Tears are trying to force their way up but I push them back.

I decide to tread fast and careful toward the cabin. I am not liking this one bit. My adrenaline is so high I cannot even feel the pain in my body anymore. My only thought and concern is my girl.

Sneaking behind the trees my eyes frantically look for any movement. I hear the scream again. I hold the crowbar with two hands and decide to barge right in.

I swing my crowbar instinctively to whatever is in front of me but there is nothing.

A tape recorder. It was a fucking tape recorder. It plays the same sound every two minutes. A girl screaming. There is a message written hastily on paper next to it.

I put down my flashlight and pick up the letter with shaky hand. It reads as follows: In the wall to your right inside the wooden box is the remote control. Break it and turn on the TV.

I smash it open with my crowbar and pick up the control. I don’t like this at all. My stomach is tied into a fucking knot.

One part of me wants to open the TV and the other dreads the idea of what I will see.

But time is of the essence and I take a deep breath pressing the button. It opens and I see a close up of someone’s face. Not his real face though. He is wearing the mask of a scarecrow.

It looks ugly and terrifying.

"Hello Jason. Do you want to play a game?" The sound of an old clock can be heard somewhere next to him. Tick tock tick tock.

"What do you want, you sick animal. What have you done to my daughter?"

"Ah ah ah, I would be careful how I speak if I were you. For how well you behave gives more time for your daughter to live. But let me ask you something. Are you really a good father Jason? Hmm?" His voice sounds demonic. He is altering it somehow making it all the more terrifying.

Hearing the last question fear and guilt hits me, I break into a cold sweat. I was not the best father but this guy knew stuff about me. Stuff he shouldn’t.

"I will play your fucking game. Show me she is alive first!"

'YOU DO NOT MAKE DEMANDS JASON! MY GAME, MY RULES. UNLESS YOU WANT ME TO GIVE HER BACK TO YOU IN PIECES!" He roars landing his fists on the table in front of him.

Wow, that guy had some serious issues with control and authority.

He kicks off the chair and I am staring at an empty desk and what looks like an old office. My heart is racing. Sweat pearls appear on my temple. He picks up the camera and obscures its view from me. Waiting is sheer agony I tell you. Finally he reveals to me what I been longing to see. What a relief! The camera shows my girl. My precious Nadia.

She is tied up against a pine tree. All cold and wet. Terrified. He grabs her hair pulling it back. "Say hello to daddy little girl. Tell him to play good or you go back to him piece by piece!"

Nadia cries in pain and despair and he commands her louder this time.

"Do what he says daddy! Please. I am scared!"

He turns the camera towards his face again and calmly speaks to me. I can barely swallow from anger and fear.

"Jason, how far are you willing to go to save her eh?"

"As far as I have to!" I answer with unshakable determination.

He lets out the most hysterical and sick laugh I have heard in my life.

"Nice, very nice, we made a good start ain’t that right Jason? The night is still young. But are you willing to kill?"

That moment the TV switches off and a man with his face covered charges at me out of nowhere.

He is not to strong in muscle but strong enough to push me on the table and make us both fall down. My crowbar leaves my hands.

He lands me two good hits on the face but I find a gap kicking his side with my knee.

He falls back and I stand up grabbing whatever I find tossing everything at him. He avoids some and others hit him inthe face.

He takes out a knife from behind his back and charges at me again. I try to stop him with both hands struggling and going backwards. We crash upon some shelves of a small library and the whole damn thing falls on top of us.

Grabbing his hair, I smash his face on the ground twice and try to stand up. I grab whatever I can find and make it to the window leaning on it trying to catch my breath.

My body is consumed by pain, feeling the heat everywhere but mostly in my face. He stands again but I am no way giving him the time to react.

Determined as ever I dash to grab my crowbar but when I turn, he swings a chair at me, smashing in my face.

I fall down bleeding from god knows where anymore.

I try to calm down a bit pretending to be passed out and it turns to my favor since I feel the cold metal of the crowbar hidden beneath my body.

He gets closer looking to see if I am unconscious.

When I can feel his frantic breathing closer than ever I risk everything and pull out the hidden crowbar, hitting him hard on the side of his head.

He is on the ground again and this time it calls for an end.

I am furious and sitting on top of him pressing the crowbar horizontally against his neck.

"So much hate! You fight as if...as if..."I try to read between his words but the TV opens again.

"Kill him Jason!"

"Screw you!"

"What did you say?"

"Damn it! You are sick in the mind!"

"Kill him and your daughter will get to eat and drink something and stay in a warm place while you reach your next

destination. Spare him and well...she dies!" He laughed again.

The guy is too weak to react and awaits his fate but I can hear him whispering something.

I lean closer to the point where the maniac holding Nadia cannot see.

"Hey! What are you doing down there? I cannot see!"

I ignore him completely and try to listen to what the guy says.

"Save....my...boy...for I have failed. Please! Kill me and you save my son!"

I stand back up and begin to apply pressure on his throat with my crowbar. My mind is in complete denial. How could I? Playing judge and jury taking away a life? Was he a victim to this freak as well? His words struck me hard when he asked me to save his son.

Nadia's memory appeared before my eyes, giggling and running in the park as I was removing bit by bit this poor father’s soul. I was going into shock but I had no other choice if I wanted to see Nadia again.

I began screaming in rage trying to cover the sounds of his choking. When it finally stopped, I turned my head looking at the scarecrow with my chest panting.

"You better keep your word, you sick bastard."

"We want you as fit as possible. Catch your breath, the night is still young. I will call you when its time. You surprise me Jason, your will is great for a weakling like you."

The TV closes again and I am left in the horrid pictures of a dead person which I killed and a creepy old cabin.

I stand up and light up a cigarette with trembling hands trying to hold back my emotions.

But I cannot, for no man is ever prepared for something like this. Be it the toughest war veteran or the everyday person.

No one is prepared or knows the limits of what he would do if his own creation, his very own blood, was abducted and at the mercy of a psycho.

The night was still young, but I would somehow play him at his own game for he underestimated the will of a person to survive when their family is in peril.

I throw around and kick and punch everything I find in the cabin as despair and torment hit me without mercy. They were to be my greatest enemies for what sought to be the longest night of my life and the one that would forever remain

carved in my heart.