Kidnapping

a mini-short story

Ransom note:

She ought to demand one.

If she asked for one, it would make this all even more believable.

She felt utterly free writing it—the ransom note.  Felt as though it were some vent to let her feelings free—those feelings which they had always locked inside he, like food trapped in suppressing Saran-Wrap.  She could demand anything she wanted.

What she wanted, though, was love. 

Well, she could demand anything but that.

She could demand a million dollars even—and did.  She demanded the hand-off spot to be the old shed by the creek, where she’d always ran away to think as a younger child.  What difference would it make?  They would never pay it.

They would scoff at the idea of paying for her safe return.  Just let the kidnappers keep her, they’d say, and good riddance.

And if—by some slim chance—they did pay the ransom?  Well, then she’d take the money and run.

But she knew they wouldn’t.

Thinking about he ransom that she had just written (in handwriting exactingly, expertly disguised), she thought that perhaps she ought to make everything even more realistic.

Every last detail had to be just right.

Out of all things, that was what they’d taught her the most.  Every last detail had to be just right.

She had never been perfect for them.

She had always been a detail off.

Well, this—this—would be perfect.

They would see perfection and would applaud the kidnappers for leaving no detail undone.

She wrecked her room—tossed all her books from their shelves onto the floor, flipped her bed onto its side, and punched in her television screen with a baseball bat.  She sprinkled blood from the doorway of the room to the window—her kidnappers had wounded her as she’d tried some daring escape.  Every detail was perfect: even the blood was real, robbed from a stray dog that somewhat had left dead in the road.

She left the ransom note on her windowsill, fluttering from the light breeze that crept in through the crack underneath the window.

 They’d find it and say good riddance to her, and she would be free to live as she’d always longed, out from their yoke.

She’d be free to live imperfectly.

 

           She found the money left on the footsteps of the shed a week later—complete with written pleas for her return, all sealed with tears.

Author's Note

should i make it longer?

Reviews

[Dressed in Poetry]

Awwww. I like it. It's sad, in a way, because I picture the people who thought she was kidnapped freaking out and crying, and that is just sad. But then she is so wonderfully characterized that I get over that. I like the length too, and the way it ends, so I'm going to say no, don't make it longer.