The Missing

She looked around, trying to see in the darkness. Her throat was sore, parched from having nothing to drink in so long.
Next to her came a snapping noise as if someone or something stepped on a stick or a twig.
She closed her eyes, hoping he hadn't come back. What was left if he did? She didn't know her name or where she was from. Who had she been? The snapping noise came again, this time accompanied by a touch on her arm and a voice telling her it would be all right, she would be okay. She opened her eyes and there was light illuminating so much she couldn't make out the face above her, the owner of the kind voice.
She was laying on some kind of cot in a small, windowless room that could have been in a cellar or someplace dark and hidden. She pulled away as hands came toward her, undoing the gag in her mouth. The face she was able to make out now: a middle aged man with a craggy face and roughened skin as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. The man was wearing jeans with hooded sweatshirt. If she remembered right, it was chilly out, the season Fall out. How long had she been in this place and who was this man that was untying the gag? What was he doing and going to do?
There. The gag was off and the man was telling her he was going to untie her feet and hands, to just sit tight, that she was brave and people had thought she was dead. Her family, her friends and co-workers, she'd been missing for a long time.
But now she was found and everything was going to be okay.
She just had to hang tight and he'd get her out of this hellhole. He had one of those voices she could fall asleep to, be hypnotized by, dangerously lulled.

Author's Note

What do you think?