Page 1 of Tortured

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LACEY

“Hey Lacey! You having fun yet?” Alex grabs my arm and hugs me, tipping a little on her five-inch red stilettos.

I roll my eyes and giggle. “Not as much as you apparently!”

“Yeah, baby!” Alex grins wildly and wriggles sensuously to the throbbing bass of the club music. Her tanned, toned arms begin snaking over her head and her glittering silver dress rides up on her slim, tanned thighs. I watch every man’s eyes in the place instantly snap to her. The ones that worry me though, belong to two strange men standing on the edge of the room. I watch them watching us and whispering to themselves. One of my weird talents is lip reading. I can only catch glimpses of them between writhing bodies but I swear I saw… “that one for sure” and “breeder’s hips.” I have no clue what they are talking about but my intuition is telling me it is nothing good.

“Where are Ruby and Jenna?” I scream in Alex’s ear over the pounding music.

She leans closer. “I don’t know. What’s the matter?”

I pull her arm. “We need to find them. I think something bad is going to happen and we need to get the hell outta here!”

Alex’s short, sleek raven hair flies out as she glances around. “What do you mean?”

I sigh. “Let’s just get outta here! Do you see Jenna and Ruby?”

I swing around, my long blond hair whipping left and right as I search the crowd for my two friends. Fear claws at my throat as I realize I can’t see them.

The two men now settle on either side of the room, the lights shifting so that I can barely see them fiddling with something under their coats. I swear under my breath.

“Hell’s bells! Alex, we need to find them and get out of here! Whatever’s happening is starting right now. You go to the right and I’ll hit left. Meet me by the back door. Let’s go!”

My short sapphire dress twists and twinkles under the rotating lights as I dart through the writhing bodies. I run, desperately searching for my friends.

Suddenly, a flash of vivid red catches my eye. The exact scarlet of Ruby’s hair.

“Ruby, Jenna!” I push my way through the gyrating couples, apologizing profusely, my eyes locked on where I saw the flash of red. “I’m so sorry! Excuse me, just trying to get to my friends!”

Ruby’s short red curls whip around and her tawny brown eyes widen. “Lacey?”

I lean closer and practically shriek into her ear. “Where’s Jenna? We’ve got to get out of this place. I think there’s guys with guns in here!”

Both of us know what guns in a crowded club mean. Attacks are constantly in the news. It never ends well.

“Let’s go!” I grab Ruby’s hand and we push and shove our way out of the claustrophobic, heated press of bodies.

“Do you see Jenna and Alex?”

Ruby’s golden eyes dart back and forth, scanning the crowd. “No, do you?”

“No!” I wail. I can see the two men still fiddling with something on either side of the room. One of them catches my eye and I see his eyes darken and glow.

“Oh my god!” I whisper. I spot Alex arguing with Jenna and attempting to pull the statuesque blond out of her protesting dance partner’s hands.

“There they are!” I scream. I shove harder, desperate to get away. Ruby fights to keep up right behind me.

Just as we reach them and I begin to feel less crazed, a blue light flares on both sides of the dance floor. All movement and sound ceases. I can’t move but I’m still aware. I see those two men coming straight for us. Their eyes glow demon-bright. I want to scream and run but can’t make my muscles move. A long, slim and very cold hand pushes my hair to the side and something icy presses into the side of my throat. That’s the last thing I remember until I wake up and realize that it’s even worse than I thought. They aren’t going to shoot the place up.

I’ve been kidnapped by aliens for whatever purpose. And when I look in their cold, yet hungry eyes…I know it’s nothing good. My soul shrivels and I curl up into a ball, wallowing in self-pity. Surely I have enough pain that I’ve been forced to bear over the years. I deserve something good. Losing my entire family should have been enough for any one person to deal with. I pray that somehow help comes but it seems impossible. Do our astronauts chase alien kidnappers? I kinda doubt it. But maybe something else good will happen, a miracle of some sort.

I do have a feeling that we’re not getting out of this any time soon. I lie back down and force my heavy eyes closed, knowing that for right now there’s nothing I can do. I just need to keep going.

Until help comes…or I do out here in space, which seems preferable to some of the other things I’m thinking.

I struggle against the big alien’s hard, angry hands yet again. “Let me go!

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