Trapped

"Nightmares"

"You may have everyone else fooled and wrapped around your little finger, but not me." Noah growled through gritted teeth. His grasp tightened around my neck. "You're threatening our entire way of living. Causing everyone to break one of our most important laws and putting all of our lives on the line just to save your one pathetic life. You may have managed to fool Eli, but I'm putting an end to this. I promised not to tell the board about you, but I never said I wouldn't handle this situation myself. Once you're dead, we can all go back to normal and not have to worry about any of this nonsense anymore. No one will even have to know what happened, I will just tell everyone that I seen you go out the back door towards the woods and that you never came back. They'll just think you ran away, and eventually, they'll forget that you ever existed." He continued to explain. It's clear that this isn't the first time he's thought about what would happen afterward if he were to kill me. I push at his hands and his chest, trying to get free. Silently gasping for air but failing to get any new oxygen into my lungs with how tight his grip is around my neck. Somehow, I finally managed to kick him away from me, causing him to lose his grip on me and hit the wall just opposite of me. I wanted to run or scream out for help, but all my body could seem to do in that moment was drop to the ground. I inhaled deeply and quickly as I tried to catch my breath again in between coughs. Noah, on the other hand, recovered quickly and in what felt like only seconds he was back at my side. He kicked his foot hard into my stomach and then again into my ribs. A pain filled whimper escaped, and I began to cry from the pain and overwhelming feeling of fear. "Noah, please stop!" I begged. He seemed to lack any empathy for me. He strattled his legs on either side of me where I had fell to the floor, and he began to reach down to choke me once again. "Please don't do this, Noah. You don't have to do this, I will leave, please don't kill me. Noah -" I cried out and pleaded with him just before his hands wrapped around my throat again and tightened, cutting off my sentence and once again my ability to breathe. "He's really going to kill me..." I thought to myself, "I can't even attempt to stop him this time, I'm too weak, and he has the advantage. I should've forced myself to at least stay standing. Danny and Zane would be so disappointed. They always told me to do everything in my power to not let my opponent manage to get on top and to fight like hell if I ever find myself at a disadvantage, but here I am..." I continued to think. I can feel my body giving up, no longer able to even lift a finger as the weakness consumes me, and the darkness begins to flood my vision. "I wish I would've fought harder when I had the chance," I thought to myself again. Suddenly, my body gasps for air once again, and I inhale another long, deep, beautiful breath. My breath is struggling to steady itself in between coughing fits and the sharp pain in my ribs that comes immediately after every deep breath and every cough. My vision slowly starts returning aside from being blurry from all the tears I can't seem to put a stop to. "Am I still alive? Is this real life?" I questioned in my head. "How could you do that to her, Noah!? She's just an innocent person, a GOOD person, she risked her life to save mine!" I could hear Eli's voice saying angrily. I look over to them to see that Eli had Noah pinned up against the wall by his shirt. "She's just some random pathetic person who isn't worth saving. No one would even miss her!" Noah growled back. "Everyone in this house would miss her besides you! She's worth saving!" Eli replied. "No, she isn't! And that's how I know she's fooled you just like the rest of them! What are you all going to do a month from now, or a year from now even, when she decides to use this as black mail for something or she runs to the media to get her five minutes of fame and to get rich without even a second thought about how it risks all of our lives. You know that they'll most likely kill all of us once they find out that we all hid this from them and put the whole program at risk. She's no different than any other normal person. The first chance she gets that benefits her from talking about everything, you know she will be just the same as everyone else!" Noah explained. "Noah, she's not chloe! Alethia wouldn't do that to us." Eli retorted. "Yeah right, that what Zane's mom and grandpa thought about Chloe too, but look where that got them all! I can't lose everyone over this. She just needs to die, so all of this can be over and done with." Noah said as he pushed Eli's hands off of his shirt finally. Noah took a slight step towards me, and I could feel my heart sink into my stomach before Eli stepped in his way. "You're going to lose everyone anyways if you don't stop." Eli said with sorrow in his voice. Noah gave a slight chuckle, and just before he turned to walk away, he said, "At least you all would be alive to hate me." Eli grabbed his arm quickly, and I could see that he was holding on tightly. "Noah, I swear to God you better never lay a single finger on her ever again. Stay far away from her." Eli threatened. Noah yanked his arm out of Eli's grip and walked fast paced down the hall towards his room. The reality was beginning to hit me finally, and I could feel my heart starting to beat out of control. Feeling scared out of my mind that someone really almost killed me, someone I had hoped that maybe one day would come around to not hating me just like what happened with Eli. Eli rushed to my side now that Noah was out of sight, and he picked me up into his arms bridal style and silently carried me into my room and layed me down gently on my bed. "I did what you said, I tried to stay away from him." I cried out. "I know... I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you sooner, I tried to stay near him at all times but I never even heard him leave his room." Eli said as he looked down to the floor feeling guilty. I tried to wipe my tears away and stop myself from crying. "Listen, Alethia, please don't tell anyone what happened today... you can't tell anyone what happened or what you heard." Eli explained. "What... what do you mean? How am I supposed to pretend like this didn't happen? And what I heard? Do you mean about that girl Chloe and your grandpa and zanes mom?" I blurted out the series of questions, confused and upset. "Yes. You just can't tell them anything, please promise me." Eli said with a very serious look on his face. "Tell me about chloe first." I demanded. Eli let out a sigh and then explained, "No one else knows, it is the biggest secret my family has kept for years and why we're so strict about the rules. When Noah was 14, he met this girl named Chloe one day when he was out exploring the forest, and after a couple of times of meeting back up with her, he fell in love with her. It was his first love and only love besides Tara, and he felt so strongly for her. He kept her a secret at first because at that age, we weren't really supposed to talk to outsiders. He didn't really understand why we had the rules we had and thought they were stupid and pointless, so one day he wanted to show her what our lives were about an he brought her with him to see one of the creatures that our grandpa and zanes mom were studying and trying to take down. It tried to kill them both, but our grandpa managed to kill it before it got ahold of them. Unfortunately, though, that left them in quite a bad situation, have a 14 year old girl be tortured and put to death when it was Noah's fault or try to protect her. So they tried to protect her. She stayed with us for a while, and no one knew but our family and zanes mom. She promised she would never tell anyone and she seemed so nice. noah fell more and more in love with her while she stayed with us until one day no one could find her. It was almost like she just completely disappeared until Noah was able to find her again in the forest nearby where they first met. Her and her parents were living in a camper in the forest and she ran away and told them everything. She thought that they could get rich off of a story like that, and she said she was kidnapped and her parents were going to sue the government over her being taken. Noah came home and told all of us what she said, and Grandpa called zanes mom to see if she could go talk them out of it. That's when she was killed and then they came to our house planning to kill all of us, but our grandpa said it was all his fault and that he was the only one to blame and begged them to spare the rest of our lives. They shot him in the head right in front of all of us and said, "Let that be your one and only warning to never let this happen again." And then he called someone on the way out and we heard him say, "yeah we just killed the woman and the old man, the kid and her family are being transported to the warehouse and they'll be dumped soon after". We all kept what happened a secret and dealt with it alone and let everyone else fill in the blanks. Zane and his father were contacted by police about his mom and they said she was in an accident and that they were too late to save her, and everyone assumed grandpa had just went on one of his Many trips and just never came back for some reason. Chloe betrayed all of us. She knew what was at stake and pretended to care for all of us and in the end, the second she got the chance, she ran away and tried to make her family rich and famous even if it meant that we would die. We saved her for nothing because saving her life ended in her and her whole family being killed, zanes mom being killed, and us having to watch our grandpa get killed right in front of us." I was too stunned to speak for a moment. Thinking about everything they've been through, about how Zane doesn't know the real cause of his mom's death, about how my very existence is putting all their lives at risk. "So please, don't tell them about Chloe and don't tell them about what happened tonight. Please keep it a secret." Eli begged. Feeling like I didn't have a choice in that moment, I slowly and hesistently nodded my head in agreement. "Thank you, Alethia." Eli said softly as he reached into his pocket and pulled out my phone that I didn't know he had and have no idea when he took, and he handed it back to me as he stood up to walk to the door. "Call me if you need anything." He said lastly. Before I could fully process everything that just happened, he turned the lock on the inside of my door and then shut it on his way out so that no one could easily come back into my room. My mind began to race as I lay there still in pain from being choked and kicked in my stomach and ribs. How did he get my phone? When did he take it? Was he not going to give it back to me unless I said I wouldn't tell anyone? What if I didn't agree to keep it a secret? Do I risk my life by not telling anyone and continuing to stay here where Noah can try something again so that I don't betray their trust, or do I prove that they're right about people being selfish and willing to betray others if it benefits them and tell someone who can help protect me? Will I just become more of a burden and cause more problems in their relationships with each other if I were to tell someone what happened? What do I do?

I start to cry again as I'm lying there with everything racing through my mind until I finally cry myself to sleep. As I slept, I started to replay every bad thing that ever happened to me, like being trapped in my worst nightmares on repeat over and over until my phones ringing next to my ear broke me free. I glanced at the window to see that it's nighttime now. "Zane, danny, or one of the others must be calling me to tell me it's dinner time now." I thought to myself as I struggled to wake up enough. With my eyes now closed once again, I click the button to answer and place the phone to my ear. In a very groggy voice, I say, "Hello?" And on the other end, I hear the very familiar voice that sends icy chills through my entire body. "I knew I'd get ahold of you soon, sweetheart.