Flash Fiction
•June 10, 2010 • Leave a Comment
The hand was stretched out towards Danika. She wanted to run, to turn and forget that this had ever happened but she was too curious. As a kid, mom had always told her not to talk to strangers. She’d always been shy and it was hard for her to meet friends in school but she got along alone, but why did this feel different? The hand warmly invited her in harmlessly. She had no idea the trouble she was about to get herself into.
She grasped the hand emerging from the bush and was instantly jerked into the branches. The hand was pulling her deeper and deeper into this seemingly never ending plant. Thorns and branches tore at her face and clothes pulling her, trying to tear her down. She tried to rip her hand loose, to run and never turn back but the hand held her tightly and pulled with tremendous force. She then noticed that a boy was pulling her. His face concentrated forward into the dark branches surrounding them. He was tall but looked about Danika’s age; he had hard facial features and piercing eyes. He looked troubled. His clothes were torn and stained, and he looked like he hadn’t had a good meal in a while. In the hand that wasn’t holding hers held an old film camera.
Danika called out to the boy but he kept going forward without so much of a pause. He was intent on taking her somewhere, but where? When he abruptly stopped she nearly crashed into him knocking her off of her feet. He stared thoughtfully through a wall of bushes as if he could see something there beyond it. Danika strained her eyes to see what he was looking at. There was nothing. His hand still clutched tightly around hers, he spoke.
“You’re in danger, Danika.”
Danika was shocked into silence. Questions stirred around in her head but all she managed to say was, “Who are you?”
“Adam,” he said, “I’m here to help you.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You can’t just drag me through the woods and expect me–”
“I am not allowed to tell you much but I am here to save your life. Your father sent me.”
This is impossible, she thought. Danika’s dad had left her and her mom alone to fend for themselves when she was seven. Mom never talked about who he was but when she did the story always changed as if she was hiding something from Danika and she said that she had no pictures of him. Why did she believe this mysterious boy? Something about him reminded her of the faint memory that she had left of her dad and for reasons she didn’t know why, she liked it.
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