Now, For Your Reading Pleasure . . .

Tales of Adventure presents one of the two Grand Prize-winning stories. Enjoy!

I JUST LOVE THESE RELAXING VACATIONS

By Hazel

Other people’s names are changed, but nothing else is.

It starts when I flag down the taxi. Everything’s normal, except that the driver really, really needs a shave, more than I think they usually seem to. I get in, give him the address of the mall where I’m supposed to meet my friend Angie, but then he starts driving in the wrong direction, and cackles when I ask what the heck he’s doing. Something’s wrong, I think. I start banging on the window and screaming. He hits me in the head, and I black out. Where in the world are the police when you need them?

The next thing I know, we’re pulling up in the alley behind an abandoned warehouse. Another man comes out and opens the car door. He pulls me out, but I’m kicking and screaming like crazy. He pulls my arms behind my back, and I can’t break free. I kick him in the shins as hard as I can, and then I wham my head into his nose. Now he lets go, and I run. But the first man has gotten out of the car, and catches me by my hair. That is definitely not playing fair. They drag me inside. There’s a woman leaning against the wall, smoking. She seems familiar. Then I realize that she’s the creepy-looking woman who’s been hanging around my school lately. With a gasp, I recognize the smell of her smoke from the description in a drug awareness class we had in school. She’s smoking marijuana!

One of the men says, “We got her,” and she says, “It’s about time, Seth.” Then Seth says, “Where should we put her?”

“Oh, upstairs somewhere.”

The other man cuts in. “I still think we should lock her in the car outside.”

“Yeah, right, and leave her the keys, too, huh?”

“Ok, ok, you don’t have to be so rude,” he grumbles.

“Yeah he does,” says the woman. “Really, Andrew, you ought to know that by now.”

Seth drags me upstairs, and I bruise his shins several times along the way. Then he flings me into an empty room and locks the door. I fall down and bang my head on the wall. I mean, jeepers creepers, are they trying to give me a brain concussion?!?
I realize he’s taken my purse.

Brilliant.
Now there’s no way I can escape.

I bang on the door and yell, “Hey, give me back my purse! It has all my make-up in it! I neeeeeed my make-up!”
Not what you were expecting, huh?
Well, just keep waiting.

Andrew comes and throws it at me, saying, “Here, take it. Gee, how dumb do you think we are? Did we think we wouldn’t search it?”

“I think you’re very dumb,” I say. “And what’s more, you’re a terrible kidnapper. I don’t think you even realize what you forgot.”

“What?” There’s a note of panic in his voice. “Tell me!”

“Hahaha! Like I’d ever tell! How dumb do you think I am?” Then I run past him into the hall, but Seth has come up, and he grabs me and yells, “Marjorie, she’s escaping!”

“Well, bash her head in. Why are you telling me?” is the reply. Seth and Andrew stuff me back in the room and go downstairs. An argument starts.

“What do you mean, ‘why are you telling me?’ Are you nuts or something? This whole thing was your idea!”

“I just wanted to get rich, Seth. You’re the criminals. I have nothing to do with it. The cops have nothing on me, I’m just your wife.”

“Oh, so if we’re caught, you’re gonna lay all the blame on us? That’s nice!”

“Oh, stop it, Seth. I’ll call her parents and ask for ransom.”

I decide they’re occupied for a while and open my purse. I get out the book that will be most useful to me, Getting Hot Boys. I open it up to the hidden box I’ve cut in the pages inside and take out my cell phone. Hee, hee, hee! They never guessed. I have the coolest kit in my purse. But when I try to call the police, a big NO SERVICE appears on the screen. Jeepers creepers, how far out of the city am I? I wonder where I am, period. I take my jackknife out of the box, fold out the screwdriver, and take a heating vent out of the floor and then use the knife blade to cut through the duct and ceiling below. They’re really old and flimsy, and I have a good knife. Now I can see downstairs. I grab my phone. Even if I can’t call the police, I can still take pictures with it. I get a shot of each of the kidnappers to show the police later. Then I turn it off to save the battery.

There’s a shriek downstairs. “Seth! Get over here! They’re saying she’s still at home!”

By listening in to their shouting match, I realize they thought I was Hazel Fitzimmons, a really rich girl at my school who looks kind of like me, but I’m Hazel Fitzwilliam. Marjorie comes charging up the stairs and flings open the door. She grabs me by my hair and screeches, “Who are you? How can we get hold of your parents? How could you DO THIS TO US????”

“Get off me! What are you talking about?”

“You’re not that rich girl! What are we gonna doooo?”

I refuse to give them my phone number or anything, and eventually Seth and Andrew take her downstairs to try to calm her down, because she’s having hysterics.

I spend a few days there, planning my escape and eating the pbj sandwiches they give me, which are truly nasty. At least I don’t have allergies to worry about.
Lucky for me the stone of the walls is rough.

A couple of days later, I’m off! I’ve wiped a whole lot of jam off my sandwiches the past few days, and now I smear it on some floorboards and pry them up with my jackknife. I stick them to the window and hit it as hard as I can. The idea is for the glass to break and stick to the jam, so it doesn’t fall down and make a lot of noise, but I can’t break it.
Brilliant.

I take the boards off and pull up the heating vent again. I throw it at the window and it goes crashing out in a beautiful shower of broken glass. I run to the window and see Andrew lying on the ground, out cold, the vent lying by his head. Hooray! If only it were Seth. I climb down the wall, seriously encumbered by my purse. I have just started sneaking away from the wall when a huge, vicious looking dog comes running at me, snarling. I’m really sorry, but I have no idea how I manage to run back to the wall and get twenty feet up before the dog gets there. Seth has heard, and he comes running out. He pulls out a gun and fires at me. I just love these relaxing vacations, don’t you? I manage to get up on the roof without getting killed, and then I start running and leap to the next roof. Seth and Marjorie come pounding up the stairs, and before I’m three roofs away, they come out on the roof of the first building. She’s armed too, and fires at me. She’s a terrible shot. I keep running, and they run after me. I land on a roof with a huge colony of moldy chimneys on it, and, hidden by them, climb down the wall and in a window. A minute later, I can hear them crashing around above me, saying things like, “Where is she? She disappeared.”

Idiots.
When they leave, I lie down and try to sleep.

When I wake up, it’s night. I decide not to risk climbing down the wall in the dark, and try to find a staircase inside. I find one, but it’s in really bad condition, and I have to test each step before putting weight on it. I climb out a window on the bottom floor and consult my compass. The kidnappers didn’t get it because it’s hidden inside a pink compact, and they didn’t look inside.

My kit also includes gum, a sewing kit in a lipstick tube, a penlight that looks for all the world like a pen, various first-aid supplies in make-up containers, a cutesy pink note book and cutesy pink pen in which I take important notes, an expired credit card to open doors, a book, Getting Hot Boys, with a secret box inside for my knife and cell phone, and a roll of duct tape disguised as “Mecko The Gecko’s Re-Decko-Ating Tape (for use on windowsills, doorframes, etc.) style number: 65783943, style: Pretty in Pink”. I had to use pink duct tape, but I think it will work just as well.

When Seth first drove off in the taxi, we were going south, so the best I can do is walk north. The first population I see in this area takes the form of a rat the size of a dog and his cat-sized friends. The first human population leers at me and makes me severely uneasy. After walking for a couple hours, fast, but not too fast (I hope), it begins to turn into morning. A few hours after that, after (in my paranoid mind, at least) narrowly escaping mugging and worse seven and a half times, I see Andrew hurrying down the deserted street, with a tremendous lump on his head. Ha! Serve him right! I try to get away without attracting attention, but he spots me and starts running and yelling at the top of his lungs. I run, but I’m looking over my shoulder at him, and I run right into Marjorie and hurt my nose. She grabs my arm, digging into it with her red fingernails. She’s a lot stronger than she looks, and jeepers creepers, can she ever screech loud! Seth comes running and grabs me from behind. I swing around and he bashes his head on a wall. He groans and slumps to the ground. I kick Marjorie as hard as I can, and then Andrew tries to help her. I’m not really sure how it happens, but he trips and lands with his head on a brick. He’s out cold, too. I tie them up with my duct tape.

I can barely stop laughing when I think of a guy like Seth, lying on the ground, trussed up in Pretty in Pink Re-Decko-Ating Tape.
Then I realize Marjorie’s disappeared.
Brilliant.
I say that a lot.

My nose is bleeding from the fight, but I keep walking. Then I get this creepy I-am-being-watched feeling, and I realize that Marjorie can track me by the blood I’m dripping. I start squeezing my nose, and suddenly I see Marjorie running towards me. I scream and run away, and come out on a much more crowded street, just as a bus is pulling up. I jump on, and Marjorie falls down, so I get away. (Let this be a lesson to you: don’t chase people while wearing stiletto heels.)

The bus pulls away from the curb and as soon as I’ve paid, I sink down on one of the seats with a sigh. Everyone is staring at me, and I realize how filthy I am, not to mention that you can still tell I had a nosebleed. I get off a couple stops later, and find a bus that will take me home. On the walk between the bus stop and home, I find a poster my parents must have made, telling everyone I’m missing. I take it with me as a souvenir. When I get home, I call the police and tell them I’m back, also that Seth and Andrew are tied up in tape, and my guess as to where it was. When they let me get off the phone, I call my mother’s cell phone. She’s walking around the neighborhood, looking for me, and when she realizes it’s me, she screams and comes charging home with my father. The police find Seth and Andrew, and later Marjorie, and now they want to come and talk to me and see the pictures I took , the newspaper wants to talk to me, all my friends want to make sure it’s really me, and it’s 2:45 in the morning before I get to take a shower.

THE END