Chapter 1 While she was dreaming
Disclaimer: Everything belonging to Tolkien is Tolkien. Everything from my own
imagination is mine.
I dreamed I was running.
I was running from something, fast and far.
I just wanted to get as far away as I could.
A terrible fear gripped me, something I could not comprehend.
She woke up with a start and sat upright in her bed. She had dreamed something but it was slipping away fast. All she remembered was her pounding heart.
She leaned forward and rapped her arms around her knees.
For days now, she had felt emptiness in her heart that she did not understand. Like she had lost something explicitly valuable. She turned her head to the side, taking in her dark surroundings. Her room was as it always was a desk and cupboard propped against the wall to her left. The door in the wall in front of her, leading to her bathroom, was open a crack. To her right a small bookshelf leaned against the wall, and a bedside table was next to her bed with an alarm clock glaring the time in red numbers. Everything was the same.
She didn't feel tired even though she had gone to bed very late that evening. She didn't even try going back to sleep. She got out of bed and opened the door next to her bookshelf leading to the lounge and dining room. It was not a very large room. It had just enough space to jam a small table, with enough room for four, into the left corner of the room, and a small couch and TV into the right. She did not bother switching on the light, she knew exactly where her few possessions lay, and went strait to the couch, colourless in the dark.
She switched on the television, a news speaker appeared. He was standing in front of a house in some far away city, speaking of a man who had been killed a couple of days before. She pulled a cushion from beside herself and hugged it tightly. It was not fare, she thought. Why didn't the murderer think of the people the man left behind, a wife perhaps, and children? A silent tear trickled down her face, as she thought of the injustice in the world.
Suddenly the darkness of her room pressed hard on her and she felt very alone. Almost as if everyone had left her. She knew very well, of course, that this was not so. She had her very loving, and sometimes very annoying family that did not live far away. She had the best friends one could ask for and the best job in the world. But at just that moment, in her dark living room, she felt very, very alone in deed.
Shaking her head, as if to rid it from the dark and depressing thoughts, she switched of the TV and got up again. She would not be able to sleep that night she knew it. With a sigh she walked towards her room and switched on the light. She looked around again, just in case she would see something different, something that was missing, but everything was as it always was.
She walked towards her cupboard and pulled out some clothes she could wear to work. She had no set working times, as long as she worked for a set amount of hours a day and was there when meetings were held.
She laid the clothes on her unmade bed and went into the bathroom to shower. A row of images passed through her mind whilst she stood under the water. A beautiful garden, rich with flowers and trees, almost like a forest. Mountains on the horizon with peeks hidden by clouds. An abandoned swing hanging from the branches of an ancient tree. She smiled at the thoughts, though she did not recognise any of the pictures. She got out of the shower, dried herself and walked back into her room to get dressed.
She was old, she thought, putting on her underwear. 27 and she still did not have a proper boyfriend. Of course there had been the stray few with whom she had had her first sexual experiences. But if she was honest with herself, she had always known that none of them were Mr Right, the man with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her mortal life. No, and even worse she had always felt so bad after doing it, as though she had betrayed… who? Herself? Mr Right? She could not quite tell. She buttoned her blouse as she shrugged off these peculiar feelings. Feelings she had not felt for a long time.
She opened her cupboard for a second time and looked at her reflection in the mirror of the door. Sun bleached hair, brown eyes, freckles, gosh how she hated those freckles, but otherwise she looked quite good. Well as good as one could at 4 o'clock in the morning. She stuck out her tongue at her reflection and chuckled. Even at 27 she was still too immature to think of a family, no it was best this way. She nodded at her reflection, affirming her outfit, and turned towards her desk. There she had her bag with all the work she should have finished the evening before, and her keys.
Picking both up she headed towards her front door. There she pulled on her working shoes (uncomfortable little buggers!), checked that all the lights were off, and strode out the door of her small apartment in the second story of the house.
She hummed a little tune on her way down the stair and had regained a little happy feeling when she approached her car. It did not however last very long. A sharp pain went through her head two steps in front of her car and she instinctively shut her eyes. Not another headache, she thought, bringing her hand up to her head. She held her eyes shut until the throbbing had passed away a little. The sharp pain in her head, however, was exchanged for a sharp pain in her arm.
"What the-," she uttered, looking up sharply to the person who had snatched her arm, and was now grasping rather painfully.
Any curse, though, was blown away from her thoughts by the sight of what she had only ever seen in movies before.
"Now, what would a little bitch like yerself be doing all alone in a deserted part of Middle Earth like this?" The man was filthy, she noticed, dirt smeared all over his face and clothes, and a disgusting smirk showed rows of rotting teeth. She moved back, impulsively but did not get very far. "Now, now, yer would not be scared by the good old Buff, would yer?" He sniggered and his smirk widened, betraying what he really thought.
It occurred to her that the language he spoke seemed rawer than the English she was used to, but her disgust of the stench that wafted over to her combined with the fear she was feeling made that slight notion fade into thing air.
" 'Ey Buff," called a second man, she had not noticed yet, from somewhere behind her. " 'Ere, this one 'as yellow 'air. Aint that what's asked for on the market? Donnet make 'er somfing valuable?" She heard the smirk in his voice, and felt his hand go through her hair, and her disgust rose to a level she had never thought possible.
Then again, she had never thought it possible that men this filthy would be straying in front of her house. A strange quirk irked her at that moment, it was a bit darker than usual, was there not always a lamp on in front of her house? The only light she could see from her position, without moving, was the moonlight. And was it not a bit quite, even in her semi-suburban part of the city? Her stomach turned horrible, something was definitely not right.