Chapter Ten: The Boa Constrictor

"It's scary when you go underwater and hold your breath longer than you can and you feel like your lungs are imploding because you need to breathe." -Anonymous

Eddie, Nina, Fabian, KT, and Alfie were trying to not bring too much chaos to the already chaotic situation but they were not very good at keeping calm, especially Alfie. He normally freaked out if something wasn't exactly right and right now, he was going crazy. After a while, Trudy came in and looked at the eight distraught teenagers all sitting in the den and asked what was going on.

"Oh, Trudy," Joy started, "Patricia's wondered off."

Trudy laughed and said, "No, no dearie. Patricia's parents brought her a cab. She's going to see her sister perform somewhere over the weekend." Everyone except for Jerome looked skeptical of the whole situation but Joy and Willow didn't question it much either.

"But, Trudy…" Nina started.

"Nina dear, don't worry. I saw the girl off to the cab myself. The only unusual thing about it was that she was really quiet, but I just assumed she had been fighting with someone." Trudy marched off, confident that she had soothed the children into thinking that Patricia was fine.

Moments later Victor was heard saying the usual, "It's ten o'clock. You have five minutes precisely and then I want to hear a pin drop." He stretched out the last few words longer than usual and then threw the pin to the ground as he watched four boys scurry to their rooms downstairs and four girls scram up the stairs to get to their rooms.

It was eleven o'clock and Eddie was still side awake. He heard a creak some from across the room and said, "Fabian… you still up man?"

He heard a distinct yet annoyed groan from the boy and then he heard him say, "Yes Eddie, I'm still up."

"You don't believe all that about Patricia's parents picking her up, do you?" Eddie asked his best friend.

"You and I both know that if she had to go somewhere with her parents, she would have been complaining a lot more than she was. Plus, if it did happen the way that Trudy said it did, we would have seen her leaving. We had covered the whole grounds. There was no way she could have gotten past."

Eddie sighed and said, "You're right. Nina and I found Willow and Joy like not even ten minutes after dinner and where we were, we would have seen if Patricia had left."

"Only one question remains then," Fabian said, "how did she get out?"

"I don't know…" Eddie said. And that's what scared him.

I woke up in a really dark place. If I had been able to wave my hand in front of my face, I would doubt if I'd be able to see it. My hands were tied to what I presume to be is a pole and my feet were tied together. I was sitting sort of cross legged, but it was very unladylike since I was wearing a skirt. I felt groggier than I would have if I had just woken up from a nap. Everything was disoriented and even the slightest movements seemed to be dragged out and extremely painful. It wasn't the pain like I had just gotten beat up but like a sore type of pain like I had overworked my entire body.

I had no idea where I was or what had recently happened. I tried to remember anything that I could, but everything was really fuzzy. I knew what my name was: Patricia Williamson, but to remember much more than that caused extreme pain and caused me to grow more disoriented with the world around me.

With every breath that I took, it felt like there was a huge weight on my chest; with every gasp for air it seemed as if the mass was imbedding itself deeper and deeper within me. It felt like a Boa Constrictor was wrapped around me and was getting tighter and tighter. In the last few moments before I was knocked out, I felt like it was squeezing the life out of me. And then I was unconscious again.

When I woke, I felt another's presence in the room. I shouted as loud as I could, "Who's there?" but it barely came out as a whisper. I tried again, "Who's there?" but it was still barely audible.

"Silly girl," a deep, menacing voice boomed throughout the room. "You should conserve your energy because you won't be leaving anytime soon."