When she came to, Sue Ann kept her eyes tightly closed. She knew that she was sitting upright in a chair, and she could feel that her arms and legs were restrained. By the sounds and smells that surrounded her she could tell that she was somewhere in the country, but she had no idea where or even how she had gotten there. The last thing she remembered was inhaling some sort of spray that made it difficult to breathe. Maybe, if she kept her eyes closed, this entire experience might turn out to be a horrible dream. The sound of a truck pulling up close to the building quickly dispelled that idea.
Sue Ann opened her eyes when she heard a door open. She didn't recognize the young man who walked into the room. He looked appraisingly at her and asked, "How long since you last ate?"
"What?" Sue Ann wasn't sure she had heard right.
"Ate," the man repeated. "Put something in your mouth and swallowed it. Ate."
"Breakfast," Sue Ann replied testily. "Who are you? And, what the heck do you want?"
"Well, that doesn't make much of a difference," the man replied as he moved closer to her. 'You're not exactly in a position to object."
When he got close enough, Sue Ann tried to kick him. However, because her legs were secured to the chair legs, all she succeeded in doing was rattling the chair around. She tried spitting at him, but missed.
"No sense trying to escape," the man told her as he squatted to look her in the face. "You may just as well accept the fact that you're going to be here for a while." He grinned at her. "You might even say you are going to be around long enough to become the teacher's pet."
He stood up and began systematically checking the boarded up windows in the small wooden shed.
