the shack
There once was a boy in the small town of Ohio who, despite the warnings given from his Mother, traveled to the woods by his home very often. The area was very close and he liked to escape there. He never saw a problem with it; he rarely met anyone in the forest, let alone the types of people his Mother described. She always said it was dangerous to go alone, especially late into the night.
The boy always listened but thought nothing of it and went alone anyway. He didn’t even bring anything to protect himself as he felt it would be unneeded. He would spend hours in the woods just being alone and thinking. Honestly, he never saw what the problem was. But I guess some people have to learn what monsters are out there the hard way.
One fall afternoon, late October, he was walking through minding his own business. He was taking his time on this particular walk because he liked to feel the chilly breeze and smell the leaves and whatnot. (Fall is his favorite season). It was about 6 P.M. and he was enjoying the escape. He stopped by some rocks to skip them on the pond’s shallow water when all of a sudden; he was snatched up by a large man. He had to be about 34 years of age and 220 pounds. He was amazingly strong and large compared to the 12 year old boy’s size.
In the boy’s head all he could think was that his mom was right about the woods and that he was not going to survive. He was trying to fight to get free and thought he was free until the man threw him onto the ground and hit him over the head with a large rock. After that was nothing but darkness.
When he woke up he was in the trunk of a car tied up with tape over his mouth. His head was also wrapped up where it was hit. He was sweating badly and was finding it hard to breathe all cooped up in the trunk. He was starting to become even more terrified and thought he would never leave this small space. He waited a long time, 20 minutes at the most, and he thought might pass out again, his head still hurt from the blow. Just as he was starting to drift in and out of consciousness, the trunk opened and he was taken out by the same man who put him there.
He was carried into a shack in the middle of a forest; most likely different from the one he walked through he thought, and put into a basement. He went out again. When he woke up he heard voices. These voices didn’t seem to be that of an adult talking to another adult, they were little kid’s voices. Kids that were younger than him. Their ages ranged from about 8-10 (not including him). He was the oldest out of them all. He got up and could see a little better now, his head was throbbing.
“Are you OK?” one of them said.
“No, I have a throbbing migraine, and what the hell is going on here?”
“Nobody knows,” one of the kids said.
The boy looked around and realized now that he was in fact the oldest kid there. Just then they all heard the door open at the top of the steps and a little bit of light shown in. The others all scurried by the walls into the shadows. He did what they did. As the man came down the stairs he closed the door behind him and his face was hidden. The boy didn’t get a good look at him but he saw once again that he was very tall. He looked around the room a bit, waiting for his eyes to adjust and then picked a boy at random. He immediately started screaming and crying. He was kicking and trying hard to get away from the large man but he just punched him in the side of the face hard and he was out cold. He took him up the stairs and that was that.
The boy looked around and was scarred again. He said, “Who was that? ...”
“The taker,” one boy answered.
“And who did he just take?”
“Ken.”
“Why?” No one answered. The boy guessed it was simply because no one knew why. He looked around trying to make sense of what was going on. It had been a long time since he was in the woods and he was sure she was worried sick. Come to think of it, he was feeling sick himself. He was extremely thirsty and was also feeling very hungry. His mouth felt dryer than ever when he said the word “water”.
“There’s a sink over there. It’s nasty, but it’s water.”
He quickly walked over to it and drunk for about two minutes. One of the boys even asked if he was ever going to come up for air. When he was done, he looked around the room and counted four other boys. He asked for names from everyone and from left to right it went like this: Stan, 9 years old; Eric, 10 years old; and Timmy and Jimmy, they were both 8 and were twins.
“What’s your name stranger?” Stan asked.
“My real name is a secret. I can’t tell you.”
“OK,” Stan said. “So do you have a plan for getting out of here?”
The boy thought, he thought for a while, he couldn’t think of anything. “Maybe just not fight and let him take you upstairs, and then when you get up here, wham!” Jimmy said
“But with what? You can’t just punch him, you’re too weak, we’re all too weak,” the boy said. Stan walked around the perimeter of the room.
“Maybe there’s something in here, a pole or a rock.”
“I think we should attack him all together as a group instead of cowering in fear.”
“That’s a good idea, how often does he come down?”
“About once a day, I’ve been here for at least a week,” Eric said.
“OK, then it's set then, we will attack tomorrow."
DAY TWO[]
The man opened the door and threw in a pack of ham. The kids ran towards it fast because they were all hungry, but the unnamed boy was most hungry. He ate about 15 pieces of ham, but that still didn’t fill him completely. He walked over to the water and there was a line, it was sort of like a line for a water fountain at school. It was about 10 A.M. and the unnamed boy had a hard time sleeping. The other boys all slept fine, or so it seemed to the unnamed boy.
They all talked about how they might confront the man. “Maybe we’ll all hit him in the crotch!” one said. Another said “No, the throat, he’ll be even more helpless.” They were all talking as quietly as they could when the door opened and there was a gunshot. It was fired randomly in the dark but it did hit one boy. It hit Timmy right in the kneecap. Timmy let out a scream, as did the others, but Timmy’s as the loudest of all. When the others stopped he kept going, he was crying and screaming in pain and Jimmy and Stan were just crying. Stan because he was scared and Jimmy because of both that reason and because his own brother was shot. The unnamed boy was scared but acted very quickly despite his fear. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around Timmy’s wound.
“I think that was just a warning shot, I think maybe he knows what we’re planning,” the unnamed boy said. Stan and Eric nodded but Jimmy tried to comfort Timmy. “We should be careful,” the unnamed boy said. They all didn’t talk to each other for the rest of the day. It was a very quiet, very long day for all of them. The only noise as Timmy’s sobbing, which eventually to died down.
The unnamed boy had to use the restroom very badly; he didn’t know what to do so he walked over to the drainage pipe and urinated. It was about 5 P.M. when this happened. There was still a little bit of ham left so he also went to get a piece. Eric went and got a piece soon after. The rest of the night was anxious waiting.
DAY THREE[]
The man came downstairs early in the morning, it was about 3 A.M. and everyone was sleeping. He again picked randomly. He picked up Jimmy as softly as he could to avoid waking him. He was successful, no one would even know he was down there until they woke up and noticed he was missing. He took Jimmy upstairs and shot him up with some anesthetics so he wouldn’t wake up for sure while he drove him back to his own house.
It was about 6 A.M when Timmy first woke up. When he woke up the first thing he noticed was that his brother was missing. He started yelling “guys!” and after about six times the unnamed boy said “WHAT!” back in frustration.
“He’s gone! He took ‘em! He’s not here anymore!”
“Who’s gone?”
“Jimmy!!!” Timmy yelled.
Oh god, he must’ve been taken in the night,” the unnamed boy muttered.
Stan and Eric went over to go try and calm him but the unnamed boy just sat there thinking, there were only three of them left that were able to attack, he was thinning their numbers because he knew their plans of attack. He had to act quickly next time he came down. He thought maybe if he hid under the stairs he could sneak up behind him and hit him in the throat, which would surprise him. Then the other two could help attack. He went over to the other two to tell them his plan. They abandoned Timmy and discussed it, they thought it as a nice plan and they would execute it for sure.
THEIR PLAN[]
They had all had a fair share of food, even Timmy, and they were all waiting. At about 10 P.M. he made his way back downstairs. He thought maybe they’d all be weak or sleeping, he was wrong. As he came down the stairs they all moved into position. The unnamed boy was under that stairs. And the other two were in corners waiting. When he was a few steps from the bottom of the stairs the unnamed boy walked up and tapped his shoulder, the man turned and was punched square in the throat. But that wasn’t enough to stun him completely so he also kicked him right in the testicles. It brought him to his knees but he managed to slap the unnamed boy right across the face. That’s when the other two boys came over and started punching him in the stomach. It hurt but they weren’t strong enough to keep him down.
The man got up and bitch slapped the other two boys so hard they fell to the ground, the third unnamed boy was up and running out of the door already. The man got up and still had the keys that locked the basement door and tried to race to the top before the other two got there and he was successful. He locked the door just before Stan and Eric got there, also jamming the door, leaving them pounding on the door and yelling. The man didn’t care; he just wanted them to not get out.
He grabbed his machete and left the small shack in search of the unnamed boy. The boy was way ahead of him, but since he didn’t know where he was, finding help would be hard. He ran as fast as he could and as quiet as he could. He didn’t run very long because he was so tired and hungry. He stopped running and went along slowly trying to be as quiet as possible. He was lucky at this moment because the man was going in completely the other direction.
Back at the shack the other two boys were trying hard to bust through the door, they were very weak because they were young and also haven’t had very much food. Also, the door was jammed and there were no windows for them to break, so they were pretty much stuck since the door was locked AND jammed. They pounded for hours trying to escape before finally falling down from exhaustion.
Meanwhile, during the time it took for them to fall over and sleep, the unnamed boy as making his final escape. He was walking on a road he didn’t know and it was deserted. He was just hoping a car would pass and see him and stop, he didn’t care who it was or what they would do, he was sure it’d be better than what the unnamed man would do to him, the unnamed boy. He walked for hours and saw no cars for a long time. After what seemed like an eternity, one car did pass, it was going slow and for a moment he thought it was the unnamed man looking for him, but luckily it was someone coming home really late from an office job. He was driving slowly because he was so tired. When he saw the boy he thought maybe he was hallucinating but he slowed to a stop and rubbed his eyes. After that he was sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
He opened the door and said, “What are you doing way out here kid? It’s 1 in the morning.”
“Please help me sir, I’ve been kidnapped and so were six other boys, two are dead I’m sure and the other three are in an old shack, you have to get me help…”
He told the boy to get in and he was saved. He got help for the other three boys and the bodies of the other two were found, but in pieces. The unnamed man was never found. And as for the unnamed boy, he never went into the woods again… and that folks, ends our story of the escape.