Fuse

FUSE [excerpt]

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Hessian sacking has a very particular smell.

On an ordinary day, I wouldn’t say I was overly familiar with the material. But today is not an ordinary day.

Today the scent fills my nose, so close and constant that the normally pleasant aroma has become a sickly-sweet miasma.

Every breath out fills the sack with damp air. I think my face might be rubbed raw by now. Each shake of the vehicle we’re in scrapes the fabric against my lips and cheeks.

“You are not in any danger, Cassidy.”

My hands tighten into fists. I don’t know how long it’s been since strange armed men pulled me off an ordinary suburban street and into the dark. Pulled a sack over my head that hasn’t been removed for days. All I know are those words. Said over and over,  You are not in any danger, Cassidy. No one is going to hurt you.

I’ve counted. 22 times in what I assume has been a few days. I’ve slept twice. When they took me there was a van. We’ve changed vehicles four times, and once was a plane. The familiar rush of take-off was unmissable. That was the first time they gave me something to make me sleep.

All of that means I could be anywhere. Anywhere on the whole planet, and they keep saying those words. You are not in any danger, Cassidy. No one is going to hurt you.

I may only be sixteen, but I’m not a fool. Those words give me one question, and tell me one fact.

One – how do they know my name?

And: they are lying to me.

Fuse is an in progress work of young-adult fiction. Copyright Moana Moran, 2021.