Hurricane Heart

Arjan

I could hear a phone call going on in the front seat and, despite the fact that I didn’t like this girl, Hurricane as she liked to call herself, and I didn’t know anyone else she spoke to, I was worried for them. She’d sounded frightened, and that had made me frightened too. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I was stuck with ‘them’ now, whoever ‘they’ were. I didn’t want to be, though—I wanted to be back home, and I didn’t even know anything about these people. Perhaps, though, by the tone of her voice, she wasn’t one of the government workers.

I didn’t even know what Hurricane had been talking about, other than that someone had done something wrong somewhere. I’d just heard her sincere declaration of ‘shit,’ and knew that something was seriously wrong. Since I’d been in the car with her, I hadn’t detected even the slightest change in her emotion, so to hear it come on so sudden and drastic was disconcerting.

Hurricane didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day. We just continued to drive; mostly fast, with engines roaring past on either side, suggesting we were usually on some sort of highway, but occasionally we would slow. It seemed that, every so often, we were taking diversions down smaller roads. Endless hours drifted on past as I grew increasingly angry and scared and even sad; not to mention unimaginably bored.

After an immeasurable amount of time, she put on the radio. The first piece of music came on; that typical, computerised stuff that was played everywhere, and she grunted something about how crap it was, although personally there was no way she could have known anything other than this sort of music as she was nowhere near old enough to have been born before the Revolution, and turned it off again, plunging the car back into silence. I wasn’t even able to look out the window because of the stupid blindfold. And, aside from everything else, I was incredibly hungry and thirsty and I was growing more and more desperate to use the toilet.

Sometime during the endless hours—I didn’t know if it was morning, afternoon or evening—my phone began to ring in my pocket. It vibrated against my jeans and a series of melodic tones bleeped through. What could I do? Even if I could reach it from here, which I couldn’t, what did I say?

‘Don’t touch it,’ Hurricane warned, her tone emotionless but severe from the front seat. ‘Touch it and you’re dead.’

I knew she wasn’t joking.

It finished ringing, and the message tone bleeped. My heart jolted, and a sudden sickness filled me when the person on the other end began to leave a message.

‘Arjan,’ came a worried voice. It was my mum. ‘Arjan, where are you? You said you’d be here by midday—that was nearly three hours ago, and you haven’t even phoned. Is everything alright? Has something happened? Please call me?’

An unwanted tear leaked from my eye as I was forced to listen to her fear in silence, dampening the material tied round my eyes with nowhere else for it to go. I could talk to her...just one phone call, just to put her mind at rest...or not, as the case may be. But surely anything was better than nothing.

‘I’ll take that from you when we stop,’ Hurricane announced. I didn’t dare say anything, but my mind was racing. She’d bloody better not.

At one seemingly random point we drove onto a smaller road, and the noise of cars quickly disappeared. After about five or ten minutes, the car finally ground to a halt, and I heard her door open.

It felt like too long before I heard her again, during which time I began to panic—what if she was just abandoning me, or what if she was plotting something dreadful? But then the car door opened and it was almost reassuring to be pulled from my sort of lying down position, purely for something to do. I understood completely the sheer terror of being kidnapped, but what no one ever mentioned was the boredom.

She untied me and pulled the bag off of my head and, after being in darkness for so long, I blinked rapidly in the dim light, letting my eyes adjust, finally able to breathe clean, fresh air. I choked on it, allowed to inhale properly for the first time in hours.

‘Where are we?’ I demanded, once again both scared and desperate to know some answers.

‘Get out,’ she ordered. Without waiting for me to respond, she grabbed me and pulled. I half fell out of the car, standing up again and facing her with as much venom as possible.

We were in a forest, though this time we were on a sort of track as opposed to a road. I had no idea where we were—we could be anywhere in continental Europe right now—but she held my wrist firmly and began to drag me off into the trees.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked after a while, still trying to break free of her grasp, though eyeing her gun warily at the same time. I just had to keep reminding myself that, if she needed me, she wasn’t going to shoot me.

‘Stop asking questions,’ she ordered. I saw her shove the rope into her large, black leather bag, before slamming the car door shut with her foot, locking it and continuing to march me into the trees.

I didn’t dare ask again; I needed as much time as possible without being tied up in some way, and I couldn’t afford to get rid of that.

At that moment, my phone began to ring again. I dived into my pocket with my right hand, fishing around for it, trying to answer it...anything to let my parents know something.

‘You answer that and you’re dead,’ she hissed.

I had to try. I had to do something.

With more force than I thought was capable from a slim, barely average height woman, she reached out, tearing my arm away from the mobile that was almost to my ear. I cried out in defiance but she wrenched it from me as we struggled, turning it off and putting it neatly into her pocket.

‘Give it back!’ I cried. ‘It’s all I have left!’

She pushed me roughly up against a tree.

‘Shut up Arjan,’ she threatened. ‘Or I will make you shut up.’

She released me, and I fell almost to my knees. She grabbed me again and dragged me off back into the trees.

We walked for about twenty minutes, during which time the grey, early evening sky got a little darker above us, and Hurricane eventually took a torch from her bag and switched it on.

We arrived at a small building. I couldn’t really describe what it looked like; it was a bit bigger than an average shed, but it was much better built and made of concrete.

The door was locked with a little keypad beside it, into which she tapped a code number, and the lock clicked open.

‘Get in,’ she ordered, studying me as I moved inside. She came in behind and slammed the door shut; her torch being the only light other than the tiny amount which could penetrate the small, dirty windows.

‘Go down,’ she continued, gesturing to a flight of stairs leading underground that were barely a foot in front of me yet I’d been too preoccupied to see. ‘Go!’ She snapped when I didn’t respond immediately. Shaking with both fear and cold, I grasped the metal handle and began to head down. They were steep and creaky, and I couldn’t see much of where I was going. I could sense her, impatient behind me, silently urging me to hurry up.

The underground part of the building was much larger than the above ground section. It opened up into a room at least three times the size of the shed-like structure above, still all shrouded in darkness, and there were at least three doors that I could faintly see leading off when I peered into the gloom.

Behind me, there was a clicking sound, and a dim light switched on above us. The bulb was old and flickered dully, barely lighting the further reaches of the room, but it seemed to be all we were going to get. Hurricane locked the basement door behind us, placing the key in her pocket, and gave me a slight push into the room.

‘This is where we’re sleeping tonight,’ she announced. ‘You’re going to be in there,’ she gestured to the door directly opposite us, and I could only imagine—

No, I couldn’t imagine. Not if she was who I thought she might be.

It was ages since the last time I imagined, because it was illegal. Of course, though, ideas and thoughts and creations always came to peoples’ minds. It was a simple trait of being human—to think about other lives and other situations besides your own, whether they were real or otherwise. Wasn’t it?

I shoved the imagining thoughts from my mind, keeping my brain firmly in the present. There could be anything beyond that door, but with Hurricane’s piercing gazes and studying expressions, I could never rule out the idea that she could read my mind.

There it was again—an idea. If she really was from the government, I had no chance. Of course, like I say, it was human nature to think, imagine, create, dream, and, whilst it wasn’t really considered acceptable, they had no way of stopping it. Just like dreams, imagination was a taboo subject, because, so far anyway, the government couldn’t penetrate our minds, so we were safe inside our heads, so long as we didn’t show it outwardly. However, imagination didn’t really come naturally. Since the day we’d learnt to think, our creativity had been harshly suppressed.

‘The bathroom is there,’ she said, gesturing to the door on the left. ‘You can go in there now before you go into your room. I’ll be sleeping in the other room.’

She nudged me towards the bathroom, and I didn’t hesitate to go in, making sure I spent as long as possible in there. I was certainly in no hurry to get out of here.

The bathroom was a little scary; cold and uninviting. Square tiles lined the walls and floor; tiles that might have once been white, but now were a grubby, lightly yellow-grey colour. The sink, shower and toilet were all the same off-white colour, and it was very dirty and dusty in places. I certainly didn’t fancy showering in here; not that I was in a position to be picky right now. The little bulb on the ceiling was even dimmer than the one in the main room, casting a weak, yellow light across the room, flickering often.

Eventually, there was an impatient hammering on the door.

‘Hurry up!’ Hurricane snapped. Reluctantly, I stood up, opening the door.

‘You take a bloody long time,’ she muttered. I didn’t reply.

She nudged me towards the door that contained my room, whatever atrocities lay within. I could only fear and...imagine (though it wasn’t something that came easily) what was in there.

There was another keypad in the door, which she tapped another code into, and gave me a nudge into the now open door.

I moved hesitantly forward, freezing stone dead in the doorway when I saw what lay beyond. Inside was a small, dark room, the only light coming through the door from the room outside. It was empty apart from some long, rusty chains coming from the far wall.