I don’t know how it happened. One minute, I’m walking home from school; the next, I wake up in a dingy room with a really sharp and intense pain at the base of my neck. I couldn’t do much more than look around though, because of the pain and the fact that my mind seemed so foggy. So I drifted in and out of unconsciousness, for god only knew how long. Then after what seemed to me like hours, (days?); a semblance of clarity came back to me and I was able to look around.
The room I was in looked like an underground parking area, maybe for a mall, or office. I got this idea from the yellow lines and numbers on the floor. It was not very big, maybe only a couple of cars could have parked here. Someone had placed a mattress and pillow on the floor, with a blanket which was now tossed to the side of this makeshift bed. There was also a jug filled with water and a plate of rice, complete with spoon, and a bowl of curd. Apparently this someone was going to take care of me. Suddenly, I heard a loud creaking and footsteps. I turned around and saw a rather heavily built man approaching. “It seems you’re awake”, he said.
“It would seem so”, I replied, “who are you, and what do you want?”
“Ah, the standard response from the kidnap-pee to every kidnapper. If you want to know, I am Captor 1, (he said this with a sarcastic tone) and with me are Captors 2, 3 and 4, who have gone to deliver the ransom message to your father. We know who you are, Akash. Extremely eccentric billionaires Rajesh Gupta’s son. We are asking for a ransom of the small sum of 2 million crore rupees. That’s all.
I didn’t say anything, giving him what I hoped was a resigned look. As he spoke, I examined the room further. I noticed that this was a walled off portion of a parking and the door he came through was locked as he said from the outside with a padlock and the door itself had a lock. He mentioned that dinner would be at 8:30 pm and I would be moved to a more secure location at 9 pm; but I was told nothing about how long I was actually here. My watch was also removed.
Hours passed, the room growing darker as twilight approached. A lamp was given to me, the kind we use when there’s a sudden power cut. That lamp helped me find to my surprise, a flashlight, half buried under some metal sheets with the bulb end facing me. I heard footsteps approaching, and a man entered, muttering something about “… Captor 2”. He told me that dinner would be ready in fifteen minutes and left as abruptly as he entered, still muttering. I went to the door and discovered that the door which held me in my jail didn’t stop outside sound from coming in. I heard the ‘Captor 2’ drag something, maybe a metal chair, and sit on it.
I knew from this that I could make my escape and I had fifteen minutes to steel myself and half an hour till anybody realized I was missing. I am around 6 feet tall and very muscular due to long hours in the gym and lots of sports.
Sometime later, there was a knock on the door and I heard Captor 2 announce dinner like the housekeeping staff at hotels. I asked him to come right in and hid next to the door before it happened. As he entered, I launched myself at him and grabbed him in a choke hold, as my friend who taught me a bit of wrestling told me to. Man, he was strong. It took me a good couple of minutes to choke him out. I didn’t stop to see if I had knocked him out or I had killed him. I took a bit of the dinner, two packets of sandwiches and tore out of the room. I realized, as I moved to the ramps, that the place looked too familiar and I knew how to get out of there. The ramps exited out onto the street and as I walked out, I took a deep breath of fresh air and prepared to find my bearings in the massive city that was my home.
I looked back, and saw that the place where I was held all along was my eccentric billionaire father’s office, the company he owned. The startling discovery helped me to recognize the place I was held in to be the new office of the security guards. My dad had spoken about this renovation for a long time but I hadn’t seen it so I didn’t know where I was. But the fact that I was held in my dad’s own office for god knows how long, shocked me. As the time was still 8:45, and I had come to visit my dad here many times, I knew what bus route to take and I reached home to find it locked. The doors were shut and the grill was down. There was a letter written in my mom’s hand saying that they had left urgently to visit my grandma who was ill, apparently. This letter was dated the day I was kidnapped. It mentioned that a neighbour had a key to the house. I went to the neighbour’s house, where owner’s wife opened the door. I found out that I was kidnapped the previous day, and pretended to know this fact. I calmed her down and said that I had gone to my friend’s house for the night and my mom knew about this. I took the key and went back to my house to do some digging and call up either of my parents to know where they were and tell them about my ordeal.
As I went back to my house, I noticed that the light to my room was on. I went inside the house, and the living room was lit up by the three tube lights which I definitely did not turn on. I looked towards the switchboard,near our dining table, and there was a man sitting there with a pistol pointed at me.