It was my 15th birthday, we had a big celebration at our local bowling alley with my friends and family, complete with pizza, subs, snacks, soda, etc. I had just gotten a boyfriend 5 months before that, Landon. He invited me over 3 days after my party, he said he couldn’t make it due to ‘family stuff’, so he wanted to make it up to me. I got a ride from Damien, who’d had his license for about 2 years at the time. He told me to have fun, call him if I needed anything, and to be safe. I wish I had listened to the voice in the back of my mind saying “tell him to take you home. NOW”. But I was naïve, and thought I was ‘in love’.
When I got inside, Landon greeted me with a forehead kiss and took my hand. He lead me to what he called the ‘game room’, with computers, game consoles, a big flat screen tv, and multiple VCR’s and DVD players. Honestly, it was impressive, and I was absolutely nerding out, excited to see what old VHS tapes they had to watch. His older brother walked in and greeted me with a smile and a “hey what’s up? I’m Kal!”. We shook hands, he seemed nice. Landon lead me to the collection of DVD’s and VHS tapes and asked me to pick something to watch. I was looking through the ‘horror’ section, because I was obsessed with horror movies, Little did I know how horrible the movie I picked would actually be…
‘My First Time’. Sounded creepy enough, interesting, probably one of those home-made cheesy horror movies that didn’t make it to Hollywood. Landon and Kal smiled ear to ear, and Landon excitedly popped it in the VCR. I can tell you, I wish I would’ve picked a movie I’ve heard of before, because we only got about 5 minutes in when I realized it was a snuff film. I didn’t say anything, I tried to play it off. “Wow the graphics kind of suck, but it’s still kinda scary. Can I have some more popcorn?” I don’t know if they bought my acting, or just wanted to watch more of whatever the hell this was… But about 10 more minutes and I couldn’t handle it, I asked where the bathroom was and Landon pointed down the hall; “last door on the left”. He didn’t take his eyes off the ‘movie’ for a second.
I walked as calmly as I could toward the bathroom, but instead of going in, I quietly searched for a back door or window of any kind that I could sneak out. Not finding one, I went into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. There was a small window, but not too small to where I couldn’t fit through. I stood on the toilet, opened the window, popped the screen out, and slid through.
I lowered myself maybe 3 feet down to the soft grass, trying to be as quiet as possible, as to not tip Landon and Kal off. I crawled under every window, and maneuvered around every possible way they would catch a peek of me, until I got to the edge of the woods behind their house. I fumbled for my phone to call Damien, it started to ring when I felt two pairs of hands grab me and cover my mouth. I tried to scream, squirm, kick, punch myself free. It was no use, and I could only watch as I was being dragged back to the house, my phone on the ground under the tree I’d been standing next to. God, I hope Damien saw that I called, I hope he calls back and realized I’m in trouble… Please Damien.
Landon and Kal picked me up and carried me upstairs, still kicking, screaming, and punching, telling me to shut up. When we got to a room at the top, they threw me to the floor, piled in behind me, and locked the door. I sat up as fast as I could. “What the hell is your problem, Landon?”. Him and Kal just stared at me, with so much hate and anger in their eyes… I didn’t know what was going on, or what was going to happen to me. I was terrified, but I wasn’t going to let them see that. I stood up and stupidly got close to Landon and demanded he tell me what was going on. He just stared at me. “Oh Princess, if only you’d chosen a different movie. You wouldn’t be in so much trouble now.” Landon and Kal started to snicker.
I tried so hard to hide my fear, I crossed my arms, acted like I didn’t know I was in danger. “Alright you two, that’s enough. Can we go back to watching movies please? This isn’t funny”.