Time To Play by KA Richardson (free children's ebooks online .txt) 📕

front of her mask. Connor had been the standby diver, and Sharpie had sunk a reflective weight for her to recover. She’d used the jackstay search technique, a method of searching across a given line then a diagonal direction. It made for an efficient search and she’d eventually pulled the weight to the surface. Methodically they’d worked through each team member diving and recovering until it had been time for Marlo to return to shore for the meeting.

Turning the tunes on the radio up loud, she slowed down a little, and sang along to ‘Sweet Dreams’ by the Eurythmics. There was something about eighties music that called to her soul.

Wear Street, Sunderland – 3 November

Nita couldn’t stop shaking. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She kept having flashbacks of bad things; things she didn’t want to believe could have happened to her. But she knew they had. Her dress had been torn, she had bruising to the sides of her breasts, and she had a burning sensation between her legs.

She could only remember the person responsible as a monster. Whatever they’d injected into her had numbed any pain, but she remembered his eyes, dark like a shark’s, as he grunted above her. She’d been floating on clouds, seeing things that couldn’t possibly be there, but at the same time, she saw things she knew were real. Her sense of time had altered, and it had felt like he’d kept her pinned to the bed forever. He’d forced her to drink salt water, slapped her face and said something to her, “whore” she thought it was, though she didn’t know what it meant.

And now she’d been put in a different room. Another girl was laid on the bed next to her. Her eyes had rolled back in her head and there was vomit at the side of her mouth. It smelt like she’d soiled herself, and Nita crinkled her nose.

She wished the shaking would stop. She yearned for something, but it wasn’t food or water; she’d already eaten the sandwich that had been left for her. More bread. Didn’t they eat anything normal in this country? Wherever she was. She started to cry as memories of the evil shark filled her mind. Curling into a ball, she sobbed until there were no more tears. And even then, she rocked, the movement oddly comforting to her. Nita wondered where Elvie was. Had the same thing happened to her friend? Was she even alive?

Suddenly the door opened, and the evil shark entered. Shaking her head fast from side to side, she scooted to the back of the bed, praying if she pushed into the wall hard enough then she would go right through it.

It didn’t work.

She watched as he checked on the girl on the other bed, tilting her head sideways so she didn’t choke on her vomit. Slowly he turned back towards Nita, and her shakes turned to terrified shudders as the shark seemed to swim towards her.

‘Shhh. I’ve got a little something to make you feel better,’ he said, grabbing her arm. The syringe only had a small amount of brown liquid inside, but as soon as it entered her system, Nita felt like she was swimming with the evil shark. She couldn’t stop him now if she tried.

And she did try.

‘Noh,’ she muttered, flailing her arms in his direction. But he pinned her beneath him easily. He held her still with one arm and used his other to pull down the zipper on his trousers. Nita tried to wiggle from his grasp, but this made him angry. His hand around her throat made her gag, she couldn’t breathe. Her small hands grabbed at the hand round her throat, and even through the drug-induced haze, she felt a searing pain as he pushed into her. Nita was seeing flecks of black in her vision; tears fell from her eyes as he pounded at her mercilessly. He grunted loudly, his hands squeezing her throat even tighter as he suddenly stilled and juddered with a cry.

Unable to fight the black spots any more, Nita sank into unconsciousness.

 

Chapter Five

Ryhope, Sunderland – 3 November

A s he opened the door to the room, he could hear her crying. That would stop soon. Usually within the first couple of weeks the girls cried less. He would be glad when she did: he hated people crying. It always reminded him of her. The one he tried his best to forget when he was in this room. The one that had caused him all the pain he felt then, and still felt now. The one who made him do what he did.

He watched as the girl looked up, her face swollen and bruised with blood crusted down her chin and onto her neck. She held her left hand to her chest as she watched him warily, and he knew she was silently begging him to leave her alone.

He couldn’t though.

It was how it was. ‘C’est la vie,’ as his dearly departed mum used to say.

It was almost as if he had woken up one day a completely different person. One minute he had been normal, then the next he had been … this.

He had a compulsion to find out what made people tick, to help them become immune to the pain of life so they wouldn’t have to suffer like he had. So they wouldn’t have to make the choices he had to make.

Frowning, he realised the girl had defecated in the cage, and there was a strong smell of urine.

She would have to clean that up. He wouldn’t tolerate a dirty cage.

Unbolting the cage door, he reached inside and grabbed her spindly arm. The right one, not the left. She whimpered, but allowed him to pull her forward, and he heard the scrape of her backside on the bottom grate of the