Chapter 1: Waking up

Pooja hears a long noise and wakes up in a startle. She can still hear sounds coming from the living room.

Paralysing dread fills her body. She tries to convince herself it’s a cat to calm herself. But then she hears voices, men’s voices, not loud enough to understand what they are saying but human voices nonetheless.

She can hear her heartbeat. She can barely breathe. She is panicking.

She hears footsteps becoming louder, coming nearer.

She looks around and with all courage, silently moves into the closet and she closes the closet doors.

She starts to pray to God and starts looking into the room through the slits of the closet. She sees her phone beside her pillow and curses herself in her head. She could have called the police but now the door knob is turning.

She sees the door of the room slide open and four-five men enter while holding their phone in front. They had all switched on their phones’ back lights.

“Where is the bitch?”, someone asks as one of the men bends down to look under the bed.

She realises they are searching for her. It makes her hear beat even faster. She starts swearing.

Another guy switches on the bedroom lights.

She sees five rough looking men in her room.

One of them looks at the closet curiously. She stops herself from screaming. He starts walking towards it. She covers her mouth and nose.

As he comes closer, she closes her eyes.

She hears the closet door open and she starts screaming at the top of her voice but immediately she is silenced with a hand over her mouth.

She opens her eyes as she is dragged from the closet and she starts fighting with all her might to free herself.

The guy dragging her turns her around, covering her mouth with one hand and grabs her hands from behind with the other.

Another guy comes and lands and slaps her face harder than she had ever been hit.

“Stop wiggling like a fish, bitch”, the guy who slapped her face says to her.

She keeps fighting to get out.

“Stop it, cunt”, Suddenly one of the guys shouts and reveals a gun and places the muzzle on her stomach.

Immediately she stops fighting. Tears start falling from her eyes and her body starts shaking. She stops breathing.

“Arey! What are you doing! This is not required...”, Pooja hears and realises she might know the speaker.

Pooja looks at the direction of the voice to see three more men. One of them is Rocky.