Chapter 4 The Stranger Hunk

The biting cold air made Rave who laid in the middle of a soft king sized mattress shiver and curl like a drowning baby bird.

She sleepily turned to her side and groaned softly. Her entire body throbbed. She felt a headache, not very serious though.

She stretched forth her hands to pull the blanket over her head, but a sharp pain stopped her. Her guts twitched while her eyes spurred open. The bright morning light dazzled her vision. Ignoring the arching feeling from her arm, she rubbed her eyes.

After a while, the blurry features before her eyes began to make sense.

She stared warily at the white ceiling for good five minutes, trying to recall how she landed herself in this strange bedroom. She knew beyond any shadow of doubts that the room she was in wasn't her cottage. The bed was larger; the mattress was softer as was the pillow. She had no ceiling fan in her cottage.

Once more, she snubbed the pain that travelled through her body and strained her neck while scanning around the bedroom. It was tidy and luxurious. Hers wasn't. Again, clothes, shoes, sanitary pads, office documents were not jumbled together on the floor. This definitely wasn't her home.

Where was she? Why was her body sore?

Oh, lordy!

Had she escorted some manwhore to his apartment?

She quickly peeped into the blanket. She wasn't naked. Instead, she was in a plain black oversized shirt.

Rob didn't own a black shirt. Obviously not any she was aware of. Whose shirt was she wearing?

In the speed of light, the memory of what had happened on her way home unfolded.

Her brain figuratively cracked like an overly baked potato when she pushed to recall a lucid description of the incident in question. Cold chills travelled along her spine as the horror movie began to retell in her head.

She had been at their mercy. With all corners tight, there'd been no room for her to escape. The spiteful words of those thugs still slapped her cheeks in ways she couldn't imagine.

Their evil laughter that drummed like battle songs enclosed her ears.

She couldn't even scream for help.

She could feel how terrified she'd been. When those little devils had linked hands together and inflicted pain upon pain on her body with their hurtful kicks and punches, she'd seen her end staring at her with haunted eyes.

Even with the pain she felt, happily would she die protecting what was left of her dignity than throwing it to some swine. That was at least a good way to reunite with her creator.

The pain had become extremely unbearable just as her hope for survival begun to quench. The dazzling future she had once envisaged shrunk like an old rag. Before her naked eyes, they all had vanished one by one just as darkness enveloped her.

She had fought to rise above them all but her strength had lacked.

A stranger had saved her.

His large smooth hands had wrapped his coat around her bruised skin and ego. His touch was gentle when his hands had brushed against her skin. He had borne her weight in his arms like a rare fragile treasure. Warmth had sparked and spread throughout her body when he spoke to her.

His voice had been commanding to do exactly as he instructed.

Who was he?

A cop?

Or a responsible citizen with guns and James Bond's type of fighting skills?

She owed whomever it was a fortune.

She relaxed into the soft mattress and closed her eyes. The question clicked once more, where was she? Why wasn't she in a hospital? Why was everywhere excruciatingly quiet?

Heck! She needed answers not the endless trail of questions that kept whirling in her head.

"Bluidy, hell!" She exclaimed as she slipped away from her thoughts, her eyes snapping open.

"My car." she mumbled. The memory was hazy and smoky. Was that really my car? She thought. Oh, no! I hope not. Because if it were-

She sensed something pleasant to her nostrils waft in the air. Something bacon and scrambled eggs? She wasn't sure.

She wasn't the only one in – wherever the hell this place was. And truthfully, the aroma of whatever the mug in the kitchen cooked or was cooking caused her belly to rumble.

She exhaled and hauled away from bed. Her muscles ached terribly. She lost her balance and fell on the bed.

Groaning, she stood up again. The marbled floor was cold against the sole of her feet. She looked down to the over-sized shirt that barely reached her mid-thigh.

Where were her clothes? Wait. Who undressed her?

Questions.

Loads of questions. Not necessarily what she looked-for at the moment.

She needed answers.

Registering her surrounding, she moved toward the window. It had stopped raining though it drizzled a little. Dense deciduous trees stood behind the walls of the house outside.

She veered and took in the room again. The bedside table contained a first aid kit and a good number of cigar butt. The room was swanky and ostentatiously designed. She looked at the mirror before her. She'd got a black eye, though it was slowly fading away. How long had she been out?

She stroked the pad of her thumb on her colorless lips and turned away. But what surprised her was that her wavy jet black hair was braided in two piggy tails. And it made her look like of cute. Someone had been taking care of her while she was unconscious.

She sluggishly walked to the doorway, fear of the unknown, uncertainty obvious on her face. Her fingers were trembling as she touched the door handle. Her heart pounded hard at what she might find beyond the door as the door briefly creaked before parting.

She was afraid for reasons she couldn't understand.

Mouth-watering aroma of bacon saturated the hallway. She swallowed hard, placed her hands on her flat stomach while wrinkling her nose, sniffing the aroma as she searched for the kitchen. The faint pain she felt on her joints didn't matter now.

Oh, lordy! She was freaking starving. When last had she eaten?

She heard something break not far from her. She followed the echo. As she drew closer, the once mouth-watering aroma of bacon gradually transformed to a sharp pungent smell.

Oh no, something was burning. She matched on. She peeked into the supposed kitchen.

Holy! The bedrooms in her cottage were way neater than the kitchen she beheld. The kitchen was messed up beyond repair.

Pasta sauce splashed on the white wall of the small kitchen. Sliced tomatoes had poured into the sink. A long row of dirty plates, chili flakes, freshly grounded black pepper, a bowl with boiled spaghetti, and eggs covered the sink. On the burner was a stainless steel non-stick frying pan that presently emitted smoke.

Obviously, the burning bacon.

The white ceiling was as black as chocolate from the smoke made its way up.

Well, no living soul was in the kitchen.

"Oh my!" She whispered.

Straightaway, she hopped over the broken ceramic pot that lay on the floor and quickly turned off the burner. She coughed as the ill smoke shoved into her nostrils. Sadly, couldn't revive the now burnt bacon.

She sneezed loudly and made a U-turn to disappear from the hellhole of a kitchen. Just then, her thigh collided with a stool that stood behind her. Irritated, she shot an angry look at the stool, and caught a glimpse of a gun that sat homely on it.

A bluidy gun?

This was mad. She exhaled and ran off before the smoke drains away the life from her.

Outside the kitchen, she bent over while panting, lightly tapping her chest to calm her racing heart. She closed her eyes and inhaled. All is well, she thought.

The chef or whoever it was cooking must not have gone far.

"Hello, can anyone hear me?" She questioned audibly, desperate to hear any form of noise.

Silence responded to her ears.

She walked toward a half-opened door and glanced. It was a living room, a huge plasma T.V. turned on a documentary played at its lowest volume. "Is anyone here?" She asked again, goose bumps slowly creeping on her arm. The silence was creepy and scaring the shit outta her.

Maybe, if she wondered more, she would find someone; something, a pet even would do. She just needed the assurance that she wasn't the only one left on this part of the planet.

Just then, she made up her mind, she would just go back to the room she woke up in, and patiently wait for whoever brought her here. It sounded stupid but considering the throbbing headache that clouded her judgments, it was the right decision.

In her bit to turn around, before one could scream Jack Robinson, she blindly bumped into solid abs. She winced, scratched her fingertips on her forehead before taking two long backwards steps, her back hitting the wall.

When she looked up to the tall hunk before her...

...time simply stopped meaning a thing.