West of Famous by Joni M Fisher

Author:Joni M Fisher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indie Author Project
Published: 2019-02-17T08:00:00+00:00

18

Martina ate crackers and boiled eggs and drank bottled water, then they sent her to the small stateroom for the afternoon. Prisoners on death row got a better final meal. A lifetime should last longer.

That’s it, huh? All I get is twenty-two years.

The men argued in the pilothouse. Fragments of their heated conversation reached Martina.

“…hot shower. What’s the problem?”

“It’s not working.”

“What an idiot. You can’t even follow written instructions? Give them to me.”

Cringing, Martina curled up on the bed while her mind and stomach churned. She couldn’t remember any time in her life when she had been so alone. Growing up in a large family, she rarely had privacy long enough to be alone. Her sisters would barge in at will when she was in the tub or on the toilet so often she stopped whining about it. Because of her home environment, she’d learned how to study in chaos and noise. Today, she missed every annoying, nosey, hovering family member down to the weirdest cousin, Rosalie, whom her aunts called a hippie. For years, Martina had thought hippie meant being childless. Later she learned Rosalie and her husband had chosen not to have children. To Martina, their life sounded lonely.

But ultimately, everyone faces death alone.

Martina sighed and climbed under the colorful quilt. Eventually, the kidnappers would connect the generator problem with leaving her in the engine hold. Even at gunpoint she wouldn’t know how to undo her sabotage. She didn’t remember exactly how the wiring looked before she’d pried out the connections. It was likely the men didn’t know how to repair the electronic systems either.

Tears rolled over the bridge of her nose and her cheek to the soft pillow.

She would not sit exams or graduate from the Oxford master’s program with her classmates in solemn black robes and mortarboards. She’d never get engaged or married or have babies to share with her sisters and brother and cousins. Oscar would not walk down the aisle with her at Vincent and Nefi’s wedding. Her passport would not get stamped in Australia, New Zealand, China, Peru, Tahiti, or Sweden, or the many wondrous places she longed to discover. All the cousins and nieces and nephews would have one less person to play with, one less gift at Christmas. Mama and Father would have a hole in their hearts forever.

How long would it take for her status to change from missing to presumed dead? Without a body, would there be a funeral? Or would her family hold a memorial service like Jason Hamilton’s, with a closed casket topped with flowers and a portrait? She envisioned her parents dressed in black near Senator and Mrs. Hamilton, who understood the loss of a child. Nefi would rekindle her anger at criminals for taking another person from her life. At the graveside, a handful of dirt would fall from each person’s hand onto an empty casket.

She didn’t deserve this surreal situation. She had loved her family, worked hard in school, and starred as the flyer on her high school’s varsity competitive cheerleading squad.

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