One moment Donna was waiting to be picked outside the music academy in the afternoon. A sedan pulled up and the next thing she knew she had awakened at night, to find her ankle was chained to the bed, the only furniture in a plain featureless room. Nothing to give her a sense of place other than she was in a basement room of some sort.

Donna was young and smart. She knew enough of the world to understand that her family was wealthy. It had been told to her, and her siblings, that despite their best efforts at security, a kidnapping was always a possibility for a family as hers. She never imagined it would be her that was taken.

She spent the first few hours screaming until she was held down and gagged. She knew it was less so that her screams could not pierce to the outside than for those on the inside not to hear her. After the first full day she realized wherever they are, there was no foot traffic. Thus, no passersby to hear her screams if they could have been heard.  

The only light sources in the room were a lamp on the floor by the door that stayed on even in the daytime. She could not reach it without dragging the heavy bed across the room. At ten years old she certainly did not have the strength to ram the bed into the metal door which opened inward with any discernable force. There was a clearstory window too high for her to reach. It had amused her captors to discover, that even with the chain, she had managed to turn her bed on its short edge to try.

She never left the room, except to be taken to a bathroom. The men wore masks and made a point of showing her a gun before she was blindfolded and guided to a loo which had no windows at all. She had been given food the second day. If a couple of protein shakes, and bottled water could be called food. She read it as a good sign that they did not expect to keep her for long. Still, she had started to grow hungry again.

She sometimes heard her captors through the door. She understood the leader had a plan and that demands for her release were sent. Some of the things heard would sometimes send a chill through her. She deduced they knew she can hear them, and they purposely said horrible things. She also knew her parents would do anything for her release and/or to find her. Anything. She also knew once she was free it was going to be a bit not good for her captors once they met her Papa.

She just had to wait for a sign and be ready.

Donna had been held captive four days when she heard a slight screech sound above her that fourth night. Her head automatically popped up to look at the window. She recognized the sound as something that had scratched against the glass. But it was night, she could not see anything and nothing else was heard.

Then a miracle happened.

A feather landed in her lap.

Not just any feather; a black raven feather. A raven was on the family crest, she knew what it meant. It was a sign. The sign.

Her father was there!

Suddenly there was screaming and gunfire in the outer room. She dived under the bed in fear of the just as sudden silence. It felt forever as though had passed before the metal door that had once locked her in opened and Donna knew it would never close on her again. Her father ran to her while her ankle was freed at last and she tearfully threw herself into her father’s arms.

It was over she was going home!

The Sunday Whirl | Wordle 500

Leader, Release, Edge, Feather, Grow, Send,
Demands, Days, Force, Plan, Read, Four

Use at least ten of the words in a poem or short story.