A Strange Place

I think you'll enjoy this more if you read Beep Beep first, but it's not essential 😊

It's not so bad here. I mean, I miss mom and dad. I think we all do. But not as much as I thought I might. So it's not so bad. Not really. The thing about this place is, it's weird but not scary. Sunny but never hot. There's a sun, and it goes up and then down, in the normal way. Over and over. Like a very slow, fiery yo-yo. But it doesn't feel like time is passing. I don't feel any older. The other kids, they all look the same. Exactly the same as the day we got here. Which might have been five days ago. Or twenty. Or a hundred.

I guess I look the same, too.

When we want food, it just sort of turns up. We don't get hungry, but sometimes we want something. The other day, or the other week, or something... I just had this hankering for pink milk. Like mom used to buy. Next thing, there's a picnic blanket spread out on the green, and what's there? Yup. Pink milk. We all take it in turns watch him. The man, I mean. The man who brought us here. We don't know his name. We just call him The Driver. Not even that. More like, the driver, just like that. No big letters. No slopey words. Sometimes we call him Ratman. He does have a kinda ratty looking face. He just lies there, his wrists all purple and black where the straps dig in. He mustn't get free. We agreed. He would definitely be up to something if he got loose, and it won't be anything good. The first time we met him, he lied to us. He pretended. The stupid thing is, if he'd just told us where he was taking us, we probably would have gone with him anyway. Gotta be better than school, I guess. When we realised we didn't recognise where we were, we knew he was Bad. We thought he must be a pedophile. We knew a bit about pedophiles, and we didn't want to find out the rest. We could be sneaky, too. We whispered. We pretended. There were lots of us and only one of him. We had heavy book bags to hit him with. It didn't hurt him, I don't think, but it did him some damage. When he was down on the ground, we beat him round the head, over and over, until he stopped moving. We cut the handles off our book bags, and used those to tie his hands behind his back. But it was too late. He'd already driven through that tunnel, and now we're here, on the other side, and there's no way to get back. The first time he woke up, all trussed like that, like a turkey for roasting, he tried to persuade us to untie him. Billie found an apple from someone's lunch bag and pushed it in his mouth. Later, he managed to spit it out somehow, and started shouting about how they would be sorry, and they should have paid him, yada yada yada. Kayden squatted down next to him. "Shut up, Rat Man," he said. He pushed the apple back into the man's mouth so hard he might have broken his teeth. Then he tied his football sock around it so the man couldn't spit the apple out again. After that, every time he wakes up whoever is Watching him kicks him in the head, again and again, until his eyes close and he stops moving. Sometimes he goes limp to stop us, but we can tell now when it's just more pretending. The dark red sticky patch around his head keeps getting bigger. Sunny without being hot. Nights and days, but no time. Bleeding but never dying. It's that sort of place.

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Thank you for reading!

Thanks especially to Thavien for the inspiration.