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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MyInnerCulture on 2024-12-27 19:40:48+00:00.

No one ever wants to wake up in the trunk of a car.

I don’t realize that’s where I am. Not at first. At first, I feel my body being jostled, my legs and shoulders bumping into a hard floor. It’s the smell, really, that tells me where I am. Scratchy carpet with a rubber smell, like tires in a hardware store, beneath the unmistakable reek of bodies that have been here before me—a fetid mix of blood and piss and sweat and fear. I wince because I recognize that smell too. I wish I didn’t. I wish I was anywhere else. Anywhere but here.

No one wants to wake up in the trunk of a car.

I try piecing together how this happened, as my body bounces and cracks with every bump in the road. It was my turn to bring dinner to my weekly support group, and I was under a lot of pressure to make it good. Of all the members of our group, I’m the most obsessed with food, the most enraptured by the pleasure of eating beyond simple nourishment and survival. Because of this, I need the most help controlling my appetite and making healthier choices. Tonight the city streets were bustling, ripe with possible meal options, as they usually were at ten o’clock on a Friday night. All around me couples stopped for nightcaps amid rowdy pub crawlers, businessmen downed whiskey in their suits, women in low-cut tops let loose while their kids slept at home with the sitter. Then there was me, alone. I didn’t have to try hard to blend in. Almost no one noticed my mousy brown hair, my slight frame, my beige peacoat. I’m pretty but not in a way that draws attention, and yet, somehow I attract his.

I notice him behind me a few blocks after I leave my support group in search of food. He looks like the kind of guy a woman avoids: dark winter cap pulled down over his ears, prominent stubble on his cheeks, his hands buried in the pockets of a dark jacket zipped up to his chin, intense, menacing eyes that might’ve been attractive in one of those smutty novels that romanticized danger, but actually were dangerous to a woman out alone at night.

The skin on the back of my neck prickles. He’s getting closer; I can sense his presence creeping up on me. I hope I’m imagining it, so I decide to test it. He’s followed me across three blocks, keeping just enough distance in the throngs of pedestrians that I can’t be sure it’s me he’s after, so on the fourth block I see a break in traffic and step off the curb in the middle of the block and hurry to the other side.

He does the same, skittering through traffic that approaches from both directions. I’m already across when the horns start blaring at him, and for a moment—when I dare to look him in the face—our eyes catch, and I feel my guts twist because now he knows that I know he’s following me, and this knowledge doesn’t deter him. If anything, he picks up speed. My heart leaps up my chest and chills descend the entire length of my spine, and that’s when I look to my left and see it: a car with an UBER sticker.

The driver waves me into his car. I don’t dwell on his error, mistaking me for his fare. I just open the back door and slip inside, locking it behind me.

UBER driver: “Are you okay?”

A strong whiff of Old Spice collects in my throat.

I peer out my window down the block, but I don’t see my pursuer. It’s as if he’s blended into the crowd or slipped into a building or alley.

Woman, breathless: “I think so. I think I was being followed.”

UBER driver: “I saw that too.”

Woman: “What? You saw?”

UBER driver: “That’s why I waved you into my car. Let’s get you out of here.”

I thank the driver profusely and he waves it away like it’s nothing, like he hasn’t just saved a life, then hands me a bottle of water because I must be thirsty, and I am. He has no idea how much.

I drink.

The last thing I remember is thinking that it’s strange that he doesn’t ask me where I want to go. He just drives. I’m about to say something and then…

And then…then I wake up here. In the trunk.

My stomach growls. It’s a strange thing to notice at a time like this, but I had been scouting dinner before my capture and the hunger pangs give me something else to focus on to stay calm so I can assess the situation. I swallow a few deep breaths of sour air, the stench of other bodies coating my tongue in a sickly sheen. I wonder how many others ended up in that trunk before me. I can move all of my limbs so I haven’t been bound, and because I can move my limbs, I know that the trunk is empty. There are so many bumps in the road and it’s so quiet beyond the walls of the trunk that I figure us for somewhere in the country. Somewhere isolated. I haven’t eaten in days. I had been saving myself for the meal I was to share with my support group, and now the hunger in my guts is raw. Visceral. I shouldn’t be thinking about that as much as I am, but I can’t help it. It’s why I never miss a meeting.

I don’t know how long we’ve been driving. I reach into my pocket but my phone is gone, so I have no idea what time it is and no way to call for help. For a moment I panic and force a few more sour breaths down my gullet. I need to make a plan. This isn’t one of those trunks with a safety latch inside it. I won’t be getting out of here on my own. After what might’ve been a few minutes or an hour the car slows. I feel a hard turn to the left then the car creeps along down a heavily potted road. A few minutes later, the car stops and the engine quiets. I hear the opening and shutting of a car door, and muffled voices.

UBER driver: “This one was almost too easy.”

It sounds like the UBER driver, but I can’t be sure. The other voice is one I don’t recognize at all.

Stalker: “It can never be too easy.”

UBER driver: “Takes some of the fun out of it, doesn’t it?”

Stalker: “Just get her out of the car, man.”

UBER driver: “Is everything ready?”

Stalker: “Of course it’s ready. What do you think I’ve been doing out here, freezing my nuts off?”

UBER driver: “All right, all right. She should still be out for another hour or two.

Stalker: “Not like it matters. It’s not like anyone will hear her scream.”

For a moment my blood runs slow and cold. I’ve clearly stumbled into something terrible, and it’s getting worse by the minute. I need a plan, but I still don’t have one. Then I realize that if they still think I’m unconscious it’s probably why they didn’t bother tying me up. I can use this to my advantage until I see a way out. I try to steady my breathing, even though my body hums with a horrifying cocktail of fear and anticipation. I hear footsteps approaching the trunk, the click of the latch. I will my body to be still, my heart to slow, my eyes to remain heavy and closed. I feel the cold night air kiss my skin as a man leans down in a plume of Old Spice and forces his hands underneath my body to lift me from the trunk. I’m aware of things now I hadn’t noticed in my brief exchange with the UBER driver before he poisoned me. His skin is dry, his rough hands scraping along my clothes. He has trouble breathing, huffing and puffing as he pulls me free. His stomach is so rotund he braces me on it to carry me away from the trunk.

Stalker: “You got her?”

I know without opening my eyes that it is the man who stalked me down the road, the one with the jacket zipped up to his chin and hat pulled down over his ears.

Stalker: “Don’t drop her, man.”

UBER driver huffs: “I’m not going to drop her. This one’s heavier than she looks.”

This one. Confirmation of what I already knew—that I’m not the first person to be abducted, the first to be driven out to wherever we are. I hear forest sounds now, like the swaying of tree branches in the wind and the skittering of squirrels in the brush. I know we’re in the woods without having to see the press of trees around us. I smell sap and bark and damp moss and hear the crunch of pine needles under the feet of the men who are bringing me somewhere deeper. Somewhere hidden.

How many women have they brought here before me? How many times have they gotten away with whatever it is they are planning to do to me? The thought turns my already fragile stomach. My empty stomach. I really, really shouldn’t be thinking about food right now. It seems so silly, this obsession. This need. What would the others in my support group say? They’d remind me there was a time and a place for everything, and this was not the time or the place. I should be thinking about the horrors that lie ahead and instead my mouth is watering at the thought of my next meal, my throat painfully dry because it’s been so long. Too long, really. Even the staunchest members of the group couldn’t fault me for it this time. Still, I can hear them muttering our mantra: you are what you eat.

You are what you eat.

It’s supposed to remind us to take care with our food choices. Last week’s dinner was lean, barely feeding the whole group. It encouraged us to chew slowly, savor every morsel, and allow satiation to settle in before going back for more. Tonight I was supposed to find something of similar quality, steering clear of the fatty, artery-clogging fare that most of us—especially me—crave so dearly.

Unfortunately for them, I’ll be bringing back an overweight UBER driver and his skinny sidekick.

I silently apologize to the group in my mind. They won’t be pleased, but they’ll be so hungry by the time I get back that they’ll eat any old thing I drop in front of them. I slowly slide my hand up the UBER driver’s neck. He jumps and almost drops m…

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