Well, you see, it started off in the town of Warwick.

It was a lovely, crisp morning and I was just having a cup of coffee, living a partially normal looking life and then I noticed a girl and a boy, probably a bit older than me, so a woman and a man, anyway. They were sitting there too, potentially normal people, but the girl who had green hair looked over a few times. Honest to God, I didn’t know if she was checking me out or just looking, so I gave her a small smile. She just turned back around. I finished my coffee and walked down town and then just continued till I got to the park.

I’m homeless, my favourite place to sleep is on or under a park bench. I have a secret stash of clothing hidden under one of the bins, I wash them in the pond and then hang them up in the trees at night (so I don’t get in trouble for having them there by the council). I get food, like most people, from the bin or I get donations from people passing by, or charities. Like my coffee, there was a fragile old woman who would pay for my coffee in advance because I help her mow her backyard.

I was pretty good at being homeless, Warwick was very far from where I had been originally. Somewhere in Brisbane. But that was a long time ago, I’m seventeen now. And no, I didn’t run away. But anyway.

I was just standing there, at my park bench, having only just got back, and I noticed the couple again. They were going for a walk over to the pond. I just looked at them for a bit and then became interested in something else entirely.

Around dusk, I was sitting on my park bench, looking at the way the trees turn into silhouettes and then you have the sky as their background, a purple, pinky blue mixture. It was amazing, and then everything went black. Someone had unoriginally thrown a garbage bag over my face and they started pulling tight so I couldn’t breathe. As a person, your first response is to pull their hands away or pull the bag up, but logically, I opened my mouth and tried to rip a hole into the garbage bag where my mouth was. It didn’t work, it was more than one bag. I started to suffocate and began trying to turn around, peel their fingers away but someone else just grabbed my hands. I started panicking, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe, I was trapped and everything had closed in around me, now I was in a literal blind panic. My breath got caught in my throat and the rapid breathing became jugged, I was choking and then I became unconscious.

I woke up, and it was morning, suggesting that I had been out for the rest of the night. I was in a car, a corolla to be more specific and in the front seat was the young couple from the café. Surprise, surprise. The girl was driving and the guy just sat there. Immediately I was up in arms, but not literally, they had tied them up. As well as my legs.

“What’s going on!?” I questioned, trying to sound threatening, it came out casual, a bit groggy.

“Shut up.” The guy said. I looked at him.

“Excuse me?” I questioned him, he looked at me with a frown. “Do you even know who I am?” I started up, no one knew who I was, but I wasn’t going to let them know that, I wanted them to think that people would be looking for me.

“Nope.” He replied. I looked at him. And then I looked at the girl.

“I’d be worried, if I were you.” I said to them both. “I’m pretty important.” I continued.

“That’s why you were about to go to sleep on a park bench?” The girl retorted. I didn’t like the situation. There was no point in screaming, no one could hear me, apart from them. Maybe if I made enough noise they would throw me out. So, I did, I started screaming at the top of my lungs and they started yelling for me to shut up and then suddenly both turned around in their chairs, the boy held me while the girl gagged me, then she stood on the accelerator, and the craziest thing happened. We went over a bump in the Dirt road.