Chapter 7
Charlotte woke me up the next morning. I was always the last to get up in the orphanage, not including the nocturnal guard. Sometimes I wondered if he was an owl in his past life. Anyway, I woke up groggily to the sound of Charlotte pounding my back like a drum. I also sometimes wondered if she was a drummer in her past life. I sat up in bed, and I saw myself in the mirror across the room from my bed. I would have screamed, but I bit my lip just in time. However, Charlotte laughed like crazy! I swear she would have died of laughter if I didn’t stick a bar of soap in her mouth!
We went downstairs to get some breakfast. It was a breakfast buffet. I immediately picked up a tray and put a plate onto it. I piled croissants, bagels, packets of cream cheese, 4 tangerines, two scoops of yogurt, some bacon, jam, and lots of scrambled eggs on to the plate.
When I came back to the table we had claimed, Charlotte asked, “Are you really going to eat that much?” with a half disgusted look on her face.
“Yeah,” I replied, this time in English. She left to go to the salad bar.
“You sure are picking up English real fast!” said a man sarcastically behind me. I recognized that voice, but I didn’t dare to look behind me.
Instead, I ran all over the buffet, knocking down things in my path. I didn’t exactly care. I put obstacles between us like movie stars, tables, and I even threw some mashed potato at him(his eyes to be specific)!
Unfortunately, my aim was horrible that day. It landed on a few innocent bystanders. He was speeding up now! I learned that you weren’t supposed to look at your attacker when you were running from them. I tried hard to do this. I was almost out of breath when I reached the elevators. The elevator closest to me was almost closing! I leaped inside just in time for his arm to be caught in it. His fingers wriggled. The other people inside stared at the arm. “Eww,” someone said. “Gross!” another one yelled. “Disgusting,” a woman commented, wrapping her fur shawl tighter around her body. Then they all looked at me as if they were expecting me to do something.
I looked at the screen close to the top of the elevator. It said that we were on floor 16! How did he stretch his arm so much? Or did he just come up here with his arm? I found the answer to my question when the lady pushed the ‘open’ button. The elevator opened up, and I saw the man’s arm drop to the ground. It was all bloody. It wasn’t attached to anything, so I knew the man must still be downstairs, screaming with pain. I wondered if it was my fault. I shook that thought out of my head. I didn’t think it was my fault.
The three people said, “How revolting!” in unison. Then the lady screamed bloody murder. The noise could have blown my eardrums out. A hotel worker quickly rushed to the noise. I picked up the hem of my dress and stepped cautiously over the arm. Now the fingers were not wriggling as they had been doing in the elevator.
I dashed away as fast as I could. I ran into one of the bathrooms. I didn’t exactly care which bathroom, but I just ran inside one. I guess it must’ve been the wrong one, because I didn’t see these sorts of things inside the girls’ bathroom. I thought it was a drinking fountain, so I took a drink. I thought it tasted nasty. Suddenly, the door opened. A man looked at me in a curious way. He was wearing a brown coat. One of his sleeves was bloody, and hung limp. I realized that he was the man who was chasing me! I jumped to conclusions too quickly, since I jumped nimbly on top of the urinals, climbed on top of the bathroom stalls, and pounced onto the ground. I swung the door open, which hit the man in the face. I paused for a moment and saw him laying there. I thought, oopsies daises.
I scrambled like crazy to get back into the hotel room before he could wake up. I passed by the buffet, and I saw Charlotte calling my name. I speed-walked over to the table. I saw her mutter, “Oh well,” and turn around. She screamed almost-bloody murder when she saw me. Why do people scream like that? It’s so annoying. Her plate was piled with food two times as high as my plate was.
“Hi,” I said calmly.
“What took you so long? Where were you? Why is blood, of all things, on your sock? Why are you sweating so much?” she asked.
“One question at a time,” I told her. We both gasped at the same time. We were speaking in English—fluently! “Well, someone was chasing me. The kidnapper, to be exact. By the way, why is he chasing us? I was in the elevator. That kidnapper lost his arm when it got caught inside the elevator. Then, the door opened, and I ran into the bathroom. I took a drink from the drinking fount—“
Charlotte cut me off. “Why would there be a drinking fountain in the bathroom? There aren’t drinking fountains in ladies’ bathrooms, you know.”
“It was the men’s bathroom.”
“You must be talking about the urinals!”
“OOPS?!” I said, still not sure what a urinal was.
“That’s disgusting! Did you know that men actually go to the bathroom in the urinals???”
“Yuck,” I said in a monotone.
“You drank toilet water!!!!”
“No, I didn’t, I drank urinal water.” Suddenly, I could hear an ambulance wailing. I knew exactly who it was for. I excused myself, and jumped into the elevator nearby. I pushed the button for floor 16. as soon as the bell rang, I scrambled out of the elevator. I dashed to the men’s bathroom, and I half expected to see the man who had lost his arm. I didn’t see anyone. I thought that I saw him get knocked out cold. Dead as a doorknob. Unconscious. I turned around in despair—for nothing.
All of a sudden a voice boomed behind me. I knew better than to run, in fear I would get blamed for breaking off his other arm. I turned around slowly, and saw what he was holding: a knife, a rope, and a bottle of ether. He unscrewed the lid of the ether-filled bottle, and I knew I had no choice. I started to run, but then stopped. The kidnapper was too stupid for kidnapping me. He reminded of Tom and Jerry. Tom always got himself hurt when he tried to catch Jerry, but he never learns from his mistakes, just like this kidnapper. The ether drifted into his nose, and he fell asleep. He dropped onto the ground, and I bounced a few times on his stomach. He was very bouncy, like a trampoline. Then, just to make sure that he wouldn’t wake up in a while, I stuck the bottle of ether into his mouth.
Subsequently, a heard a loud moan down the hallway. It was a middle-aged man who was doing drunk kung-fu. Or so I thought. Anyhow, he was actually drunk. He bumped onto doors, crashed into walls, and hit his head on a window! I had to help him before he fell of the 16th floor. I understood that I couldn’t trust everyone I met, but I knew that he was too drunk to do me any harm…