She couldn't believe that she would be hospitalised for the next two weeks. Tears escaped from the corner of her eyes. Alone - curled up on the bed - with scars and injuries everywhere, she knew nothing would be the same anymore.
It was her fault, really. She was supposed to return home from school immediately, but she couldn't help it. Freedom tasted sweet. She thought, spending some me-time somewhere would be alright as long as nobody knew about it. Of course, nobody would know. By the time her parents found out about her disappearance, she had been missing for more than 18 hours. It didn't mean that they were irresponsible. Her father is a chief inspector, who got caught up in - the irony! - missing children investigation. Her mother is a heart surgeon in general hospital, and she had just finished her on-call duty.
When she got home, she went to check on her daughter, but her bed was empty. It was a Saturday, she was supposed to sleep in. She took out her phone and called her. Nobody answered. Her last online on WhatsApp was yesterday at 14:08. Her heart skipped a beat. She dialed her husband's number instead. He didn't answer either. She supposed he was busy with his case. Almost immediately, her phone rang. It was the hospital.
***
First, she stopped by a cafe for lunch. She would take pictures of her food and check in her whereabouts on Instagram. That was something usual she did, a common thing majority of her friends did, to update everything on social media. Her father warned her before, not to share anything on a real-time basis as followers might be able to stalk her. She never really bothered.
After she had finished her food, a message popped up in her Instagram. It was a picture of her, taken from the back. She turned around. A man who wore a dark green cap was sitting at the table right behind her. He smiled. His teeth were pearly white, but that was it. She couldn't see the rest of his face. He then stood up and walked over to her.
"Would you like to have ice cream?" he asked. "My treat."
She finally saw his face - he was really good-looking. Without thinking, she agreed and left with him. He led her towards an old building and alarm started going off in her head. She was having second thoughts as she stopped in her tracks and tried to come up with an excuse to get away. Before she could think of anything, he grabbed her arm and shoved her roughly into a doorway. She screamed aloud. He slapped her hard across the face, pinned her against the wall and wrapped his fingers around her throat. She choked, trying to pry off his fingers so she could get enough oxygen into her lungs. Then, he released his hold on her. She slid helplessly onto the floor, inhaling as hard as she could.
"Time for dessert."
***
KOALE LOMPUR - A teenage girl, 17, was brought to an abandoned building before she was severely beaten up and then raped. It was suspected that the rapist stalked her social media and marked her as his victim because she was usually alone. Police urged adolescents not to update real-time location on social networking sites as this may promote themselves as easy target for the assailants to assault them - be it robbery, kidnapping or even rape.
