A Curious Tale: One girl's search for her father...

Chapter Two

Twenty years ago, Pascal Curious discovered his baby daughter was missing, kidnapped! Since that night, Cora Curious has suffered at the hands of men who observed her growing up in a white padded cell. This is her story...

The room was all white. Even the furniture was white, the toys and the floors and walls! Little Cora sat terrified, wondering where her daddy was, where Uncle Lazlo was!

 A voice called her name, she didn't know where it was coming from!

"Hello Cora, I am Mr Bane. This is your new room, do you like it? It's where you will be living from now on!"

"Dada..."

"Your daddy is right here Cora. This is a game, if you play along you will see daddy again, I promise!"

 Cora did play along, doing everything the voice told her to. At meal times and bed time a person all in black from head to toe would enter the room to feed her and put her to bed. She never once saw that person's face! During the day Cora would play with blocks and be asked the colour or shape...

"Wed, twiangol!"

"Very good Cora!" Mr Bane would coo over the tannoy.

 The shadow men, as Cora came to call them, would stand outside the room and observe her every move. It was frightening at first, but she soon got used to them being there.

 Cora was now a child, fluent in four languages and she had read every book that was in her book shelf. Being a genius most of these things came easy to her. She learned to talk in a week, learned to walk in three days and was potty trained in twenty four hours. Now that she was six years of age, she began to feel very lonely, with only the shadow men for company ten minutes a day. She would think back to Mr Bane's promise, "If you play along you will see daddy again, I promise!" he was a liar!

 Being in the white cell, she would never have known whether it was day or night if it wasn't for the shadow men bringing her meals and telling her it was bedtime. It was  a very unpleasant experience! Why would her daddy do this?

 Why would he put her in this place? She cried for him every night but he never came! She didn't understand what she had done that was so bad, why her family didn't visit or take her home!

"I want my daddy!!!" she whimpered and drifted off to sleep, her face stained with tears and her nose stuffed up from crying so much! Maybe daddy didn't love her!

 She continued to do the tasks Mr Bane asked of her, playing with a bear that was nowhere near as good as Pat, her rag doll!

 The block table was his favourite object, but Cora grew bored of it easily, as geniuses do!

 Most of the time he would tell her to "just do your thing, go about your business Cora and we shall leave you to it!" all the time watching her, like a lab rat! Was that what she was? An experiment? Why did she play along? Because in her heart she hoped her father would come for her...

 ...but she still waited, and he never showed!

 Cora was now eight years old and out-smarting the shadow men and Mr Bane easily! She would mock them when they put her to the test and made her dabble with the blocks and the toys and bears. Her father wasn't coming, she'd resigned herself to the fact that she was never seeing him or her uncles ever again. They had abandoned her, or so she thought...

 ...until one day when she was sixteen, she heard two of the shadow men talking behind the glass. As they lay her breakfast on the dressing table, they chatted about the day she arrived. Thinking she was asleep one said to the other "remember when she came here? Tiny little thing with big bug eyes!" he laughed as the other man added,

"Yeah, must've been a big shock for the poor kid! In your cot at home one minute and grabbed in the night and brought here the next! I always wonder about her father, how he must've felt when he found that she was missing!" They muttered a few other things she couldn't quite make out as they left and shut the door tight, ascending the stairs still babbling on...

 ...and as she made her bed a tear rolled down her cheek, a tear of sheer joy and relief that her father hadn't abandoned her after all! She had been taken from him without his knowledge!!!

 She didn't touch her breakfast that morning. A wave of anger washed over her and it boiled up inside! That was the day she rebelled, trashed her prison and demanded to see Mr Bane in person!

He of course did not appear, instead the same two shadow men burst into her cell and tazered her. When she awoke she was in a restrictive white suit that would zap shocks into her body if she attempted any violent acts. She pounded on the glass and wept, every thump was answered with an electric shock within the suit. The shadow men stood on the other side of the glass and laughed.

"LET ME OUT!!! I swear I'll rip your throat out you faceless cowards!!! Let me OUUUUUUT!!!" Cora's furious cries reverberated all around the room as the shadow man slowly walked up the stairs and she was all alone once again! Her body numb with the multiple shocks she had endured!

 The faceless people had covered her cell with yellow caution tape that day and it had stayed there all this time, no one except the two shadow men who seemed to be in charge were allowed within arms length of Cora or her "room". She still wore the suit, a reminder that if she tried to defy Mr Bane, she would suffer for it. Eighteen years, that was how long she'd been in this colourless prison! And for ten of those years she'd been planning her escape, it had only become real when she overheard the truth two years before, that her father was not responsible for leaving her here! Some day soon she would be out of this hell hole and back in his arms, some day very soon...

 On her twenty first birthday, Cora finally made her move. Having worked out how to remove the suit, disable the cameras and open the door to her cell, it was time to escape!

 Being a genius had it's advantages she thought, as she crawled under the tape and began to leave...

 ...but then it suddenly hit her, she couldn't go outside in her underwear, and all of her clothes were tagged with tracking devices...

 ...yes being a genius was epic!

 Leaving her prison for the first time equipped with only the painful device from her suit in her hand, she climbed the white steps to freedom. Anyone out there who tried to stop her was in for a "shock" themselves!

When she fought her way out of what turned out the be Bridgeport Science Facility, she hopped on a bus to Strangetown with no money and no idea where her father actually lived. But when the bus drove up the hill, she recognised her old home immediately. The bus driver didn't even argue with her when she declared she had no money to pay for her fair, the symbols on her back put fear into him for some reason...

 As she ran towards her house, a paper boy looked her up and down...

"You're green!"

"Is this the Curious residence?"

"Yes, but they're not here!" Cora's heart sank in her chest,

"What do you mean? Do they not live here any more?"

 "Well yeah, but...man you're sooooo green lady!"

"Where are they? Please tell me?"

"They go to Starlight Shores every year for the convention. Pascal leaves a note in the letterbox for a girl called Cora, every year they do this!"

"Convention?" Cora mumbled feeling overwhelmed by the mention of her father's name.

"Yeah, Star Watch? You know, UFO's and stuff! You are soooooo green!" the boy stammered and ran away.

 "Oh Pat, how I've missed you!" Cora sighed as she peeked in her father's bedroom window, nothing had changed since she left twenty years before. Nobody was home, just a note in the mailbox, for Cora the boy had said, for her! She was almost afraid to read it, but she knew if she wanted to find her family she must!

It felt good to be home, memories came flooding back to her, warm memories of being loved!

 As she opened the mailbox, her heart pounded and she struggled to breathe...

She opened the envelope clumsily and tore it, pulling out the letter desperately with sweaty hands, and began to read... 

"My dearest Cora,

It's been twenty years since you were taken from me! Not a day goes by when I don't think of you..."

 Getting to Starlight Shores was much easier. Her father had left some money in the envelope for a bus fair. When she arrived, she had no idea where to start, so she asked a few startled residents about the Star Watch Convention. They told her of a hotel that specialised in tours, meetings and even UFO watches! So she made her way there hoping her father and uncles were waiting for her!

 Cora bit her lip and entered the foyer...

 ...a pretty brunette sat at a desk in reception and smiled warily at her. She was green, wearing caution tape! Of course she was wary!

 "Can I help you madam?" she smiled wider.

 "I do hope so, I'm looking for my father and uncles. Pascal, Vidcund and Lazlo Curious, are they staying here?"

 "Ohhhhh your "father"!" she giggled and tapped furiously on her keyboard. "Yes, I can give you their room numbers..."

 Cora was unsure of what the woman was implying but she was only too happy to be finally meeting her father...

 ...walking through the corridors was like wading in treacle, every step took forever!

 She stood outside his door, trying to catch her breath...

 ...after knocking and waiting a very long time, she realised he wasn't in! "Oh father, where are you???" she sighed and tried not to cry...

 "One hour until sundown Laz!" Pascal declared excitedly.

"This is so stupid, it's been over twenty years brother! She is gone!" Vidcund frowned and tried to keep his voice calm, but his frustration shone through!

"I will not give up!" Pascal replied through gritted teeth, "She is out there and I will find her!"

As the brothers waited by a picnic bench for the sun to set, Cora was waiting patiently for her father to return to his room. Would they ever see each other again, or be forever doomed to be ships passing in the night?

To be continued...