It was little past midnight. Priya woke up from her sleep given all the disturbance outside her house. She stood up from her bed and made a frustating sigh.
“What are these people up to in the middle of the night ?” , she thought to herself.
Looking out from her window, she saw a huge crowd gathered around just a few meters away from her house. And right infront of her house were three children of around her age, that is 16 and looking up to her window. Those were her friends- Aryan, Simran and Ryan. The four of them always hung out together and were almost inseparable. She rushed down to meet them.
“Do you guys know what happened ?” asked Priya.
“yeah, looks like our old neighbours are again squabbling over their trivial issues” replied Aryan.
Aryan was a smart child. He was always interested to know what’s happening everywhere, so he was often the source of information for the group.
They kept talking like always when they suddenly saw a little dog at the corner of their street. It wasn’t from around here and from the looks of it, it definitely wasn’t a street dog either.
This caught Priya’s attention and she took the all of them near the dog.
“Oh God! look. There is a little boy there down the street” exclaimed Simran.
“let’s go take a look at him maybe he is lost” replied Ryan. And this is where the kids got involved in their biggest adventure so far without even realizing it.
As they were approaching the boy, who seemed to be around 9 years old, they realised that they weren’t alone. A little away from the boy were two tall and stout men who were hidden in the shadow which made the kids think the child was alone.
But their realization was too late, the men saw them and caught them before they could even react. The clueless kids now with their hands tied up were made to sit in a mini moving truck near by and all they could do was glance at each other not knowing what kind of a situation they got themselves in.
“what is happening right now?” said Ryan who was scared out of his life.
“Well from the looks of it, we are being kidnapped you fool” replied Simran who was irritated by his stupid question.
“Guys stop. Let’s try to see if we can wake this kid up. Maybe he knows something. ” said Priya trying to stop them fighting. And her idea worked. After trying for almost 20 minutes, the little kid finally woke up. After a little comforting and assurance that won’t harm him, he finally started speaking.
He told them that he was kidnapped from his house while he was asleep and was here with these men when he woke up. Apparently, when those men stopped for a while in between he tried to escape but was caught and punished by those men, which explained why he laid unconscious on the ground down their street.
“There could be two possible explanations for this situation. One, they are child traffickers and two, they kidnapped this child to blackmail his parents for money” said Aryan.
“And in both cases we should try to escape from here and be careful” continued Priya.
“wait how do you know this ?” asked Ryan. The others decided to ignore his question for the time being.
“okay so what’s the plan?” asked Simran.
“guys look!” exclaimed Ryan.
Shut up Ryan said Aryan.
“No look there is a glass bottle here. If we try to break it somehow, we can cut these ropes around our hands.
And that was exactly what they did. The five of them, now without their hands tied had better chances of escaping. Their happiness was short lived as they suddenly heard the truck stop. This meant that the men would come to check on them. They quickly hid all the pieces of the broken bottle and all slept in one corner in a way no one would realize their hands weren’t tied.
Their plan worked. The kidnappers saw them sleeping from outside and was about to close the door when other said to leave it open for a while so that they get air as they don’t want them dead before delivering them.
this confirmed the children’s suspicions, these men were indeed human traffickers. They lay still for a while when they couldn’t hear any voices they slowed rushed to the door to see where they were. They were quite far away from home, but could still recognize the area as their school was nearby. So they had to try to escape from there and reach near their school. Then they could use the phone at the front gate used by the security to call their parents.
But the problem was how would they escape. They waited for a while until the men sat down to eat and were lost in their talk. One by one they slowly got down and started walking in the opposite direction of the men, taking cover from the truck and making sure they don’t make any noise. The boy was too tired to walk so they took turns in carrying him from time to time.
After carefully reaching half way, Ryan had a brilliant idea. They made a false scene and made it look like the they went walking in the opposite direction to fool the kidnappers.
after this they hurried to their school and called both the police and their parents. Soon after they were saved by the police and thanks to their hints the police also managed to find those kidnappers and put them under arrest.
The little boy was also send home. They all went home together but just when they were about to part ways, Simran raised a question which is still left unanswered.
“But where is dog which let us to the child and where did it come from ?”
And this was a question they did not have an answer to because they could never find that dog again after that day !