Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

Where Have You Gone?

Claire Dakota

"Please pick up! Please pick up!" I muttered when I could hear the sound of ringing as soon as I dialed Bernardo's phone number. My blood matted my disheveled hair, my lips cut in various places and swollen like satiated leeches. I was breathing like as if I was doing so through a straw. I had run a long way into this forest about which I knew nothing. I ran into this one because I had no choice. If I wasted time planning which path I had to take, they would have caught me.

It is not Mr. Black about whom I am talking. The baby-faced obese drunk molester whom I had blinded came with a gang, perhaps the leader of which was his brother. They were mad and angry when they saw what I had done.

I tried my best to run but someone had caught up with me and swung a metal rod with a sharp end against the back of my head, making my skull vibrate as the rod formed a cut behind my head, a deep one just above my neck. I threw up spontaneously because of the concussion. My eyes were blurry at that moment, and I had faltered as I tried to keep my balance. I saw my blood dripping from the metal rod that he - the one with the horseshoe mustache- had used. After beating my head, the mustached man ordered his men to do something to me. I didn't know what he commanded them to do to me, for my ears were ringing after my head was injured. I knew that whatever they were about to do, it would be no good. I had to flee as swiftly as I could. I stopped clutching my injury and glanced at my hands, laced with thick blood. The men had been coming close. Run! I had dashed to my right and fled into the forest.

They had pursued for more than half an hour, with the man armed with the revolver firing some rounds in my direction. All except one, which grazed my hip, hit the trees far away from me. I had crossed two small hills and had navigated through thickets thicker than stone. But they had not relented. I continued to scamper through the forests. I fled as fast I could until I had reached a rock on top of which was a mobile tower. So that was how I had decided to ring Bernardo, who by then answered me. By then it seemed as if the man with the revolver had run out of rounds. I heard one of the gangsters yelling at another for wasting rounds.

"Bernardo! Help me! I don't know where I am. There's..." Before I could complete my sentence, I caught sight of the men who were pursuing me. And dropped my phone which fell into a pit next to me and broke into pieces.

"There she is!" a man screamed out loud, and the other gangsters came towards him and looked at me staring at my broken phone at the bottom of the pit.

"Catch her!" they screamed. I got up and stopped myself from almost slipping into the pit beside me and continued running for my life as fast as I could, without even looking for my phone after I had dropped it during my flight further into the forest far away from the last mobile tower that I had seen. "Now how are you going to call Bernardo, you idiot," I curse myself as I gripped a twig to get some balance, only to pull it away with a scream after realizing that worms were feeding on the then dying wood of the branch.

Red blisters adorned my hand, probably an allergy that flared upon contact with those hairy insects. A branch of a neighboring tree was just within reach. I leaped. I had a brief moment of hope as it seemed like I would grip the edge of that branch. But I missed and scrambled to find another tree until I fell on something else that broke my fall. It was one of those gangsters. He screamed after looking at this then displaced elbow and shattered fingers, the fragments of which pierced through his skin. My stomach hurt, but I still managed to get up and sprint towards a thicket where I thought I could hide. The leaves and jagged branches lacerated my skin as I tried to bury myself in the thicket. I could hear the sound of the other gangsters approaching their wounded comrade far away.

I realized that I had to hurry. With adrenaline numbing my wounds, I continued to bury my way deep into the thicket until I finally pushed myself out into a clearing. The noises of the men grew distant, but I knew that even then, I wasn't safe. I fled as far as I could, as deep as I could into the forest. The voices fell to the noise of a distant whisper when I climbed up a hill and stared back at the last phone tower I passed by, on the brink of a cliff. I stood there for a while, panting. My legs were sore, and I couldn't even stretch them comfortably. I couldn't also stand. Taking a deep breath, I shook my limbs as I surveyed the forest. To the extreme edge of the forest, I could see lights, probably of Roboré, and a few dark but small silhouettes - perhaps hills - on the horizon. A cold wind swept over the canopies of the forest and engulfed me. It was pleasant. There were no voices anymore in the jungles; probably, the gangsters gave up their pursuit.

Relieved, I trotted down to the base of the hill and began walking towards what I thought was the way to Roboré. The major inconvenience at the bottom of the hillock was that I couldn't see the lights of the city; as a result of this, I could lose my way because of a single misstep.

"Don't overthink, you idiot. They might come for you," I muttered as I ran towards some trees on my right.

Felipe Altamirano Alvarez Espadachín

"Hurry, boy!" I told the young son of the hotel's manager who tried to find the right key to open Claire Dakota's room from his bunch of keys of differing sizes. Claire's caretaker locked herself out of the room when she walked out of it while talking to Bernardo on the phone. So, from the bunch of spare keys, we had to find the right one to unlock Claire's room.

"You heard him, boy. Hurry up!" the lad's father repeated.

"Yes, father," said the young lad. This time he dropped his key out of nervousness.

"You useless, son of a [Explicit]," his dad muttered as he grabbed the keys before he could. "Go off to your mother! [Explicit]! Good for nothing, piece of [Explicit]!" The young lad ran off while his dad managed to find the key within thirty seconds. "Room 32 B."

"Bernardo?" I called.

"Yes, sir."

"I want you to go down and ask the guests and the bar owner and every worker in this establishment about any information they have about Claire Dakota."

"Yes, sir."

The door opened and I was overwhelmed with the scent of perfume. Covering my nose, I walked into the hallway and checked for any clues pointing to where she might have gone. First, I checked the hall and found nothing there, except for a box of pizza with three slices half-eaten. I found the television still on, tuned to a news channel that was covering a protest that occurred in La Paz.

There was nothing else in the hall, except for a knapsack. I looked through it and found nothing except for some sanitary products. My fellow men looked through the bedroom.

I looked under the couches to see if I could find something.

"Sir, I spoke with the manager of a bar down here and he said he last spoke with Claire Dakota. Do you want to see him?"

"Yes," I replied, as I got up and went downstairs. "So you are the barkeeper who last spoke with Claire Dakota, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir," the old man said, pouring himself a drink, before settling down on a chair.

"When and why did she meet you?"

"This evening, sir. She was inquiring after this man she saw-"

"Sir, we found this picture in her room," one of my men said as he entered the bar. The picture was of a peculiar looking man who was staring from the balcony.

"It is he!" the old man said, pointing to the picture.

"What?" I said.

"She was inquiring after him when the protest was going on."

"A protest?"

"Yes, there was a big one going on, about some indigenous rights thing."

"Okay tell me who this person is, the one in the picture, the one she asked about? And most importantly where did she go?"

"Where she went I do not know, but I know who the man in the picture is. He is -"

Another of my officers entered the room, "Sir, I found a taxi driver who just came to the tea shop next to this hotel. When we approached him with a picture of Claire and asked him if he knew her, he said he had dropped her somewhere. He told me that she was pursuing a girl in a flimsy black dress."

"A girl in a black dress?"

"Yes, sir."

I looked at Bernardo. "Continue questioning this old man about the man in the picture while I go and to find Claire. Perhaps she might be somewhere near the spot where the cab driver had dropped her."

"Yes, sir," Bernardo replied.

I went with the officer who brought the news about the taxi driver to meet him.