Thread: Transporting Taylor (Dere and skittish_butterfly)

The nearest officer met Taylor's sunny smile with a leer. His eyes told her he hadn't understood a word so she turned to look over the roof for someone who would help. Surely one of them must speak English. Hadn't India been a British colony or something once upon a time? That had to count for something. Hello? Sir? The policeman across the roof ignored her, busy yelling at the driver, getting him out of the limo. Taylor couldn't understand any of the heated rapid-fire gibberish between the cop and the driver, but the body language looked like maybe the driver must be a dangerous serial killer or suicide bomber or something like that... totally ridiculous! Taylor hoped the misunderstanding would be straightened out with a minimum of further yelling, so her trip wouldn't be delayed and the nice young driver, scarcely older than she was, wouldn't have to go to jail or pay a big fine, which Taylor vowed she would pay on his behalf so long as it wasn't for anything that was a serious crime or moral failing on his part. It was pretty clear things were tense, so she kept quiet and just watched, not wanting to make the situation worse. Of course the authorities would straighten it out and it was best just to do what was needed to keep everyone calm. But Antonio's voice hissing at her from inside the limo was anything but calm. Taylor! A shouted whisper. Get the fuck back in the car, now! Rock, watch her, I'll deal with this. She twisted almost completely on her window perch to try to face her two bodyguards and tell them to let the police handle this, but she couldn't see them under the line of the roof. All she could see was the officer yelling at the driver getting even angrier, the others circling the limo on both sides drawing closer with nasty looks on their faces. That was when things went to slow motion hell, in a ballet of chaos and cacophony of terror Taylor couldn't completely follow as everything that came next seemed to happen at the same time. Best she could tell, the driver went down, slipping below her view across the roof as if he'd tripped, but then the officer -- still yelling like a mad man -- started bobbing forcefully up and down, like he was kicking and stomping, and she heard screams! Taylor leaned back, really scared for the poor driver now, holding on to the roof with her hands so she could try to look through the inside of the car, to see what was going on, maybe get her phone and call... somebody. She saw Rock next to her watching as well, and Antonio bravely bursting through the door on the driver's side to help, and in that moment Taylor was so proud of him. Such a good man. She had only brief glimpses of the driver further forward. Each time his head popped up enough for her to see him through the window a policeman would beat him back down. The driver sounded like he was pleading between his screams of pain, holding something from his wallet up in front of him like a crucifix warding off a vampire -- only he almost certainly wasn't saved of course. It might be a driver's license. No, the driver was holding up a baby picture. Must be his baby. Oh... oh... Taylor felt a lump in her throat as the driver -- now pleading for his life? -- was smacked down again, the picture fluttering from his fingers. Taylor shrieked. This was bad, so bad. Please, please, please Lord, help the poor driver! Or help Antonio help him. SOMEone help him, please. She was almost in tears. Things like this weren't supposed to happen! Antonio wasn't even clear of the door before he went down with a grunt and one of the loudest thuds she'd ever heard a human body make. Then she shrieked again, not a concert shriek but an instinctive girl shriek. Sharp tugging pain out of nowhere suddenly lanced through the roots of her hair in her scalp and she started toppling backward from her perch in the window. Her hands clawed at the back of her head where it hurt the most, trying to get at the fist in the back of her hair but it did no good. All she got for effort were a series of thudding blows and sharp slaps at the side of her head in return. She got a glimpse of Rock turning to her. A look of determination in his eyes that told her she might still be ok, even though another hand was pawing at her chest now, popping buttons on her denim topshirt, painfully mauling her breast as another kept tugging her from the car by her long hair. Her door swung open and Taylor cried out from more than pain as her world spun in ways it wasn't meant to. She was teetering with her lower back painfully perched on the stub of thick glass still sticking up from the window sill. They had pulled her down almost horizontal, held up really only by their cruel use of her hair and breasts as handles. Rock yelled something she didn't hear, or she thought it was Rock -- everyone was yelling along with the grunts of pain and her own panting and pounding heart beat in her ears and nothing made any sense -- Thankfully, Rock's powerful arms wrapped around her lower legs, tight enough to hurt her but Taylor didn't mind. He was pulling her back into the limo in a horrible game of tug-of-war where she was the rope. There was a sharp crack and Rock's grip around her calves jerked suddenly and then weakened, slipping away from her. The awful policemen who were attacking her, holding her up so rudely, suddenly let go. Taylor couldn't save herself from tumbling backward out the window to the dusty pavement with a grunt of pain as the air was knocked out of her. The men just laughed. Something dangled from the open car door right in front of her face. It was Rock's head, his eyes open and unseeing, blood everywhere -- even splattered on her! There was blood on the door and as she reached in vain for Rock the little droplets of his blood glistening on her bare extended arm pushed her over the edge into tears. She could she Rock's blood on her hands. Another shot rang out, making Taylor flinch and then flinch yet again after a third shot. She felt her lower lips trembling like it did the few times she really got in trouble at home. The policemen were calling to each other in their undecipherable language, their footsteps coming around toward her from the other side to join the men already standing over her. Taylor started trying to crab walk backward away from Rock's dead eyes, away from this horror. It wasn't an act of choice, just what her body did. Her shoulder was killing her from the fall, but it didn't stop her desperate scuttling. What stopped her was the realization she had nowhere else to go as the men surrounded her. Taylor looked up, fear and wild panic in her eyes. She couldn't see the faces clearly, the sun shining harshly in her eyes and offering only silhouettes of the looming forms to her front, but her imagination saw the cruelty in their eyes, their inhumanity obvious to her. She rolled to her side but saw no escape in that direction, nor behind her, and the limo with its stench of death was no escape either. The men's legs closed in on her, their chatter sounding to her like crude remarks as her head dropped in resignation. She started praying as her end approached, not wanting to see the barrel or the flash. Her mom and dad and brother came first to her mind, how much she loved them. She prayed they wouldn't miss her too badly, and maybe they would do good work in the community with whatever money she left them. She prayed for the souls of Rock and Antonio and the poor driver, who were almost certainly dead or soon would be. She didn't pray for herself. She didn't believe in a Lord who stopped bullets, just one who saved souls, and she could only hope in a few seconds hers would be in a better place than this hell. The thought of her father got her a little focused, his ever-present practicality a boon to her even in these seconds before her life was snuffed out. There were no bodyguards to save her, no police who would help, and the best she could hope for from God was that he'd forgive her sins and save her soul, not save her body. But she was Taylor Swift. Would she really let this meek surrender cap her final chapter? That wasn't how Mom and Dad raised her. If she had one second of breath left and any hope at all, any good she could do, then by God she had to try. She squinted up into the glare of the sun, one hand shielding her eyes, seeing the men looking down at her and coming so close. It was worse than her worst stage fright ever, not that she'd ever had much of that, but she managed to talk through chattering teeth, praying one of them would understand. R-Rich American! I c-can get you m-money! She had to be worth more alive than dead. None of them answered, except to chuckle. Hands gripped her under her arms, hurting her injured shoulder worse. They pulled her roughly to her feet. Seemed they didn't want to shoot her down on the ground. Oh. No! Wait, they weren't going to... She struggled not to cry, trying not to think about what they were going to do to her now. The cuffs snapped on her wrists and locked them behind her back, totally predictable, but the sudden darkness and dank warm smell of her own accumulating breath as a dark sack around her head took away her sight was not. Hooded and cuffed, she stumbled painfully on a rock as uncaring hands shoved her forward, supporting her only when she seemed to really be going down. She screamed through the muffling hood, screamed of riches, begged them to reconsider, that she would pay them if they just would stop. No one listened, just shoved her stumbling further along. Taylor tried not to think about what would happen when they got her to their chosen spot. But she did pray for herself now, prayed that her corpse not be found so no coroner would report to her parents of this ultimate indignity about to be inflicted on her. Let me just be gone, she prayed. Tires crunched to a halt on the loose gravel near her. Must be at the road's edge still? A car door. Men talking loudly. She shrieked as all balance left her, strong hands all but tossing her in the air, her arms trapped by the cuffs unable to flail in mid air, helpless to protect herself wherever she might fall. She bounced and settled, her shoulder blazing painfully. It was a car seat, a big one by the feel of it. Sightless in the bag she still couldn't help herself from turning her head this way and that, trying to locate the voices, trying to see through the impenetrable cloth. The door slammed and she was alone in the car. Someone else breathing. Not alone. A British voice, mocking her with the pretense of politeness. Please, they don't understand! You have to help me. Let me go. I don't know if you're part of this, I don't care! I'll make you rich, incredibly rich. Just let me go. I have money, I can prove it if you just take off the hood! Why wasn't he at least considering her offer? Once he saw she was Taylor Swift -- surely he'd recognize her -- he'd know her offer was real! A beep and a boom, a terrifying blast as loud as the most amped up concert hall she ever played silenced her with shock, the vehicle rocking ever so slightly under her. Bad things were happening, happening to her. Please, the hood, take it off. It was a little damp with silent tears. I'm Taylor Swift? You must know me. Take off the hood and you'll see! I can pay!