Hello everyone!
I’ll be leaving for the two-week program out of state and I might not be able to post anything for a while. If I do, it might be late at night. Anyways, I just wanted to let all of you know.
I added something to the “Digital Works” page. There is now a slideshow with some of the photographs I took, or rather photographs of photographs that were already in a book. I took the pictures while in a program at Pace a few years ago. The pictures were for a book. All the students in the program was supposed to take pictures with a camera and use the best ones in their own album. You can see the pictures by clicking here.
I will leave you with a new chapter of “Gypsy Adventure & Romance”. I know it been a while since I updated the story. I actually had the chapter finished for a long time, and just hadn’t posted it. This is the tenth chapter, I’m still working on chapter eleven.
Well, here it is:
Chapter 10: Trapped
The woman at the front desk was kind enough to fetch his wallet for him. He thanked her and started to head back to his room. He was halfway up the stairs when a man with short brown hair in a red shirt walked through the hotel’s doors, one hand hidden in his pants pocket. A pair of thick, pure black sunglasses covered his eyes. The appearance of the man strike Knight as odd; ominous even. He shook the feeling out of his mind and continued to climb the stairs.
“Hands in the air, lady!”
Boisterous yelling made Knight race back down the steps. To his utter shock, he saw the man in the red shirt and dark glasses holding a pistol to the woman’s face. The woman, clearly scared for her life, held her hands in midair. She took a step backward screaming: “Please…please don’t hurt me!”
It wasn’t long before four other people, all wearing red shirts and dark glasses, came rushing through the doors of the hotel, all of them holding pistols at the ready. They immediately began to tear apart the front lounge; knocking over the dark emerald chairs, breaking the legs of the dark wood coffee table, breaking the ornamental flower vases, and tearing down the embroider drapes.
Knight immediately want to reach for his gun, only to be reminded that he left it in his room. “Bugger!” He said under his breath. He ran to his room, threw open the door, and hurriedly gasped his gun from the bedside table. He hurried back to the staircase, pistol in hand. Before he could set foot on the first landing, a familiar and frightened face appeared before him. It was the woman from the front desk and behind her was the man with the red shirt and thick glasses, holding the barrel of the pistol to the back of her skull.
“Hand it over, or I’ll shot her!” Shouted the man. Knight gritted his teeth and begrudgingly handed his pistol over to the man, who tucked it in his pants. “Now hands in the air!” The man ordered. Knight obeyed. “On the floor against the wall! Now!” He ordered again. “You too, lady.” He added, referring to the woman. Knight slowly sat on the floor, his back against the far wall. The woman followed suit, her hands still in midair.
The man, holding the firearm in-between his two hostages, turned his head slightly and whistled loudly towards the stairs. Within seconds, the four others came running up the steps. They ran passed Knight and the woman and began to kick open the doors of the rooms, breaking the locks. The surprised yelps and terrified screams of the customers of the hotel rung out throughout the hallway. The people in red stepped into the rooms and yelled at the customers to get into the hallway. One by one, the people in red led the hotel customers out into the hallway. They shouted at the customers to sit down against the wall and held their hands in midair, and the customers obeyed. One of the people in red, whose Knight presumed was female from the long scarlet hair, went to bound his wrists and the wrists of the hotel’s customers and staff members with thin white rope. The rope cut into Knight’s flesh.
Suddenly, another scream rung out, yet this time the scream sounded familiar to Knight. He snapped his head to his left and what he saw made his stomach drop. The beautiful young girl who he bumped into earlier this evening was being pulled out of her room by her right arm. The person pulling her was one of the people in red, who Knight presumed to be a man by the short black hair. The man pointed his firearm at her and shouted at her to get on the floor. The girl obeyed, sitting against the wall. The man kneeled before her, set his gun down on the floor, and went to bound her wrists with rope.
Once all the customers and staff members were present, the man with brown hair stood in front of the twenty hostages that sat against the two walls of the hallway. “Ok, everyone!” He shouted. “We are going to break into the basement of the hotel and put you there!” He looked at one of his companions, the man with short black hair. “Break into the basement!” He barked. The man with black hair nodded and run passed the hostages and down the stairs. “Once the basement is open, we’ll bring you guys down there two by two. You…!” He pointed a finger at Knight. “And…you!” He pointed at the young girl with curly black. “You two are going in first.”
In the dark, damp basement of the hotel, where she was sitting against one of the walls, Kuan Eim was trembling. She wasn’t trembling because she was scared, rather because she was cold. The basement had pipes attached to the walls and hanging from ceiling. The exposed red brick walls felt moist and cold against her back. In some corners of the room, there were cobwebs forming. Rectangular pillars of bricks were supporting the ceiling and massive barrels of wine were located to the right of her. Valves were attached to the wall opposite her. There was an arched doorway that led to a set of stairs the led up to the lobby; it was the way set of stairs that the people in red pulled her down by her arm.
The other hostages were around her. Five of the hostages were seated near the wall opposite her. Nine more sat on the wall to the left of her. Five more hostages were seated near the barrels of wine. Finally, seated near the arched doorway, was Kuan Eim, and beside her, was the handsome gentleman she had ran outside her room. He was scanning the room before him with his blue eyes. She noticed that he was grinding his teeth. She wondered what was he so upset about; it was not as if he could have prevented this from happening.
He watched the eyes of the gentleman dart from the other hostages to the doorway and then back to the other hostages. She wondered what he was thinking about. She shifted her gaze to the floor. Her mind raced through ways to get out of this situation, a way for her and the other hostages to make it out of the hotel alive. When she couldn’t settle on a probable plan, she resorted to praying. Interlocking the fingers of her hands and pressing them against her chest, she closed her eyes and silently said: “Buddha, please help us.”
“What is your name?”
Kuan Eim’s eyes snapped opened. She looked up to find the handsome gentleman looking at her with gentle eyes. He had whispered a question to her. “E-excuse me?” She asked, as she couldn’t hear him clearly.
“What is your name?” He repeated.
“Kuan Eim Rattanakosin.” She answered.
“Nice to meet you, Kuan Eim.” He said. “My name is Magnet Knight, but my friends and colleagues call me Knight.”
She giggled a soft and almost noiseless giggle. “That’s an odd name, don’t you think?” She said.
“You also have an odd name as well, Miss Kuan Eim.” He said with a smile.
She giggled again. “Yeah, I guess I do.” Her glaze shifted to the floor again, the smile on her face quickly fading.
“I know you’re scared Kuan Eim-” Knight began to say.
“I am not scared!” Kuan Eim interrupted him, her voice barely below a whisper. “I’m just uncomfortable is all. It’s really cold in here.”
“Yes, it is rather cold.” Knight agreed.
“What do you think they went with us?” She asked.
“I met these people before.”
“You have?”
“Yes, in Florence, Italy. Three teenagers wearing identical red shirts. They attempted to rob me.”
“What did you do?”
“I was able to frighten them off, but that was when I still had my pistol.”
“You had a pistol? Where is it now?”
“They forced me to surrender it.”
“Oh.”
“However, I have a plan get it back.”
This is Noel. He is Alexandrea Embrace’s pet reindeer.
It is only a sketch; I’m working on adding color to it now.
