Notes

I was laying in my cousin Jena’s bed with her under what seemed to be an unlimited amount of blankets, after we had smoked the night before. She was talking on and on as per usual and I couldn’t bear it anymore. I looked away from her, and a roll of cellotape that she had thrown on the floor earlier caught my eye. I picked it up and stuck a tiny piece over her mouth. She didn’t seem impressed but she didn’t take it off either. After a minute or so of me unraveling and sticking back the tape on the roll, she took the tape off her mouth and said “oh my goodness, can you start wrapping that around my wrist? It’ll be quite therapeutic”. I agreed, but after a couple rounds I grabbed her other hand and said “let me do both of them”. She rolled her eyes but agreed.

After I had tightly wrapped about 6 or 7 layers around both of her wrists, I stopped and tried to cut the tape. She pulled her hands away and said “no keep on going, just use the whole roll!”. “Are you sure?” I responded and she replied “yes, it’s my tape after all”. Following another dozen layers wrapped around, I cut the tape and asked her to do me. With a little struggle due to her wrists being taped together, she was able to tape them together tightly and finished the roll. “Well what do we do now?” I asked, “get out, obviously” she replied whilst failing to escape. She clearly thought it was going to be a lot easier. I tried to get out as well and was unsuccessful. We shared a stare with each other that clearly said “oh shit, we might be fucked”

About 15 minutes later, we were both still stuck in the tape, with my cousin joking about how embarrassing it would be to have to go up to her dad and ask to let us out. All hope seemed lost, until she remembered that she had a pair of scissors in her desk drawer. “Go check my desk, there should be scissors in the closest drawer” she said excitedly. I couldn’t get up due to the mountain of blankets on me, however with my hands tied I was still able to reach to my left, open the drawer and reach as far as I could for her scissors. I grabbed them and cut her free. She kept complaining about how her wrists had turned a reddish-purpley colour. She had seemed to forgotten that I still had the tape around my wrists, forcing me to ask “so, are u gonna let me out then?” She responded “oh yeah, of course! I completely forgot”. She picked up the scissors, put the tape between the blades and then hesitated. “You know what, actually no”. She withdrew the scissors and threw them across the room, “get yourself out”.

I asked why the sudden change of heart and she replied “this is for all the times where you were a dick to me, and this is my revenge”. I sighed as she had clearly taken my previous jokes to heart, and she wasn’t planning to let me out. I kept on pleading and pleading for her to let me out, but she just pretended to fall asleep so I would stop. Well that’s what I thought anyway, but she did fall asleep. For a whole half hour, during which I was trying to get my hands out of the blanket labyrinth and contemplating whether it was worth it to walk over to the corner of the room and let myself free. In the end I didn’t, as the risk of my aunt or uncle walking in on me tied up was simply too high. Little did I know, I should’ve taken this chance whilst I got it.

After Jena woke up from her nap, the first thing she did was sit on her phone for another 5 minutes before even acknowledging me. “Hello? Can I get out now please?” She looked at my and scoffed, as if she thought I was joking. I followed up and she said “I swear you got out? Why are you gaslighting me right now?” I reacted by showing her my still trapped hands and she started laughing hysterically. “You really couldn’t get out of that after all this time? Wow, you really would be a great kidnap victim”. She tried to take an embarrassing video of me still tied up but my hands managed to avoid her camera. A couple minutes later she got up and announced she was going downstairs for some food. I asked for her to get me some and she just responded with her signature middle finger.

Whilst upstairs by myself, all I could hear was Jena saying goodbye to her parents and the door opening and closing a couple times, which wasn’t great for me as they seemed to be my only ticket out of this situation. She returned with a platter of Chinese food from the night before and her cargo pockets bulging. For the next 10 minutes all I could hear was her chewing her food obnoxiously loud whilst scrolling through TikTok, with me being able to do nothing more than just lie there and listen. “Oh my god, can you shut up!” I screamed at her after I couldn’t take it anymore. “Oh I’m not sure if I can, but you certainly can!” she screamed back. From her pockets she removed a pair of black Nike no show socks and a fat roll of duct tape. Before I could even understand what was going on these socks were shoved in my mouth and tape was wrapped around my head at least 8 times. I recognised the socks and tape, as I had let her borrow the socks last week when she visited mine and gifted the tape to her for Christmas so she could tape figures to her dashboard. Both of these gifts backfired completely as I was now tasting the horrible smell that came from the socks.

“You see, the reason I had to borrow those was because I don’t actually have any socks left, so I’ve had to use those everyday since you gave them to me. They simply caught my eye when I went out to my car for the tape.” That explained the taste. After her plate was clean of Chinese food, she started the conversation again with “well, it would be a waste if this duct tape wasn’t put to good use!” I sighed under my gag as I knew what was coming. She grabbed my wrists from under the covers and reinforced them with the grey duct tape. “Well if you couldn’t get out before, you definitely can’t now! Now let’s just make sure you can’t grab those scissors and escape!” She flipped the covers over my head, revealing my legs. I kicked them around but she was able to sit on top of them and wrap my legs at the ankles, lower knee, upper knee and thigh at least 12 times each, which I thought was excessive. After this she told me to sit up and wrapped tape around my shoulders and hips, pinning my arms to my sides. “There we go, don’t have too much fun now!” she said as she clicked play on Modern Family and continued scrolling on her phone. I knew I had a long day ahead