Dear Diary,

It was my ninth rainy season when it happened. Don't go out alone they said. Don't go near tall grass or bushes they said. Beware the white man they cried; and yet I didn't listen. One of the girls had been bitten by a mosquito and I had been "politely" pushed into the forest to collect some plants- that will be used in a remedy to draw out looming infection. While I walked through the forest, I go over the rules my brother had told me:

1. Don't go out alone

2. Don't go out at night

3. Beware large fires and/or groups of smoke

4. Don't go near long grasses or bushes

5. Don't go near areas that smell like wet chicken

Don't they care about my wellbeing: I'm alone in a forest; surrounded by trees and bushes; its dark out and I can smell smoke... I'm dead.

I collected the plants I needed when, I could smell the faint smell of a wet chicken. I slowed- ready to pounce when... a wet chicken jumped out from a bush followed by one of the village farmhands. I felt my body relax. A strong hand clamped my mouth shut.

"Scream and I'll slice that pretty head off your shoulders," he whispered as he removed his hand and placed a blood stained knife on my throat- I wasn't his first victim.

"A pretty one you got there," said an unmistakeable voice- the man who took my parents when I was six, and now he has me. He stepped out from behind a bush revealing himself.

"നീ എന്റെ മാതാപിതാക്കളെ ഓർക്കുക" I said (Malayalam for, do you remember my parents?)

"I remember them allhoney," he replied I had no idea what he said but it brought a tear to my eyeas I was knocked out.