 While doing some early morning shopping, I happened to get into a small confrontation with a man who'd been before me in the only open line. Ahead of him had been an old woman who, upon glancing back, kindly allowed me to go in front of her. Welcoming the jump, I passed the man who loudly said that I was impatient like the rest of my kind, presumably meaning people of my generation. I ignored his comment, which only upset him further, and he nudged me with his cart as I edged past him. It hadn't hurt, but the audacity of the gesture alone made me mad, and in response I grabbed his cart and forcefully pushed it away, sending him jogging after it down the serial aisle. The old woman chuckled softly to herself, amused by the scene, and stepped back so that I could get in front of her. The cashier who'd been oblivious to, or perhaps unfazed by, the altercation with the man, rang up my small selection of items, and dispassionately thanked me for shopping at the store. Awkwardly, I said you too, and hurried away, shouting my thanks to the old woman as I went toward the coffee stand near the store's entrance. I later saw her shuffling through the doors, pushing the cart full of groceries, her little arms barely able to move the burden across the flat pavement. When she neared the curb, I had a moment of empathic anxiety. Imagine myself in her position, pushing the cart off that edge, jarring my frail, ancient body as I held on to the thing before she could reach it, and potentially hurt herself. I sprinted the short distance to her and politely asked if I could help her load the groceries into her car. She smiled, thanked me for the offer, and allowed me to take control of the cart. I effortlessly handled the curb, and upon receiving a general direction from a weekly raised finger, steered the cart toward her vehicle. As we crossed the lot, she commented on her groceries, detailing with a sort of elderly innocence her meal plans, which I nodded along to and complimented when appropriate. She asked what I'd bought, and I showed her my solitary bag of sausage links, bagels, cream cheese, and the pouch of pumpkin spice-flavored coffee from the coffee stand, the breakfast I was planning to eat upon returning home. She smiled and mentioned that her granddaughter always drank the stuff, and then almost absentmindedly remarked how she wished the girl would visit her more. We arrived at her car, a surprisingly modern SUV, and I began loading the groceries into the back while she stood by and made further comments on the items. I arranged the bags so that the more fragile items were snug and secure. Using a blanket I found, tucked into a compartment off to the side. When everything was snugly secured, I took the cart to a nearby stall and returned to offer my goodbyes to the old woman. She thanked me, and before I could turn away, grabbed my hand with her delicate wrinkly fingers and forced a $10 bill into it. I of course tried to return the money, saying how her pleasant conversation had been payment enough, but she of course insisted and playfully shoved me away. I made it halfway across the lot when I realized I didn't have my bag. Turning, I saw the woman shuffling around her vehicle to the driver's side and reflectively thanked her elderly slowness as I jogged back to the SUV, knocking on the driver's window softly so as not to startle her, I gestured toward the trunk, and after rolling down the window, she greeted me again and demanded that I keep the money. I waved away the implication that I'd return to try and give it back and explained how I'd accidentally loaded my bag along with hers. She laughed, popped the trunk door, and told me to go on ahead and grab it. Sorting through her bags, I finally found my own and gently pulled it free from the nest I'd made earlier. But the dislodging of the bag shifted the overall collection of groceries, revealing yet another piece of paneling in the floor of the trunk, a compartment just like the one from which I'd grabbed the towel. I went to put it back into place, but my eye caught something odd in the recess, and rather than refasten the panel, I instead undid the remaining latch, revealing the object beneath. It was a small plastic baggie filled with human teeth. I stared at it for a moment, trying to make sense of the bizarre collection. Going over my conversation with the old woman in my head, trying to recollect some point at which she might have mentioned losing several of her teeth. But the idea that they could be hers was dismissed when I sorted through them, still in the plastic bag of course, and found that they obviously weren't all from the same person. Some were larger, clearly adult, while others were much smaller, alarmingly youthful. At this point, I really wanted to return the panel to its proper position, getting a really bad feeling about that superficially concealed collection. Sliding my arm through the loops of my bag, I returned the panel, shifted the old woman's groceries, so that they were newly secured, and closed the trunk's door. But before I could back away and return to the tooth-free normalcy of my own car, I felt a prick in my arm, and then another arm, one which before she had been weak, interlock itself with mine and steer me around the car, turning. I saw the old woman, now standing upright, devoid of her former hunched, enfeebled appearance. Her smile stayed the same, kind-eyed and friendly. Only she now exuded a vitality, unbefitting an old woman. It wasn't until she opened the backseat door that I thought to resist, and subsequently realized that resistance was futile. There was first a mounting sensation of sluggishness, and then, as she guided my body into the car, an unsettling and intensifying stiffness, I realized that I'd been injected by something, some sort of paralyzing agent, and tried in vain to overcome, or at least slow the drug's effects. But her strength, which before had been deceptively hidden, was now virtually indomitable, under the paralytic effect. Had the paralysis been instantaneous, I might have panicked a little less. But gradually losing my ability to move, powerless to resist, only made the situation all the more terrifying. She positioned me in the seat, then brought the belt across my body. But rather than buckle me in, she instead fastened the belt to a mechanism of some kind buried in the seat, which she then locked with a key, pulled from beneath her shirt. Next she brought my left leg through a leather loop affixed to the car's floor, and my panic mounted exponentially as I realized I was being restrictively bound in place. By this time, all freedom of movement had been taken from me by the drug, except for my head and shoulders. And using this quickly diminishing freedom, I turned around, desperate to spot someone, anyone, and draw their attention to the abduction taking place in broad daylight. All the while, the woman casually hummed some old hymn or lullaby. Finally, I spotted a person through the opposite window and tried to call out to them, but found that I could no longer open my mouth. I expel the torrent of air through my nose, but this was no louder than the woman's humming, and she even chuckled to herself at the feeble attempt. Her hands, pale and vascular, danced across my body in spidering motions as she checked my bodily restraints before moving on to my other leg. The other shopper continued out of sight, and I felt tears swell beneath my eyes as the completion of my kidnapping seemed imminent. The woman, speaking suddenly, as if in response to some unspoken question, said, I like to keep a few reminders in the car with me. I've only kept the teeth in the trunk because there just isn't any room left in the glove compartment up front. The middle console is full, too. Sometimes, I'll pop a few of the really yellow ones in my mouth, I especially like incisors. They're like chicklets. I suck on them as I drive, usually three or four at a time. I felt the sudden wave of nausea, and my terror reached new maddening heights. But just as I was about to lower my head in defeat, the effort to keep it aloft was exhausting. I saw another face emerge between two cars, a familiar face, and they saw me, too. The recognition was instant, their first expression, a glare of still seething contempt quickly softened into an expression of confusion. And I saw them say something, something that might have been hold on to the person they were talking to on their cell phone. I don't know if the cause was my expression of tearful helplessness, or simply the bizarre sight of an adult being buckled into the backseat of a car by an old woman, an adult they knew to be of perfectly sound body and mind. But they ended their call and diverted from their path, even leaving their cart off to the side. Approaching the old woman's SUV, their confusion turned to worry, and then shock as they spotted the odd manner of belting around my body. The old woman hadn't noticed any of this, her attention being focused on my right leg. In an effort to keep her attention there, if only for a few more moments, I mustered all the strength left in me to shift my leg from her grasp, a considerably draining effort, and one that elicited a violent reaction from the old woman. With a disappointed click of her tongue, she removed my shoe and sock, and broke two of my toes. Tears surged down my cheeks, and this sight compelled the man to sprint the remainder of the distance. Even as the pain of my broken toes shot up my leg, I felt elated at the prospect of my rescue. Just as the old woman managed to get the strap around my ankle, she was forcefully pulled from the back seat and hurled against the car in the next spot. The ability to turn my head now lost, I could only stare ahead tearfully, as the man hurriedly undid the loops around my legs. He attempted to do the same for the belt across my body, and I saw his face briefly come into view as he reached across me. His eyes met mine, and I did my best to express, through tearful blinks, my contrition for having rudely pushed his cart away. He nodded, then returned his attention to the seatbelt. He pulled at it, noticed the key locked mechanism, and left my sight again. I heard peripheral sounds of struggle outside the car, and he then returned key in hand. I was carefully removed from the SUV and carried away to safety. As my head bobbled over the man's shoulder, I spotted the old woman sprawled out on the ground, dazed, but alive. The man helped me all the way to my car, where he sat me in the passenger seat. He told me to wait there as if I'd had a choice in the matter, and said he'd call the police and oversee the woman's apprehension. I blinked, the best I could do to acknowledge his order and thank him for his help. He left, and then returned a few minutes later, accompanied by a manager of the store. By this time I'd regained a bit of my movement, mostly in my hands, and didn't need to wonder why the additional buckling had been necessary in the old woman's SUV. Had the drug worn off during transit, I still wouldn't have been able to free myself. Grimly, the man told me that the police were on their way, but that the woman had escaped. He apologized for not having memorized her license plate, but assured me that the police had been given an otherwise complete description of her vehicle, and the store manager had helpfully pulled a record of her transaction. And the accompanying security footage. Unfortunately, he added with a frown. She paid in cash, so no credit card information. I nodded, still unable to verbally communicate my gratitude, and they stayed with me to wait for the police. Days later, there has yet to be any news of her apprehension. But the police assure me that they're diligently working on the case.