“So, what seems to be the trouble?” Dr. Roberts said, looking at his patient.

Seated in the comfortably padded chair across from him was a young woman with short dark hair and a pretty, pale face with dark blue eyes. She was dressed in casual clothing, a dark jacket over a t-shirt and jeans.

“Well…I’ve been having these recurring nightmares…” The woman, Melissa Harris, began uncertainly. “In them, these men come out of nowhere and grab me…they tie me up and gag me and take me away.” She sighed. “It’s making things hard in my day to day life…I’ll be walking down the street, or through the parking garage at work and think that when I walk by a van or something someone’s going to jump out and kidnap me. I’ve been leaving work early in the evenings so I don’t have to be out after dark…” She shivered. “I’ve been living in dread that I’ll be kidnapped for the last month.”

Dr. Roberts nodded. “Yes, I’ve had a number of cases of this phobia recently. Did you by any chance watch Chained in Darkness recently?”

He wasn’t surprised when the young woman nodded. About a month ago, a TV special called ‘Chained in Darkness’ premiered on a major network. It was an expose of the modern White Slave Trade, based on a years long investigation into one such organization operating in the country, including interviews with women who had been kidnapped and enslaved before being rescued in police raids on the brothels and homes where they had kept some for years and with police and reporters working undercover to infiltrate the organization. The special had reported, with chilling effect, how many of the women on the screen had gone missing shortly after, falling once more into the nightmare they had so recently escaped.

Some had criticized the special of engaging in sensationalism, particularly the undercover footage taken in the slaver’s facility, of freshly kidnapped women and girls packed, naked into cages, row after row, or paraded on a stage before a crowd of excited men, but the uncensored images and the accounts of the women were undoubtedly effective at driving home to the viewer what the poor victims of the trade endured. Many women, like Melissa here, had become convinced slavers were lurking around every corner and that at any moment, they could find themselves snatched away and condemned to the same nightmare they had seen graphically demonstrated on the tv.

“Well…” Dr. Roberts said, eyeing the young woman, slyly. “In such cases, there’s a method of dealing with this phobia that has worked with some of my previous patients…”

“What is it, doctor?” Melissa asked, hopefully.

“You might call it…Exposure therapy.” He replied with a grin and pressed a button on the underside of his chair’s arm. A moment later, the door to the office burst open and a pair of burly men in jackets and masks rushed in.

Melissa had just gotten to her feet, eyes wide with terror, when the men grabbed her roughly. Her arms were twisted behind her back and a pair of handcuffs locked onto her wrists. A ballgag was shoved between her teeth and strapped on time, silencing her stunned stammering.

“Don’t worry my dear!”  The psychologist called as Melissa was dragged from the room. “I guarantee that, from now on, you won’t have to be worried about being kidnapped by slavers again!”