by Drew Jordan
Which was when he pulled back and wiped at his mouth.
I gave a disappointed moan.
“I’m your everything,” he said.
He was.
Savior, protector, lover. Jailer.
When he bent over and kissed my lips, I kissed him back eagerly, wanting to hold him to me. The hardness of his body was reassuring, every angle and plane of his face so familiar now, even twisted in stern irritation. He allowed me to wrap my legs around him, but he didn’t take the bait. He didn’t take me. After a hot and furious tongue tangle, he pulled back and shoved my legs down. I couldn’t hold on to him with my arms bound.
“I should leave you here tied up until I get back. That would be a good lesson for you.”
Was he waffling? I waited, holding my breath. A smile teased at the corner of my mouth because if he gave in, that meant I had even more influence over him than I’d realized.
“But I have a better lesson.”
It should have been reassuring, but for some reason my blood chilled. It was the way he was looking at me, like he was disappointed in me. Slowly, he untied my hands. “What?” I asked.
“I need you to understand that if you try to leave you’ll die. Is that what you want, to die?”
“No. Of course not.” Confused, I rubbed my wrists. “I wasn’t trying to leave.”
I hadn’t been. I had just been scouting out the area to see if it was possible to leave.
“Get dressed, just the way you were before.”
Not sure what was going on, I just stared at him.
“Do it!” He handed me my jeans.
I got dressed quickly, back into my layers, into my boots and coat and hat.
“Get outside.” He pulled a gun off the rack and the backpack he’d been planning to carry in to town.
I stumbled backwards onto the porch, grabbing the doorframe. “Where are we going?”
He tossed the pack at my feet, into the drifting snow that had blown onto the porch. “You’re going to survive out here without me. Since you don’t seem to appreciate me and are perfectly fucking willing to risk your life to get away from me, the man who saved you, fed you. Fucked you. Since you think you can just stroll away without my help here’s your chance.” He held the gun out for me to take. “Good luck to you.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. My teeth started to chatter, just as much from nerves as from cold.
“Take the gun and don’t play stupid. I don’t respect that.”
So I took the gun. My arm fell slack. It was heavier than I expected. “I don’t know how to use this.”
“But you can survive, remember? You were going to walk forty miles to town on totally foreign terrain to escape me. So take the gun and show me what you’re made of, Laney.”
“Don’t do this.”
“You did this.” He went back into the cabin and closed the door. I heard the latch close.
He was kicking me out. He was throwing me out into the cold. He was done with me. I was the prisoner who had pissed him off and now he was going to teach me the ultimate lesson- death. A surge of adrenalin sent me rushing to the door and I pounded on it, screaming.
“Let me in! Oh, my God, I wasn’t trying to leave, I swear to you! Let me in.” I didn’t want to die. I knew that as surely as I had when I’d woken up in that plane, how many days ago, seven? Eight? Nine? I hadn’t learned anything about survival in that time. I didn’t know how to use the gun. I set it down on the porch so I could hit both my fists on the door.
He ignored me. I peered in the windows and he was sitting in the chair by the stove, just calmly putting wood into the belly. He looked warm. I felt cold, both from the sting of the wind and my fear. Should I break the window to get in? No. He’d kill me with his bare hands if I did something so destructive. It would piss him off. I could stand there, so he could feel the weight of my stare. Eventually he would have to turn around. Eventually he’d have to use the outhouse, too, right? If he left the cabin, maybe I would have a shot at convincing him to let me back inside.
I didn’t want to die.
Freezing to death probably wasn’t the worst way to go, but I would know it was arriving. With each minute, each shiver and teeth chatter and numbing extremity, I would know that death was approaching, like the sun casting a shadow. You couldn’t stop its ascent, its encroaching creep, inch by inch. Hypothermia would be like that and I would die and then what? Would he bury me? Feed me to his dogs?
Frantic, I pounded again.
No response. I sank to my ass on the porch, needing a minute. I felt like I was going to throw up, my head spinning, vision blurred. I concentrated on breathing, drawing huge breaths into my lungs.
This was a pathetic ending to a rather lackluster life. I hadn’t done anything yet. I hadn’t proved anything. Achieved anything. I had floated and now I was going to float right into death. I sat there for at least a minute, maybe five, breathing in and out, trying to calm myself down. My ass got cold on the floorboards and my nose got numb. I brought my tears to a sniffle and put my hands on my knees, lifting my head to stare out into the yard. The dogs were moving restlessly around their houses, like I had unnerved them. Like they sensed hysteria and didn’t like it.
That was what I did to him. I freaked out and he didn’t like it. He wanted me to be strong. He would respect that more. I knew that without question. So maybe if I stood up and made myself a shelter and a fire, he would see that I wasn’t worthless. I would see that I wasn’t worthless. If I had made it this far, didn’t I owe myself the chance at life? Shouldn’t I fight for it?
I’d never fought for anything. My preferred method normally was to roll over and let life happen to me. To let sex happen. To let jobs happen. To let my mother happen. To let Trent happen. I was the passive voice in every story of my life. With one exception.
If some kind of inner strength wasn’t going to lead me at the very least I should let fear run free and attempt to save me from death. So I did. I unleashed the terror that was coiling inside my gut, the dragon ready to spring. I let the fear thread throughout my body, invading every limb, every inch, every cell. It was like an influx of heat, hot molasses chugging through my veins. My cheeks and forehead flushed and my vision cleared. For a second, I thought again I might go down in a faint, but I hung on, and used my fear to goad me into action.
When I stood up, I didn’t look into the cabin. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to be stupidly hurt by him turning his back on me. I didn’t want to cry, or wish I could have his arms wrapped around me, warming me. My lips were cold, as if he’d never kissed me. I was nothing to him. He was nothing to me.
Not that I believed that. But I needed to tell myself that.
Wiping the tears from my cheeks before they froze to my skin I sniffled and bent over to look inside the backpack. It was fully loaded and heavy as hell. There was a plastic tarp in there, along with water, granola bars, matches, a pocketknife, and a compass. Very basic survival. But if I stayed close to the house, maybe I could make it work. I did know where he kept the straw to make beds for the dogs in their houses. I had seen him get it from the outbuilding behind the cabin.
That’s when it occurred to me that I could just move in to the outbuilding. If I had shelter from the wind and any new snow, I could wrap myself in the plastic tarp for warmth and build a fire on the floor. I could manage for a day or two at least. I wasn’t sure what the end goal was, but it was a plan of sorts. There was no way I could get my ass to town and I knew that. I would rather hunker down and wait it out then die somewhere on a death march, because that’s what it would be.
So I walked to the outbuilding and shoved open the creaking door, pulling it closed behind me. It was dark and still inside, the only light from the chinks in the wallboards. I dropped the pack on the floor and scrutinized. There was a chainsaw, straw bales, giant pots, tools hanging on the wall, a metal trap dangling from a hook, and a machete. Even in the case, that weapon made m
e shudder. It looked nothing but lethal.
I wondered if I could bring one of the dogs to live in the shed with me. Most likely that would annoy him, but I wasn’t sure I cared. I wanted the comfort of a body next to mine. Something breathing. Maybe at night I would do that. I could stake his chain around something. But for now I needed to focus on gathering wood. That was the key to living in Alaska- fire.
Never had I missed Google more. I desperately wanted to do research on survival techniques. I also really wished I could hear the ding ding of an incoming text. Just the knowledge that someone out there in world was thinking about me. That’s why we loved text messages so much. It meant someone took the time to communicate with us. That we were penetrating the membrane of their day in some way or another. Was he in the cabin thinking about me? I was thinking about him. I was picturing the way he looked at me, in his softer moments. The way he brushed my hair off my cheek, and ran his thumb over my bottom lip. Sometimes I thought that if a man like him could love me, I would be something really special. Because love didn’t come easily for him, that was obvious.
In the yard, I kept my eyes averted from the cabin. I didn’t want to make my longing increase to intolerable levels. I didn’t want to beg again or break bones in my hands railing at the impenetrable door. There was enough snow to make everything an eyeball searing white, but not enough to bury the low growing foliage. I could still see random sticks and brush poking out and I started to gather it. I was pretty sure that damp wood wouldn’t burn but I had the straw. I could use that as a quick flame to light the kindling to light the wood. In theory. I was going on common sense not any actual knowledge of how any of this worked. I hadn’t even gone camping as a kid. My mother found all those clubs and organizations for kids irritating.
“I’m not a joiner,” she would say. “I can’t be tied down.”
So no Girl Scouts for me. Not that I had cared. But I had wanted to do ballet. I had visions of myself as a ballerina on stage, performing The Nutcracker. I was Clara, twirling with my new party dress. In college I could have taken ballet. But by then, it felt too late. And I was lazy. That was the unmitigated truth. I was lazy, complacent. More skilled in complaining than changing.
But there was no point in complaining now. There was no one to listen.
I had no patience for my own whining.
I wondered then how he had even tolerated me. I was a whiny brat.
“What’s worse than a whiner?” I asked myself out loud, my voice only a murmur as I yanked sticks out from under the snow, the powdery white fluff bursting up in a wet cloud. “Someone who talks trash about herself.” Wasn’t calling myself lazy just an excuse for pity?
Gathering an awkward armful of wood, I mused that maybe I was actually achieving what I had been trying to avoid by coming to Alaska. Self-awareness. Michael had after all been a huge avoidance tactic, a desperate move. If I could fall in love, get married, establish a household and a life somewhere new, then I could avoid facing why I was so malcontent in the very respectable life I had in Seattle. The busy details would keep me from wondering what would really make me happy. And who the hell I actually was.
Those had been uncomfortable thoughts I hadn’t been willing to have. Yet I was perfectly willing to chase a fantasy into the Alaskan wilderness just to ignore them. That was the very definition of running scared.
I dumped my haul into the shed and went for more, this time for bigger logs. That proved harder because they were either too small to do more than burn quickly or they were too big for me to lift. Breathing heavily from yanking on a log that didn’t budge I turned on my heel and went right up on to the porch, not looking in the window but keeping my eyes on what I wanted. The axe he kept by the door for his wood chopping. It was heavier than I expected and I cursed when I picked it up. I couldn’t swing that over my head, there was no way in hell. But I could get it to waist level.
My first swing was pathetic. It barely grazed the wood. My second was better, but it took everything I had. The third was weak, my arms already aching. The fourth finally took a tiny chink out of the log. I kept my eyes on the target and I thought about spinning class, and how I’d given up halfway through. I thought about yoga and how I bullshitted my way through poses, hanging out in downward dog the majority of the class because it was the easiest. There was no consequence for bailing when my ass started to ache in spinning. If I didn’t become flexible in yoga it was my own fault and it didn’t matter in the slightest.
But here, it mattered. If I failed, I died.
He wasn’t going to save me.
For the first time ever, I had to save myself.
So I lifted and I whacked and I lifted and I whacked over and over, until my shoulders were screaming and my nose was trickling snot that instantly froze down onto my lip. But after who the hell knew how long, I had a log that I could carry and burn. My back was tense with pain but I huffed and grunted and got that motherfucking log back to the shed. I sat on it for a minute, breathing hard. I pulled one of the water bottles out of the pack and took a sip. I’d lost weight since the plane crash. I didn’t need to eat as frequently and it was oddly liberating. So I ignored the granola bars and instead looked around for where I could build my fire. I couldn’t just set it on the wood floor, obviously. I needed something like a trash can to put it in.
There wasn’t one. The only metal thing I could see that might work was an old metal box filled with screws and nails. I dumped them out on a shelf and studied the box. It was small, but it was all I had. “Use your brainey, Laney,” I said. Then I laughed, a hoarse croak that didn’t have any real mirth. “Make it work.”
It took me seven tries and six wasted matches to get my straw smoldering under my damp kindling. It sputtered out immediately. Maybe I just needed to let it dry out for a few hours. It was still covered in snow. I brushed everything off and sat and thought for a minute. I could use the time to go get more wood. That seemed wise. But my arms were protesting. I puttered around the shed, inspecting everything, wondering what could be useful. My breath was a misty plume in front of me.
There were probably all sorts of things in the shed that could be used to make my semi-outdoor camping less miserable, or at least allow me to live. But if there was, none of it was recognizable to me. It was just tools that I didn’t know how to use. Machinery made by man to do things I had never learned. I sat down on a straw bale and assessed what I was good at in life. The list felt abysmally short.
I could dance. Not so useful in the bush.
I had good grammar skills. I could interpret Shakespeare with ease.
I could make myself invisible in a crowd.
I could survive being alone.
Pulling the plastic around me like a blanket, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. My shoulders relaxed. The urge to laugh suddenly washed over me but when I did, the sound was hollow, echoing around the shed. What was he doing in the cabin? Eating lunch? Taking a nap? Was he missing me? Did he jack off standing up or leisurely lying down, relaxed and sleepy. Why had I never put my mouth on him and sucked him? It seemed like something a dominant man would like… me on my knees before him. Bowing to his majesty.
His flesh would be warm. I would be able to feel the slight throb of his veins, the give of his cock as it bent slightly under my onslaught. His hard thighs would be right there, emanating heat, and his hands would hold my head steady.
My own hands felt numb. I had on gloves, but they weren’t warming them, just shielding them. I put them between my thighs, hoping my crotch would heat them. The plastic crinkled as I shifted. I hummed a Taylor Swift song softly. I dozed off. Woke up. Dozed again. Woke up, worried that I was succumbing to hypothermia, ignored it and closed my eyes a third time.
It was a dream that jerked me so wide awake it snapped me out of the fog I was in. I stood up, panicked, stamping my boots on the floor to bring feeling back to my feet. “What the hell?” I asked myself, words shaky.
I couldn�
�t believe I’d actually fallen asleep. Mouth dry, I went to the makeshift fire pit again and went at the kindling with renewed determination. I needed to start this damn fire or I was going to freeze to death, plain and simple. Methodically, slowly, I lit the straw, feeding more and more onto it to keep it smoldering while I held the tiny twigs over top, praying one would catch. It took a couple of failures, but I had a petite fire going a few minutes later, just enough to warm my hands. I decided I needed to use the tarp to create a barricade, making my area of the shed smaller so the fire would warm me. Using the bales of straw and a rake, I made a tarp tent over the fire. I realized I needed a vent for the smoke, so I used the knife to saw a jagged hole through the plastic. It was still smoky inside my dark half ass shelter, but it was warmer. Knees to my chin, I sat there and pondered my next move.
No answers came to me. Not for hours and hours. Not while I went for more wood. Not when I fed my fire. Not when I forced myself to quickly drop my pants and pee in a corner of the cold shed, steam rising from my urine. Not when I sipped more water and ate one tiny little corner of a granola bar.
I heard the door to the shed open but I was beyond being concerned. It wasn’t a bear, I knew that much. So it had to be him. I just sat and waited. He’d tell me what he wanted. If I was allowed to return to him, or if he wanted to yell at me some more. I would know soon enough and there was no point in speculating, even for the sixty seconds it would take for him to reveal himself.
The tarp corner lifted and his face appeared. Those eyes. Those goddamn blue eyes. I raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t speak.
“I’m just making sure you’re okay,” he said gruffly.
So he wasn’t hoping to collect my corpse. It was mildly reassuring. “I’m okay,” I said, but my voice was brittle. “Though I’m guessing if the temperature drops any more tonight, I will freeze to death.” I didn’t even have the desire or energy to add a bitter jab. This was his doing, but it was my actions that had brought me to this moment. To this frozen, miserable, damp, exhausting struggle to live, without a plan. I had nothing but naïve hope. Maybe that was all I’d ever had.