by Hazel Grace
“Look who thought that she cheated death and gets to order people around.” He looms over my frame, then begins to hunch down, aligning his face with mine. I can smell the woodsy scent come off his body. “Guess what? You don’t, sweetheart.”
“You’re the reason...I almost died.”
“And I’m the reason you didn’t.” It must be in my eyes, confusion, because he continues with, “I like it on my time. Besides—” His eyes flick down to my lips. “—what’s the fun in it being quick?”
My brain kicks into high gear. If he thought of me as so revolting, he wouldn’t be able to be so close to me. I wouldn’t smell his cedar-smelling cologne that’s mixed with weed and the fact that he contemplates my womanly features from time to time.
He wouldn’t of told me that he wished I was the woman that he was having sex with. His thick cock wouldn’t be erect if I turned him off.
Women manipulate men every day to gain something.
I want my life.
If I would’ve thought of this sooner, Johnny, the young man in the hotel with me, might’ve helped me. He stole glances at me, his cheeks blazed pink when our eyes caught, clearly embarrassed. While I was too busy dreading what was next.
He appeared to be my age, working for a bunch of dudes that—what, go around saving damsels in distress. The burly fellow who carried me because my leg throbbed so much told Johnny to shut up and leave me alone.
He did, although it didn’t stop him from buying me a bottle of Sprite from the vending machine and some Cheez-its.
Johnny was a skinny, young man with a chatty mouth. His accomplices, on several occasions, demanded that he keep his mouth shut.
Emric, on the other hand, is a monster with a thickset of shoulders, black tattoos that I’m afraid to stare at for too long with a laundry list of bad intentions.
My limited experience with men of his kind has me wanting to analyze and do a field study on what a normal moment with him would be like.
It’d probably consist of him being an asshole with a bad temper.
There would never be a juncture where him and I would ever meet unless he stops at CVS for something random. Other than that, I don’t see him shopping at a thrift store or stopping at a college library for kicks.
“Now you’re bleeding again,” he professes. “Pull up your shirt.” My eyes expand as I watch him still studying what’s in his First Aid box. When I don’t do what he says, he peers up at me. “Did you need me to help you?”
No.
“Can’t you just—”
“No, to whatever dumbass thing you’re going to say,” he snaps. “Utter another word, and I’m going to gag you next.”
Rising to stand, he pivots and strides towards a small kitchen. Quickly scoping the room, it’s like a studio apartment, everything bunched in a generous space. Except for the dark hallway that screams creepy. A large TV hangs off the wall, surrounded by two bookshelves with barely any books. Two twin-sized beds lie in the far corner with a modest dining set on the opposite side. The room is painted in hunter green, barely decorated, and the lighting is dull.
With the time I have, I touch my side, the pads of my fingers immediately greeted by blood that has soaked through a shirt that Johnny found for me.
Emric re-enters too soon and rolls his eyes when he finds me exactly how he left me. I don’t wait for him to chastise, gathering up the hem, and delicately begin to pull it over my abdomen.
When I get close to my breasts, he seizes out, “That’s far enough.” He shifts his weight, concentration now on my naked flesh. “How good are my odds of getting you to lie still this time?”
“I’ll try,” I mutter.
He frowns but lowers himself again, peeling off the sticky bandage glued to my skin.
“How bad is it?” He flicks his attention to me, irritated at my need to speak apparently.
“It grazed—” His finger brushes near the wound. “—but it took a nice chunk out of you—”
“What?!” I move, but his hand lands on my chest again, and, this time, he gently pushes me back.
“It’s not that serious, chill out.”
“But you just said—”
“Wrong choice of words. You won’t bleed to death.”
“But—”
“Just lie there, is it seriously that fucking hard to do?” His remark is harsh, but his voice is more relaxed.
And I don’t like it.
“Why are you shaking?” His eyes stay glued to his work on my cut, wound, gash—whatever it is as he gently wipes at it.
Stop moving.
His green eyes tip up. “Hurt?” I nod, biting the inside of my bottom lip to demand my body to listen to me.
No more showing your fear, he enjoys that.
He doesn’t prod me to answer, a brown bottle now in hand, spilling more liquid from it onto a clean cloth.
The ripping of paper sounds at my side, and his thumb skims over my skin again, causing my lips to part involuntarily. “How did those dudes know where to find you?”
“You tell me.”
“Hence the question.” I feel the gentle placing of the adhesive before his finger outlines to get it to stick. “Do you have a tracking device in you or something?”
“No.”
“I can find out, you know.” Another scare tactic, but this one is whispered, setting a crest of goosebumps rippling down my arms. “I gut people, sweetheart. It wouldn’t be hard.”
“I don’t have one,” I repeat, trying to focus on any stains, imperfect paint brush strokes, or specks of dirt on the ceiling.
“I don’t believe you.” His course hand lands on my thigh, right above my wound, and I suck in a gasp. “Prove it. Tell me how they knew where you’d be.”
“You’re not going to like the answer.”
“Try me.”
I take a deep breath that causes a small, uncomfortable feeling to my side. “You keep searching for something...but it’s not here—” I crane my neck to look at him. “—it’s not me. I don’t hang out with Hollis. I’ve never been with him outside of my house. The men that took me...one introduced himself to me as Johnny. The other was Cuban, I don’t recall his real name even though he told me. I was too startled and scared...you pointed a gun to my face and—”
“Get to the part where I give a fuck,” he upbraids. “Who hired you or Hollis to murder Reagan Lockwood, also known as Reagan Shelton.”
“I don’t know anything about any murder or anyone named Reagan.” He opens his mouth, but I beat him to it. “Why do you keep asking me questions then if you think that I’m going to just lie about them anyway?”
“Because I figured you’d get as tired as I am of asking them.”
“I am. Unfortunately, it doesn’t change what I know.”
He meets my stare with one of indifference. “We’ll see about that.” His statement does the same thing it always does, restlessness and the unknowing of what’s coming.
He seems like he has everything planned out. That, since he more than likely does this for a living, there’s a million things he can do. Because who can do what he does with no etch of remorse off his face.
“You should’ve just let me die out in the street,” I tell him.
His lip quirks in a weak grin. “Didn’t think of you as a Debbie Downer, sweetheart. I liked you better when you begged.”
My nostrils flare because my entire being sits on edge.
I’m tired of being the mouse in this game. I don’t understand how he thinks this is the best way to spend his time. Making sure I survive just to kill me off later like he tried before.
“I don’t think you’re funny,” I vouch.
His brows perk. “I’m sorry I’ll try to do a better job.”
“What you’re doing makes no sense.”
“Enlighten me on what you think I should do then.” I don’t know if he notices it, but his thumb faintly grazes my skin. A tranquil action contrary to everything he’s done prior
.
My body creates a civil war between basking in his soft touch or revolting against it.
“Let me go,” I transmit, trying my best to ignore the heat he’s forming on that small spot of my thigh. “Because I don’t know anything about what you are looking for.”
He chuckles, but the happiness it normally spouts doesn’t reach his features. “Figured that would be one of the things you’d like me to do.”
“You fixing me up, trying to be kind, it’s not going to change what I don’t know. And my father isn’t a murderer.”
Emric reaches down into his First Aid kit again. “Of course, he isn’t.”
He’s mocking me, and I’m checking out of this conversation. This Jedi-mind trick that he’s playing isn’t going to throw me off and magically have answers.
“You’re all set,” he vouches. “I wouldn’t move too much if I were you. We have a big day tomorrow.”
The pads of my fingers dig into the plastic bucket, trying to heave myself out of the water that Emric currently has my head under.
It begins to fill my nostrils because I’m already out of air, as panic repletes my veins and throughout my whole body.
This is how I’m going to die—it’s official.
By drowning and thinking about the fact as Emric’s large hand sprawls over the back of my skull to keep me underneath.
I was never a person who thought about death much, I was too busy wanting to live. I spent my whole life taking care of myself, and I had dreams of being someone. Never decided on what, but I won’t get to when this is all over.
I’m disappointed that I didn’t fight harder for a better one. I let Dad order me around. I allowed Hollis to be the last man to touch me intimately. I didn’t go to parties or dates, never daring to throw myself out there to experience all the things I should have been doing in college.
I’m practically a dead person already walking in a way.
One with zero answers to the repeated and tiring questions that Emric keeps asking me over and over again. Not even sleeping removes them from my brain.
Yanking me back by my hair, I begin to choke and seize for air as my back hits Emric’s chest.
“Be a good girl,” he growls in my ear. “And tell me what I want to know.”
My lungs struggles to expand, to heave in oxygen that my body so desperately needs. Not another second goes by, and my skull is shoved back inside.
This was my morning greeting.
Hauled off the couch, my leg and side still rhythmically pounding in pain as he forced me on my knees in the kitchen.
And we’ve been doing this ever since.
He relieves me again, brushing my hair away from my face as a coughing fit wrecks my frame.
“You can do it,” he urges. “One piece of information, and we’ll be done.”
I shake my head—for so many reasons, the identical ones I’ve previously stated and because I can’t even throttle a word out if I wanted to.
“Still nothing?” My lips part, needing help, for the water to be sucked from my lungs, but he crams me back into the bucket, further this time to make his point.
My palms find the edges again, and I push up as hard as I can, but nothing happens.
He’s too strong for me.
My left leg is pulsating at my knee and knocks into the side of the bucket to get free.
Everything hurts.
I try to hold the rest of my breath, the small amount I have. Tilting over to the side, to tip the whole thing over, my body doesn’t move—but Emric’s does.
I feel his brush up behind mine, his pelvis aligning with my butt as he hovers over me.
More thrashing, jerking, jilting around, but it’s no use, and I’m done.
I’m exhausted from struggling against him and trying to get free when I know I stand no chance.
He’s not going to get what he needs, and I’m never going to become anything.
It really shouldn’t be that much of a shocker to me.
In grade school, half of my teachers forgot about me if they didn’t have the class roster in their hands. I always sat in the back so that no kids kicked the back of my chair. I liked to observe everyone and study who enjoyed what and who was friends with whom. I knew more about everybody than anyone else because I was a shadow and who pays attention to those?
My head is lugged backward again, except I slouch over. Emric holds me up by my stomach and pulls me into his hard body.
“You’re not going to last much longer, sweetheart.” I can feel his warm breath against my ear, but his words sound muddled and far away.
My chest seizes from my lungs being full of water, I cannot inhale, and even with my eyes closed, I can still feel the room spin around me.
I want to go to sleep.
I want to not feel anymore.
Everything hurts and aches.
Emric’s fingers clasp onto my cheeks and tows my face around to his. “Don’t pass out on me now, or we’ll start with something else.”
Doesn’t matter.
The weight of my head becomes too heavy and slacks in his grip. I can hear my faltering breaths through my parted lips. Emric’s body is starting to become a crutch to keep me upright, but I could care less if he lets me crash to the floor.
Maybe it’ll give me some peace.
Warm lips clasp around my bottom one, gently stretching it downward.
It happens again as Emric’s hand holds the back of my head. My forehead presses into another’s, and I know whose it is before his mouth coaxes mine to move.
I can’t, I’m void from all movement of life right now.
I guess he wants to be my last anything before I pass on from this way of life and into the next.
“C’mon, sweetheart,” he asserts smoothly, the pads of his fingers swiping away locks of my hair. “You don’t want to go brain dead for life, do you? There’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
His warm palm against the icy remains of the water on my cheek has my body mindlessly inching closer to his.
I’m freezing.
I can hardly feel my lower half anymore, and I’m so exhausted.
I just want to sleep.
“Why did you try to kill my sister?” The menace in his voice is gone, but it doesn’t halt the alarm system in my brain.
His sister.
Not that attempting to murder anyone is a good thing but a family member...now I can see why he’s so desperate for feedback.
Why he isn’t sorry for tormenting me.
I can definitely determine how this is going to go if I was in any sort of denial before.
He will burn this city to the ground to obtain what he needs. His fake promise is nothing but a fool’s dream.
I’m just a chess piece for him to get closer to his goal.
Except he has the wrong pawn.
She’s fucking riding my last nerve bouncing her bare legs around before tucking them under her ass and opening herself up for me to slide my hands down her inner thighs and—fucking Christ.
I can smell the woodsy-scented shampoo of mine in her hair. A fucking mistake on my part because when have I ever let a victim take a shower?
The answer is never.
Add on that she’s wearing one of my shirts and a pair of boxers, because everything I have is too big, and you have the world’s biggest fucking idiot right here in the driver’s seat of my truck.
I haven’t even had her a full week, and she’s driving me nuts. Like a love-child, I didn’t know about or a long-lost sibling that shows up on my doorstep.
Except this burden of mine has my body fleeting ideas around about fucking her until I can’t see or think straight.
I settled her in my bunker that’s enclosed by the woods behind my cabin. It was built in case my paranoid ass needed it and, low and behold, I use it for this chick.
Maybe I should’ve just let those assholes keep her. My home feels violated, she’s too close—like fifty yards away close, unde
rground, but it’s not far enough.
Reagan doesn’t know about it.
Fuck, she doesn’t even know I came home yet.
My place is a football field away, in the woods, and she’s going to kick my ass because—not only did I not show up for dinner, but I have a hostage with me. The cameras looking into said secret place is another dilemma. I’ve spent way too much time glancing, peering, sitting in front of my computer screen just to see what she was doing.
Which wasn’t much.
I don’t keep people.
I don’t feed them and babysit.
I don’t drive them around in my truck like we’re going somewhere together.
I mean, we are, but it’s yet another place that she’s not going to like. Perfect scenario, she would’ve sung like a bird, and I’d have already burned, buried, or sent her back in pieces to her organization as a message.
However, Stormi is squirming about when my main focus should be on the road in front of me.
I should throw her out of my truck and let whatever fucking wild animal have her for breakfast.
Pulling into an obsolete gas station, I observe the area for cops.
None.
One family in a van with two kids horsing about in the backseat is the only live sight around.
Throwing my pickup in park, I veer my scrutiny to the blonde who won’t sit the hell still. “How do you want to do this, sweetheart?”
She doesn’t pull her attention away from the window, eyeing the van intently. So, that’s how she’s going to play this. Reaching over to the glove box, I open it and remove my loaded Glock. Her eyes follow, practically bulging out of her head, realizing that there was a weapon in front of her this entire time.
I draw back on the hammer, letting the specific noise fill the cab of my truck and hint as a warning.
“Scream, I shoot the dad first,” I tell her. “The mom will shriek, the kids afterward. I’ll hit the tall boy second because he’s easier than the little girl next to him. I’ll probably knick her in the side of the head because she’s pretty small. Might have to round the van and finish her off. Unfortunately, the mom will have to see the whole thing because she’s the hardest to hit with this cement pole in the way, but she’ll have the little boy in her arms, dead by the moment I take her out.”