by Tilty Edin
He got out of the car and slammed the door behind him. "I'll be right back."
She watched him leave with hope in her eyes.
It was so hard to believe the stranger he had become.
There was no denying the dryness in her mouth. She’d been broken out in a sweat from the moment she woke from a ten minute nap in the morning but was too anxious to sit down and have a glass of water.
Seconds felt like years. Her right foot elongated as far as it could, desperately trying to reach the blade.
Maybe he’s not getting any water. Who knows what he’s doing.
She tried. Again and again, moving her foot every which way between thrashing as with as much force as she could. Finally after what felt like some time, she got the blade up to the seat near loose parts of her fingers and after about twenty minutes, three of the pieces of rope were cut.
She pulled away harder to free herself, harder and harder after the thrid rope was cut and she couldn't seem to cut anymore. She shouted in aggravation. He was good at the ropes. Too good.
She cried, laying her head helplessly on the seats, but she kept struggling, wiggling around hard to break free between breaks of giving up. Her mouth felt drier by the second. He only left one window open just a sliver open, and if he didn't come back to kill her, the heat would.
She laid motionless on the car seat. The heat of the closed in car was suffocating. She took the deepest breath she could, then reached for the blade again and cut two more lines of rope, finally freeing one hand in the tangled mess. But then, as if the world was timed perfectly wrong, the car door opened.
Tod slid back into the front seat, one gallon of water in his hands. He opened the lid slowly.
“Just in case you thought I would poison you or something," he said. "I didn’t do anything to it. He moved his body towards her, pressing the opening to her lips.
She swallowed five heaping gulps of water before he brought it back to his mouth and finished it off.
She said in a rather haunting voice, watching the sun glimmer through the trees, "Thank you.” Another hand slipped through the rope. “I was so thirsty."
He fully rolled down the window in the mellow forest. A breeze rustled the leaves. Trees cracked.
The engine rattled with hoped the noise would be enough to distract him from the sound of the last rope being cut and her body finally being freed. She had never done anything so swiftly in her life, and it gave her just enough the right amounts of confidence and adrenaline.
As he began to drive slowly out, she grabbed the car door, opened it and bolted.
"You don't want to be in those woods alone," said his distant shouts.
She kept running into the trees, pulling off the rest of the rope along the way.
43
2:00pm
Leanne never stopped running, even as she gasped for air and her chest heaved and the cramps ached. The massive trees blurred into her dried out eyes. She ached. She ached of everything. Her stomach twisted, a cry of pain hid behind her sealed tight lips.
She quickly glanced behind her to no one but endless trees. There wasn't a sound.
She rubbed a hand on her burning throat, turned behind a tree, held up her hair and puked up the water.
Thirsty again, she sat down in the shade, wondering where to go and what to do next.
A branch snapped, echoing between the trees.
When she closed her eyes to search for such a serene place, all she could picture at first was a sky where the stars shined the brightest. A moment in time when her lips gently grazed on the man she was trying so hard to forget now.
I just need to keep going. If I continue straight ahead, I’ll find someone for help or I’ll find her way back eventually.
She got up, quietly and slyly began maneuvering between the trees. Her back leaned up one against the other.
This can't be the end of me, can it?
She kept going. Her eyes started to swell again. Her knees wanted to collapse. The pressure had constricted around her flesh and bones like a boa.
A branch snapped.
She desperately looked back again to the gaps between the trees and ran. She veered to the far right rows of trees where she halted to the sound of another branch snap.
She hid behind a tree, shaking profusely when she noticed ahead of her was a shabby wet, yellowed sign.
PRIVATE PROPERTY
Her eyes widened. It was not the sign she was hoping to see, but it was a sign that could bring her help. She bolted past it.
Her eyes searched for a dirt road, the sheds, the house, anything, up until she heard a loud snap.
She screamed.
44
3:50pm
If Tod didn’t know where Leanne was by now, he never would.
A rusted over, steel clamp delved deeply into her muscle. Far enough to fracture bone, mutilating the bottom half of her part of right leg.
Her first thought was to lift it up, hoping for a quick release, but it only tripled the pain.
She looked down. A large sized, steel jawed animal trap engulfed up the lower half of her calve.
Blood dripped profusely where the pointed metal started it's laceration. She felt as if she’d snap the rest of her leg in half if she fell forward. The agonizing thought almost led her to want to.
She took a deep breath. Even the slightest movement put her in more excruciating pain. She dried her eyes.
“Anyone who uses this shit should probably try it out on themselves first,” she said through clenched teeth.
She kept her eyes away from the gory mess and looked up to beyond the swaying trees. The last of the sun loomed in the sky illuminating the lush hues of green. She didn't have much time.
She crouched down painfully to her knees. Her hands struggled to push down the rust sealed metal end pieces where the clamp should release, but she was convulsing so bad and couldn't put enough pressure.
She stood up again. Her teeth so clenched together so tightly she felt her jaw breaking.
Her freed leg lifted up and slowly pressed down on the other end of the clamp. She bent down again to press the opposite end with her hand and excreted different levels of pressure over and over.
Snap.
The horizon was sucking in the sun.
She took off her blouse and tightly wound it around the freed wound and tied it tight. It wouldn't make the best tourniquet, but it was certainly better than nothing.
Now it became a balancing act between the throbbing pain and fear of never escaping out alive, but she continued on, limping away from the trespassing sign on the other end of the trees.
She turned her head back to the dimming light. Not much progress was made, but an idea struck her.
She turned back towards where the trap was set and pulled it away from the ground, carrying it along behind her. It would have to serve as all the protection she had.
She glanced back. Not a trace of anyone anywhere came in sight. In front of her she noticed a large, deeply ingrained footprint. She inspected it.
He knows these woods.
She figured he probably knew the whole area like the back of his hand.
She looked down to see the tourniquet turned a soaking red. She tried to think of a brighter side. Anything to get her out of feeling helpless.
I just spared an animal’s suffering.
She played with the idea a little longer in her head as she limped further, imagining a wondering fox in search for food to bring back to his mate.
Foxes, they say, mate for life. The foxes love is true.
She laughed to herself, "21 year old college graduate," she said weakly. "Leanne Robinson, meets a serial killer..."
She bit her lip.
There is nothing more disturbing in this world than the monster I'm up against. And I’m not superwoman. I'm not a fighter. I’m just me.
The disturbing thought urged her to halt and break down like radioactive particles. There was no way to predict the
ending of her gruesome story, but looking back, there were plenty of ways it could have been prevented.
She clenched her fists, holding them up to her lips, biting them to numb away the pain.
Then her eyes went wide.
Her mind, growing foggy, rewound all the way back to seeing him at work, past seeing glimpses of him nearly everywhere she went.
"He was always familiar," she gasped.
I've seen him. I've seen him while dancing up on stage. He was every Tuesday night.
She was alone when she met him. Defeated and scared of the world. She didn't know what she was doing with her life or where it was taking her. The boundaries she should have made were barely built when they should have been. She didn't know them or go over them enough with herself. But even though all of that was true, Tod was not someone who seemed to be the monster he really was. He was not someone you'd want to give a thick boundary.
She continued on into the trees, hoping by some point to reach the other side.
She could taste something putrid. Something dangerous. She shambled further only to clearly make out what she was really tasting was what decomposed under the shadows of the trees.
She stopped completely for a short moment and stared. Her mouth wide open, gaping. She shut her eyes, trying to rid the images burning in her mind like nothing else, then opened them wide again, continually looking back at the lifeless piles. Her eyes swelled with moisture she couldn’t afford to be losing.
The more she stared, the more questions bombarded her mind.
Was one of them Aria Moore? Was one or all of them killed here? Just how gone were they? Could they miss home? Was it enough to be stuck in their putrid bodies forever, wishing, hoping for any sort of revenge? Is there karma? does it exist? Does divinity exist? Is anything meaningful in this life, or is this because we live in such a paradoxical world that evil must to exist too?
She shivered. At first she was afraid, but the humiliation, the feeling of sorrow and grief for the dead far surpassed that.
She stared at them as if they still had functioning organs to hear. "I see you," she whispered among their silence. "I know you're there."
She could feel every bit of warmth of her blood, tracing down to her leg where it should've been held inside.
She wanted to believe in happy endings. That she would make it out alive. That angels took the corpses home. That this all could end once and for all, but there was no time for any of that in her circumstance.
She remembered walking on the dark sidewalks before entering the restaurant the night she had met Tod.
Had he already been watching me before I even walked in? Had he already knew what he was going to do with me before we locked eyes at the fruit stand? How many lives had he taken on that boat, and did he contemplate on taking mine? Why didn't he? The models, where they a choice for him too? The way they looked at him, it surely could’ve been easy.
A shocking pain flew up her leg.
What was he planning on doing the moment we got to his house that first night? Why did he tuck me into bed instead of hitting me with the crowbar?
She couldn't believe how she didn't notice it all before. The image of his green eyes, giving her massive chills enough to freeze her blood stared at her in her memory.
Looks are deceiving, like wolves in sheep’s clothing.
She limped forward, feeling close to exhausted. She needed to sit down and rest.
A shadowy cobalt blue covered the earth. She took off her undershirt and wrapped it around tighter when she noticed a large, black ashy fire pit and peeked around for a forgotten shirt, sanitizer, anything.
The fire pit was big and gaping. A few bottles of gasoline, kerosene and some other strange, flammable liquids spread around it, along with a hole and a brown tarp shoved inside it. She supposed it was a confident spot for keeping the corpses.
She hobbled over, a piece of a woman’s clothing lingered over a damp box of matches. If it didn’t look so molded and murky, she would have used it as another tourniquet. Maybe even a little piece of tarp would do the trick, though she was sure the bacteria on it, wherever it’s been or used for, would love to make a nice home in her flesh.
She thought of searing it lightly with one of the matches to sterilize it, looking harder into the pit. She wondered if that's where he'd burn her body and everything, or if she'd get something a little more special, being his actual girlfriend and all.
Well, ex.
She set down the steel trap she managed to lug around and picked up one of the bottles, trying to read the useless washed out label.
I have to keep going. I have to get out of here.
Time was fleeting.
45
5:40am
Where the dark trees ended framed a ominous cerulean morning. It had taken Leanne all night to limp three miles. It might have taken not even an hour if she weren't bleeding so much.
Her face paled. Blood continued to seep from the drenched fabric.
Before she could make it just 30 feet to the finish line, she collapsed.
Unable to get up, she nestled into the leaves, make believing they were her bed.
A slight breeze rolled more leaves over her still body.
Just when she found some solitude and a decent enough place if she were to give up the fight, slow intervaled crunching came from far off.
When she looked up, two shoes pointed near her face. They were the shoes she reconized before. When an orange had fell. The orange that never should have escaped.
A familiar, deep, ear-piercing voice said, “Leanne.”
She lifted her head, slowly, painfully to a blurred image of Tod’s haunting face.
She croaked.
He kneeled to her.
She gasped.
"Leanne," he said. "You're dying."
She looked up at him with frilled, dry eyes.
He bent down, lifting her dangling body up with two hands and walked out of the woods and to where he normally parked his car. He set her in the back and sat with her, the coming of dawn rising from beyond the trees.
After ripping off the shirt embedding in her skin and the piece of tarp, he grabbed some of his clothing, forcing more pressure against her wounds.
She moaned.
He pressed harder. "You never should have gone into those woods," he said. "I tried to tell you. I was going to take you home last night. I know it sounds crazy that a man like me would just take you home, but I would have."
She gasped.
He held her limp body closer to him. “You need to get to a hospital,” he insisted. "I'll take you there right now. I'll-"
"I...," she gasped hoarsly. "Don't."
He felt her eyes watch him as he tightened up a new turniquiet as best he could. He took a water bottle and brought it to her lips.
"Please, drink this Leanne."
She shook her head. “Bye,” she said.
"You will drink," he said, forcing her mouth open and slowly pouring the water down her throat.
Weather she didn't want to drink, her body instinctively did anyway.
The light of dawn streamed in from the windows. He kissed her cold hands as a tear rolled down her cheek.
She looked into his eyes, eyes that were never to be fully understood by anyone. They were like looking into a never ending nightmare.
He placed a hand on her hardened cheek and moved a piece of hair away from her face.
"I waited all night for you here,” he said. "I never wanted you to die."
"If you love me," she said with what felt like her last words. "You'd take me back to the sage field."
He noticed life dimming in her eyes and got back in the drivers seat.
45
12:30pm
Tod snuck off into the woods. Dirt and smashed sage plants plastered all over him. He felt strange. Almost zombie like. Like he had become close to nothing more than a living, breathing ghost sauntering through the woods.
Blood soake
d clothes dangled from his locked arms. As the charred fire pit grew nearer, so did the feeling of reality, and somehow it would have him craving murdering more than ever.
His sick joke of an existence had become finalized. Life within him had become the darkest of any place in the universe, and it only made him want to take more.
His eyes dampened. He could hear the haunting sound of Leanne's voice calling him towards her.
The woods swirled around him. It was as if he were suddenly teleporting to another plane, a purgatory like hell where nothing really existed. Not happiness, sadness. Good or evil, but nothing at all.
He reached the ashen pit and stepped on the thick piles of damp leaves surrounding it. He threw in his clothes and poured gasoline when he heard an unusual crunch beneath his bare feet.
He lit a match and stepped not even an inch closer to the pit when he heard a loud snap.
The lit match fell, retaining its warm light, igniting not just the clothing, but the leaves and the flammable liquid-drenched tarp underneath, all the way to his feet.
The flames climbed up his leg, searing his skin and the flesh exposed from the steel jawed trap.
46
Officer Ridley, the head cop on the case of the missing woman in the area stood on Alex's doorstep. He understood the wait. As he looked out to the bright blue sky, he recalled all the events of the morning. He simply couldn’t think of anything else. It had been nothing slight of a miracle when he and the intern found Tod's car left halfway in a ditch so far from town. The mud had gotten to it, sinking the tires in pretty deep. His chest felt heavy, remembering the flashlight he took to the windows. The finger prints that still marked the insides were well defined.
Maria's body had never risen from the lake. After finding their initial suspect, Luey, hanging dead on a rope in his home after committing suicide the night she went missing, Officer Wilson turned his suspicion directly back to Tod without an ounce of more evidence.