by Amy Faye
“Now, just calm down… and relax…”
I close my eyes and think about the pleasure. My body relaxes for an instant, and in that instant he pushes inside with a second finger. Just like the first time, it feels like this is the largest it’s going to go. Ever. Then he starts to move them inside me.
They don’t go any deeper. None of the delicious feeling of being full all the way up to my brain. He twists them side to side, and makes scissoring motions. Stretching me more and more. I relax as best I can. It hurts, but it hurts so good that I can’t help myself.
“You like that?”
I nod, chewing my lip to stop from crying out in pain. To stop from crying out in pleasure, too.
“Don’t hold back,” he says. His voice is low and soothing. When his fingers split wide, I let out a voice. I’m not sure what I’m feeling, but I know that it took everything I had just to hold it back, and now that I didn’t have to, feelings surged through me.
And then, all of a sudden, all of that fullness, all of that sensation, was gone. I panted hard, my body pressed into the bed. My heart raced in my chest, and I could feel the blood pounding in my ears, even in spite of the fact that it was so low.
“Are you ready?”
I stiffen. I hadn’t even thought of the fact that there was going to be more. And then I nod, because I’m more than ready. I’m desperate for it.
Fourteen
There’s a moment where I’m waiting for Ben. Waiting for him to do something, waiting for him to finally take me. Take what I am offering. And then… he pulls away.
“We need to go,” he growls. “Now.”
I straighten. My whole body feels sluggish, but I force myself to move as best as I can. I hope that I’ll be able to keep moving like this, because even what I’ve got going on right now feels wrong. It feels like I’m moving through water.
“What’s happening?”
“They’ve found us, is what’s happening.”
“What? How?”
He snarls at me. “I don’t know, Hailey. I wonder how.”
“You don’t still think it’s me, do you?”
I realize dimly that I’m still undressed. I reach down for my pants. It’s a first step. Then I realize that I need underwear, too. It’s a process, indeed. I drop the pants on the floor, and then realize that I made a mistake again. I will need those again. I could have dropped them on the bed.
Slowly, I reach down and grab my panties with one hand and my pants with the other. The pants go on the bed, and the panties… I feel myself tipping over and barely manage to catch myself in time.
“Ben, I didn’t…”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” he says. But his voice doesn’t sound anything like he’s sure that I didn’t. He sounds angry. “Just get dressed.”
I pull on my panties, one leg at a time. Then my pants. My ass hurts. I can only imagine how much it would have hurt if we’d actually gone any further. But my body keeps moving. It’s even getting more used to moving as I go along. This time, for example, I don’t stumble when I lift my leg to try to put on my trousers.
“I didn’t do anything,” I plead. “I’m sorry.”
“We’ll see,” he says. “I know you didn’t do anything. The question is whether or not you did something without having to actually do anything. Maybe there’s a tracker on you. Maybe you’re bugged. Maybe they’re tracking your cell phone. I don’t know, but I know that I’m not going to be able to keep going like this.”
I pull on my shirt. I want everything to be better again. I want all my problems to go away, once and for all. I want to feel better. I want to relax and lay down and feel like I can actually close my eyes for a bit. None of those are going to happen, though, and I know it. In spite of myself, I know better than to hope for anything.
“I promise, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How are we going to get out of here, Hailey? You walked us right into a corner, and now we can’t get out. But there’s no way we were followed. I was watching. I kept a close eye. I’m used to being followed, and if there were someone right on our tail then I’d have seen them.”
“But…”
“And they wouldn’t have taken two hours to get here. Which means that they knew where they were coming. Maybe you contacted them, but I know you didn’t. I was with you most of the time. There’s always the chance that you texted someone while I was with Sarah, but I didn’t see it in you, so I believe you didn’t.”
“I don’t know why you’re so angry with me,” I said. My eyes were wet and stung. I realized dimly that I needed to finish getting dressed. My breasts weren’t going to be able to stay out when we left and went back into the winter cold.
“You have no idea how angry I am, darling. No idea whatsoever. But you will. Once I’ve figured out how you are doing this, you will.”
“It isn’t me,” I protest again. I reach down for my bra, and then pull it on. It feels cold against my skin.
“The timing is too coincidental. I don’t have the luxury of believing in coincidences. Not after what happened to my wives. Three! Three women, beautiful, smart, capable, important women, and they’re dead! Because someone got them killed. Someone who decided that they wanted to get out more than they wanted to keep three innocent women alive.”
I shuddered. He wasn’t listening. And I understood why. I’d accused him, before, of not feeling anything about the deaths of his wives. Of being as cold as his skin. But he wasn’t. He was furious, and right now, he was furious with me.
“I promise,” I say again, but even I can hear the weakness in my own voice. I believe I’m innocent, but he’s right. The timing is too coincidental. Is there some way that I could have been involved in this without knowing it?
“I believe you believe it,” he says, and then steps toward the door. “I need to get Sarah ready to run again. Get dressed and be ready to go in two minutes.”
I can feel tears welling up in my eyes, but I force myself to move quickly. It’s still a challenge, and my body still feels wrong and far-away. But I force myself to keep moving, trusting that my reflexes will get me through.
My clothes fit wrong. My body feels strange. But I force myself to move, and I’m just opening the door two minutes later when Ben comes through, his eyes burning. Sarah’s rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
“What’s going on?”
“Ben says that they found us.”
She blinks tiredness out of her eyes and then fixes her eyes on me. “How could they have?”
My heart breaks again. Someone else who doesn’t trust me. Maybe they’re right not to. There’s no way that anyone could have found it. There are only three of us here, and only one of us is a big change that just occurred. I don’t know how I could have been convinced to do it without knowing. But there must be some way.
We move in a quick and controlled way towards the garage. There’s a key hanging on the wall. I guess Todd thought that if you were inside already, you probably belonged. That was a mistake. Ben grabbed the key and rapped on the garage door opener. The only thing in the garage, the only thing that the keys could belong to, is an open-top Jeep. Probably for off-roading through the forest. It’s going to be a cold drive. I wish again that I had something heavier to wear than just a sweater.
The car roars easily to life, and I climb into the back as the frigid winds blow through the open garage door. We rabbit out of the start. I expect us to head towards the exit, but we don’t. Ben turns the wheel and heads us deeper in.
“Where are we going?”
“The only way that they’re not going to be looking,” he growls. “At least, hopefully.”
“We should have left her behind,” Sarah says. “They show up, and she’s alone at the cabin, and she gets away clean, and there’s no way that she knows where we are.”
I want to argue with her, to tell her that she’s wrong. That I’m not responsible for any of this. But I don’t know if that’s true,
for one, and for another, I can’t bring myself to tell them that they aren’t at least on the right track with that line of thinking.
“I don’t think she knows what she’s doing,” Ben answers. His voice sounds like he’s just thinking aloud, but he doesn’t sound as if he doubts it. “And I’m not ready to walk away from this. They’re going to kill her, in the end, like it or not. They’ll want to know what she knows.”
“Not if she’s working with them.”
“Well, the answer is, I’d like to know what she knows more.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“It’s simple,” he says. His voice is low and hard. “I’m going to drive until I think we’ve left them behind for a little while, and then I’m going to lose you. Somewhere that you’ll be safe. I’ll find a place to stash Hailey, and then I’ll find a third place for myself.”
“What? Stash me?” I can hear the fear in my own voice. They must have been able to hear it. But they ignore the question entirely.
“And then what?”
“I find out what Hailey knows. I find out how they’ve been finding us.”
To my surprise, there’s a back way out. I hadn’t known about this, but within five minutes we’re back onto the country road, and heading toward the interstate. I shiver hard. It’s so cold that my skin hurts, and it feels as if the fluid in my eyeballs is going to freeze.
“I don’t know anything,” I shout, hoping to be heard over the wind whipping around.
“We’ll see about that,” Ben says, his voice low and certain. “And if you’re telling the truth, then I’m sorry for what I’m going to do to find out.”
Fifteen
My body hurts, and even though it’s been hours since Ben left, my mind still feels blank. Maybe I’d feel better if I were somewhere else, I think. Maybe a little bit sourly, in spite of myself. It takes a moment but I manage to get my arm under me. I try to heave my weight up onto it. It hurts. I don’t think it’s broken, but I can’t help imagining that it is. It hurts so bad. Every joint feels like it’s pulling itself apart.
And then it slips out from under me, and I fall, hard, on the bony point of my shoulder. I wish I had more self-control than this, but I don’t. I scream out in pain. Every nerve in my body feels as if it’s screaming along with me, so loud that I can’t even think. My toes hurt, for Christ’s sake, and I didn’t even hurt them, as far as I can remember.
My shoulders shudder in agony, and I try to breathe again. It comes in unsteady, and shallow, and even then it feels as if my ribs are digging into my lungs. I hear something outside. I’m afraid of who it’s going to be. Nobody can find me here. I’m certain of that. There’s a bed just a little bit away from me. My whole world is the three-foot climb into bed.
I won’t be punished if I can just make it that far. If I can just get into bed, then Ben will be happy with me. He won’t get mad. I tell myself that over and over again. He told me to get into the bed, and I hadn’t yet. I couldn’t. My feet wouldn’t listen, my arms wouldn’t hold my weight, and every attempt to crawl meant that I was in terrible agony the entire time that I fought to get there.
I timed my movement to my screams. When I screamed, I had to tighten every muscle in my body to get anything out. To fight against the pain in my throat when I made any sound. I know that my arm isn’t broken. I know, because he didn’t do anything to it at all.
But it feels as if I can barely move it, as if every single movement is pulling it further and further into injury, and try as I might, I can’t convince myself otherwise. Not deep down, not where it counts.
I scream out, and pull myself another six inches across the floor. I just have to do that another five times, and then lift myself up.
I just wish… I just wish that I could have started sooner, but it only just faded enough that I thought I could possibly tolerate the pain, and the single movement is enough to have it all surging back at once. Every tiny part of my body tells me that it can’t move. That six inches is all I’m going to get. A waste.
I reach out. The tips of my fingers tap the bed frame gently. I feel like something smashed my fingers in with a hammer. I scream out, trying desperately to fight. Trying to find something inside me that can just ignore the pain, something that can make me stronger.
My arm falls. I ignore the pain, ignore the voice telling me that it’s pointless. If I can just get far enough to take a grip on the bed, I can pull myself in. I have to be able to. If I dislocate my shoulder and destroy my elbow, I have to.
The feet on the gravel outside get louder, but I’ve got time. It seems to stretch into infinity, as if the spaces between the footsteps is enough time to live out an entire life, rather than just a half-second.
I scream again. My entire body hurts. My shoulder is insisting that it’s got nothing left. That it’s barely being held together by cartilage and tendon, and that if I put any strain on it, I’ll be ruining my body. I’m not anywhere near a hospital, so in all likelihood, if I broke it, then it would stay broken, unless Ben had some kind of magic potion that would repair my destroyed body.
I reach out with my hand. My fingers fit around the frame. The metal isn’t just cold, it’s like ice. Like glass stabbing into my skin, and so cold that I can’t imagine anything else. My other hand reaches out and takes ahold of that pain, too, and I pull. Another step, and another scream.
I pull hard. My body moves. I force my hand under myself. I’m shaking so hard that I don’t know if I can press down. Never mind pushing myself off of the ground, I don’t know if I can understand what ‘down’ is. The wood feels rough and splintery. Every part of me hurts as bad as I’ve ever felt before. My nerves scream out in unison, like I’ve been lit on fire.
I push the ground as hard as I can. I make it up halfway. I put my other hand under before I can slip again. My elbow buckles, but its newly-introduced sister holds. I force myself to put both arms back, and push, with all my strength. I scream out in raw agony. I want it to be over. It has to be over. I can get into bed, with just another couple of movements.
My knee slides forward. When I lose my balance this time, I stay upright, falling back onto my feet. The stretch in my thighs feels like torture, all by itself. Every part of me hurts. I take a grip on the bed post. It hurts. I pull. My ass pulls away from my feet, and I fall forward, onto the mattress, as the door opens.
“I did it,” I say. I can’t see anything. My vision’s gone black with the concentration that I had to muster in order to endure all that. My body feels almost better within an instant. I’m pleased.
“Hailey?”
I blink my eyes open. Vision comes back. “Sarah?”
She’s standing in the doorway, and she looks like she’s shaking as hard as I am. Her arms grip around her chest in a self-hug.
“What happened to you? You look… awful.”
“He made me hurt all over. He went into my mind, and he… he’s coming back,” I say. My body aches with the force. “He said if I made it into the bed…”
Sarah’s lips purse together. “You need to escape, Hailey. We need to get you out of here, okay? I’m going to help you.”
“No,” I say. Desperation seizes my chest. “I can’t. He’ll think… he’ll come after me. It will just be proof that it was me.”
“No,” Sarah says softly. “No, I’m going to get you out of here.”
“He’s going to come back,” I say, a little louder. “He’s going to come back! I have to be here!”
Sarah’s lips form themselves into a tight line across her face, her face a perfect expression of sympathy. Sympathy I don’t want. I want to be believed, not pitied.
“I know it feels like that,” she says. Her voice is gentle and soothing. “I’m going to get you out of here, okay? We’re going to get you back home safe.”
“No,” I say again. I can hear the desperation in my own voice, and I hate it. “Please, just go. He’s going to believe me. He’s got to believe me. But I can’t
run. That would…” My jaw is shaking hard, my lips trembling. It makes words hard to work out of my mouth. “It would prove I was bad. You don’t think I’m bad, do you Sarah?”
She traces the line of my jaw. I pull back from it automatically, afraid of what it’s going to feel like. It feels like someone caressing my skin gently. I relax.
“I know you’re not bad, Hailey. I know you feel like nobody believes you, but you have to know. I believe you, okay? You’re going to be just fine, alright? Just stay calm.”
“I will,” I whimper. I lay my head down on the bed. She pulls her hand away, and the sensation of her touch goes with it. So does every other sensation. The world around me goes quiet, and black, and thankfully, deliciously painless. I pass out easily and when I’m asleep, waiting for something to wake me, I don’t dream.
Sixteen
My eyes open on their own. Every part of my body feels wrong. I want to go back to sleep, but I don’t. I force my eyes back open again and push myself up. In spite of myself, I look around and let out a long yawn.
I’m in a car. The car is moving. It’s got a closed top and pleasantly warm air blows from the vents.
“Where am I?”
I look into the driver’s seat. There’s a tall woman, blond hair falling in gentle waves around her shoulders. She’s got a deep tan and a profile that looks as if it could be in a magazine.
“You’re awake,” she says with a voice like an angel.
“How did I get here? I was… I was in bed. Ben’s going to come back!” The thought snaps into my head and rips the tiredness out of my head. I need to be on it, now. This is a mistake. “He’s going to come back, and… and he’s not going to find me! He’s going to think that I’m the one who…”
My voice trails off and I let my head fall into the window. My chest hurts. I shouldn’t be here. I should be somewhere else. I should be back at that cabin. I shouldn’t have met any of these people. I should have been better somehow. I don’t know what would have helped but I want everything to stop going wrong for me, and whatever I have to do to get that to happen is what I want. And I want it right now, thank you very much.