by R. J. Lewis
“Good question,” he replied. “I’m doing this because I’m getting a fat load of cash. It isn’t personal.”
“Nixon will pay you more if you let me go,” I tried to say, though I stuttered it.
He didn’t respond to that. Instead, he said, “Put your hands behind your back.”
I slowly did as I was told. He began to bind my hands together with a cable tie, tightening it until it pressed painfully into my skin. When he stooped down to do the same around my ankles, I bolted.
I ran down the street, toward the screams and chaos. I began to open my mouth and scream help when I felt a body colliding into the back of me. I fell in an awkward way. My hip took the brunt of the fall. The sharp pain exploded through my body, leaving me temporarily breathless. Sweat broke out as I rode through the hurt. The man pulled me up from the ground and this time wrapped his arms around me in a bear hug. He dragged me back to the car, cursing under his breath.
“What you did was stupid,” he snapped. “So fucking stupid. I wasn’t going to go so tight around your ankles, but I’m thinking you’re the type that’ll just keep running if the opportunity pops up.”
I shook my head, feeling hysterical. “No, no, really, I’m not. I’ve been in this situation before. I was obedient. I swear it.”
I wasn’t, though, was I?
A lightning bolt of pain shot through my brain as I attempted to reflect on a buried past.
My body writhed, but it wasn’t writhing against the man. It was writhing against my mind. It pleaded for me to hold back. To not walk down that path. You won’t like it, Victoria.
The man shoved my entire body into the backseat of the car. I’d gone numb now, no longer fighting against him. I whipped my head to the side, blinking rapidly as images surfaced.
Bus stops and snow.
Sadness and chaos.
Nails digging into hard flesh.
Gasps and moans.
A voice in my ear.
“You’re mine.”
I took a panicked breath.
The man tied my ankles tight like he said he would do. Then he climbed over me, and as I turned to look at him, he threw a cloth bag over my head, shrouding me in darkness.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, breathing heavy now.
He didn’t respond.
I’d have preferred he curse at me. The silence was worse.
He slammed the door shut. I couldn’t hear anything for several moments except my own heavy breaths. Being so still, I felt cold. My entire body erupted in goose bumps.
This was actually happening. I thought.
It was happening again.
But unlike last time, I couldn’t seem to shut down or go numb.
I felt a spark in my body. Felt every emotion. It physically hurt to feel the sadness in my chest.
The driver door opened. The man slid in and the car rocked with his weight. He didn’t say a word as he turned the car on and drove slowly through the crowded streets.
As we continued, the screams and cries petered off.
We entered a quiet void.
I lay tense on the leather seats.
It was crazy because the fear brought with it a huge wave of nostalgia. I remembered the cabin and the snow, and suddenly I was hearing Nixon in my ear.
“Time to look back on it, don’t you think?”
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. I’m your villain, isn’t that right? Yet I have a feeling, if you stopped and remembered, you might be surprised what you’d find.”
My breaths slowed.
I couldn’t keep running.
I couldn’t keep pretending it didn’t happen.
Because now I was in the back of a car, bound and frightened, and the opportunity to confront the past was slipping fast.
Taking deep breaths, I told myself to be calm. I told myself it was alright. It was alright to be afraid.
I took deep breaths.
One deep breath.
Two deep breaths.
I shut my eyes.
Shut my eyes and breathed.
And then I remembered.
Part Two: The Beginning
25.
Victoria…
I woke up to the soft patter of rain hitting the roof. The second my eyes flew open, I felt the walls closing in on me. The days were the same and endless.
I threw the covers over my head and shut my eyes, trying to breathe through the tightness in my chest. I wasn’t sure I could get up. To face yet another day of the same bullshit. To feel my soul dying.
Sleep was such an escape. It was just…silence. I was finding myself going to bed earlier and earlier every day, longing for the blackness to swallow me.
Depression hit me like a pile of bricks every time I opened my eyes. Every time I had to accept that I needed to get out of bed, I needed to go to school, go to work, pretend to give a shit.
That was the hardest part.
Pretending.
Smiling while you were crying inside.
And for no good reason, either.
People had it harder than me, I knew that. They lost more than I ever would. So, on top of feeling depressed and apathetic, I felt guilty for feeling depressed and apathetic.
Everyone liked to remind you to count your blessings. To be aware of how fortunate you were. To just be happy that you’re living. Because God forbid you feel like you’re hurting on the inside, and God forbid your reasons aren’t sufficient enough to warrant these feelings. Because that’s wrong – it’s so wrong to be human, so wrong to be stuck in a loop that you can’t break. Because, goddammit, be positive!
And they wondered why you didn’t want to talk about it.
Pfft.
I threw the covers off me and rolled out of bed. I grabbed my phone off the desk on the other side of my room. I kept it far from my bed so I wouldn’t be tempted to turn it on in the night and scroll through my many different social media apps.
It…didn’t work as well as I’d hoped.
I got only a few heart likes on my Insta post. I thought I’d get more, but whatever. I supposed people weren’t interested in selfie pics anymore. I needed to show some more ass or boob. I glanced at my reflection in the mirror and turned side on, looking a little disappointed in my lack of assets. I snorted at my own pun – this was what my life amounted to at twenty-one years old: depressed and making puns alone in my bedroom at – I glanced at the clock – 6:33am in the morning.
My hair was still damp from last night’s shower, so I threw it up in a ponytail – no fucks given. Half-asleep, I quickly grabbed a change of clothes, crept out of my room and tip-toed to the bathroom down the hallway. I held my breath passing Aunt Elayne’s room. The last time I’d made a sound, her boyfriend John had lost his shit. His meltdown involved screaming his lungs at me for being a loud fucking idiot followed by a series of doors being slammed shut. By doors, I meant one door. He literally opened it and slammed it, over and over again.
It was really fucked up.
I made it safely to the little bathroom with the yellow tiled wall and sticky white floor. Closing the door and locking it, I stripped my clothes off and gave myself a quick body rinse in the shower stall. I was sweating too much in the nights – anxiety and crying until your heart ached was hard business.
I scrubbed my face with the last of the First Aid face wash Kimberly had slipped into my bag when I’d broken out last week. God bless her. Money was tight. Minimum wage was a bitch.
I dried off and slipped into…I paused, glancing horrifically at the change of clothes I’d quickly grabbed from the drawer. A thin white sweater with a yellow stain on the tit area (I’d eaten taco that day and what a fucking mess), and…a black, breezy skirt that ended above the knee.
Shit.
Fuck.
This wasn’t going to keep me warm.
It was the start of December. The forecast predicted snow – fucking snow in December in Vancouver. Not that it didn’t get cold
here or anything, but snow just wasn’t that common in the land of rain.
My bus stop was three blocks away.
And I had to be there in…oh, fifteen minutes.
I quickly grabbed my bottle of foundation and brush and nope’d the hell out of the bathroom. Now that I was more alert, I needed to go to my room for a better change of clothes and –
“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, VICTORIA?!” John screamed from the bedroom.
My heart seized in my chest.
Change of plans.
I turned swiftly in the direction of the staircase and flew down the steps just as I heard him stomping out of bed. The door whipped open – the tiny house vibrated with the force of it – just as I reached the landing. In a panic, I threw on my gumboots – GUMBOOTS with a SKIRT on a day that forecasted SNOW – and yanked my backpack and black jacket off the hook.
“You don’t have any fucking respect for those sleeping, do you?” John carried on, appearing at the bottom of the stairs just as I had opened the front door. He was still in his too small briefs with his junk practically hanging out, and his brown long hippy hair looked extra fucked this morning. He was so ew.
“Well,” I quickly said, throwing a salty smile his way, “when it’s all you do, it’s kinda hard to care.”
His already dilated eyes widened. “You little bitch –”
I slammed the door on his face and ran for my life. I couldn’t miss this bus. I had like two others to catch before making it to campus. I was in the middle of finals and unprepared and these fucking exams were worth 6498342% of my grade.
It was raining a shit ton, and the drops were icy. The sidewalks were slippery, and I was so tired, and my make-up wasn’t done, I needed caffeine, and it was just one of those fucking days.
I was half a block from the bus stop when the bus came barrelling down the street. Shit. I raised my arms up in the air dramatically, pleading for him to stop. The bus driver didn’t slow down, even though he saw me. He drove on by, shrugging at me like, “oh well.”
Fucker!
Never mind my lungs were burning like…someone whose lungs were burning from a run like that. I stopped and bent over, sucking in breath after breath. The world went dizzy. I was so out of shape, and I just wanted to sleep and drink caffeine and have caught the bus on time.
He could have stopped.
Why didn’t he stop?
Why were there so many assholes in this world?
Feeling dejected, I walked slowly to the stop, crying softly. I missed Mom. She would have dropped me off at school. She would have spent the last of her money making sure I had clothes to wear so I didn’t commit fashion suicide. She was such a better person than me. I was such a bitch to her, even by the end I couldn’t make up for all the shit I’d put her through.
I stood at the stop for twenty minutes, getting poured on by the icy rain, feeling so cold, I was sure I was starting to feel the first signs of hypothermia.
And, in my typical dramatic fashion, I thought of dying and went, meh, why not? I was just hardly skating on by, anyway. I wasn’t particularly good at anything. Really, no one would miss me.
I could hear Mom’s voice in my head. You are too melodramatic, Victoria. To which, I’d respond with a melodramatic roll of my eyes.
Really, she was right.
But it wasn’t like I went off the deep-end or anything. I wasn’t the type of person to throw fits or smash things or scream. I just kept it bottled up inside me, and when it got too much, I ate my feelings.
I thought of Aunt Elayne and her screaming matches with John whenever he ticked her off. Once she smashed a lamp against the wall. Jesus, it took months to get the tiny bits out of the frayed carpet. She was so fucking crazy to let someone get to her like that. At least I had enough sense to be composed. I had to give myself credit for that.
The next bus arrived just as I lost all feeling in my fingers. It was literally the slowest braking of all time.
Of.
All.
Time.
I waited a whole minute for the bus to stop dead still and then the doors opened. I stepped on. Thankfully, the bus drivers on my route weren’t the cheery type (as evident from the last dude that just fucking drove by). They didn’t smile and welcome you on and make you smile back like everything was so rosy peaches. No, they just looked at you with dead eyes that said, “You’re having a shit day? Try driving through this bullshit. Did you know there’s gonna be snow? Try driving through that with a bunch of loud kids your age yammering away about stupid shit. It’s always stupid shit you stupid kids talk about.”
I scanned my bus pass through the system, but the red light didn’t turn green. I swiped it again and… red light again.
The driver let out a long, arduous breath.
“I assure you this works,” I said in a cheery voice that was so fucking fake. “I filled it up last week.”
She didn’t respond.
I scanned it five more times.
Maybe I was doing it too fast?
I scanned slower.
Even blew on my card by the third time.
By the fourth time, I blew on the machine.
By the fifth, I just wanted to crawl into a hole.
The bus doors opened again. Oh, no.
“I have some coin,” I then said, teeth chattering as I began to slide off the backpack. “You can keep going on the route. I’ll dig it up.”
She didn’t keep going on the route, though. She just gave me an impatient look as I hurriedly opened my backpack. My fingers were so numb, it took me forever to get the fucker to open. I knelt down, feeling flushed with embarrassment as the full bus of people began to look at me and, one by one, let out these laboriously long breaths.
Why did I get up this morning?
I could have been in bed.
I could have walked in front of the bus, too, but I didn’t want to traumatize anyone.
I also didn’t want to be reminded I was a week late on rent and Elayne used my money for cigarettes and alcohol and now it was coming out of her own pocket.
Man, she was going to kick me out if I didn’t get on top of that.
I’d have nowhere to go.
Don’t cry.
A pair of legs in dark jeans suddenly stopped in front of me. I heard the sound of coins being deposited in the coin slot.
“Bus pass for the girl,” said a deep voice.
I heard the sound of the ticket being ripped, and then the large body knelt before me. I looked up, eyes wide as saucers as my gaze collided with deep blue eyes.
“Here you go,” he said, extending his hand out to me.
My brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders because I stupidly placed my ice-cold hand in his, thinking he was going to help me up, but he was actually just handing me a pass.
His hand was warm, strong, and they immediately closed around mine. I glanced at the large hand before shooting the dude another wide-eyed look. He was really hot, I immediately noted. Full lips, straight nose, a face full of stubble, and…unruly black hair that was damp with strands falling over his forehead. The hair was the clincher, to be honest. It was fuckable hair. Like the kind you ran your fingers through when he went down on you – not that I’d know, or anything, but I watched enough porn to get an idea.
Realizing my mistake, I immediately withdrew my hand. “I’m sorry,” I said, turning warm all over. I was so cold just a second ago. Who knew the fix to hypothermia would be a hot dude warming you all over with just one look?
“You mean thanks,” he corrected with a smirk, waving that pass in my face.
I grabbed it, smiling softly. “Yes, sorry, thanks. I can pay you back. I’ve got the coin here…somewhere, I just need to dig it out.”
He glanced at my backpack, filled to the brim with heavy textbooks and tampons and other cringy shit. “No need.”
He stood back up and retreated down the bus. I felt a little bummed by that. Not that I expected fireworks to explode betwee
n us, but I’d read so many books, I couldn’t stop picturing romance scenarios playing out in front of me. What a bad habit to have.
He was just a dude that had paid my bus ticket and –
Why was the bus still stopped?
I looked up just as the fuming driver looked down at me and pointed at the sign above her head. STOP BEFORE THE RED LINE. I looked down at my feet. I was so beyond the red line, it wasn’t even funny. I shot her an apologetic look and quickly got up and made my way down the bus. Literally, the second I stepped over that red line, she began driving, sending me flying into a random person’s chest. I smelled cigarettes and mint before pushing away, muttering apologies as I grabbed the bars and hanging grab handles and searched for a place to sit, or stand, or anything.
I ended up finding an awkward little spot beside the middle doors, which meant getting blasted with icy wind every time someone stepped off.
And someone always stepped off.
This day sucked wrinkly lion ballsacks.
Pulling out my phone, I sent a bunch of scathing messages to Kim.
I hate today.
I’m in a skirt and gumboots and they predicted snow today.
I missed the bus too and had to wait in the cold rain, and now I might be late to my next bus.
I think one of these days I’m just going to throw the towel in and tell the world to go fuck itself. Running away is so tempting, it might be the only escape. Would you run away with me, Kim-Bim?
Her response was immediate.
Jesus, Victoria. That fucking sucks. Doesn’t help you live with a raging alcoholic asshole. I don’t feel comfortable with you living with him, especially when he stares at you like that. I felt so weirded out when I saw it last week. I’d love to run away. We should go someplace warm because the snow forecast was upgraded to SNOWSTORM.
I groaned inwardly, casting a grimacing look at my bare legs.
When we got a major stop close to amenities, a shit ton of people filed out. I immediately found a seat and raced to it like my life depended on it. It was one of those horizontal seats, forming a U-shape in the back of the bus. My shoulders sagged with relief as I took a seat and dropped the heavy backpack between my legs. I unzipped it and this time leafed through endless pages of notes. Thankfully, they weren’t soaked.