After a few minutes, Preppy came back into the room and uncuffed me. “Let’s go,” he said. Yanking me into an upright position, he dragged me toward the door.
“Where are we going?” I asked frantically. Then, it came to me. This was King’s house. His bedroom. He wouldn’t carry out killing me in his own home, so it was very likely they would take me somewhere else first. This was my only shot, and I was going to have to take it.
“Not far,” Preppy said.
It was getting dark, and it was about to storm. Couldn’t they at least wait until morning? I could think better when I wasn’t being choked by my own fear of the dark.
“Why?”
“Come on. You’ll see.”
We walked down the narrow hallway and down the stairs to the main living area of the house. King was nowhere in sight. Figures he would ask Preppy to do his dirty work for him. A part of me wanted King to do it.
I wanted him to see the look in my eyes as he killed an innocent person.
But it didn’t look like I was going to get that chance.
Preppy led me out onto the balcony, and I stopped short when we reached the stairs. Preppy was already a few steps below me, his grip on my wrist still tight. He turned around when he felt me come to a stop. This was my only chance to escape with my life. I didn’t think. I just acted.
I reared my foot back and kicked him in the balls. HARD. He released my wrist to grab his crotch and I shoved on his shoulders with all my might, sending him tumbling backwards down the steep staircase.
I ran down the steps and jumped over Preppy who was curled up at the bottom of the stairs groaning obscenities face-first into the grass.
I took off as fast as my bare feet and weak legs would take me. Clutching the sweats with one hand, I ran down the dirt driveway, but when I reached the road, there was nothing but more trees in every direction. I didn’t remember which way we’d come from the night before, and there was nothing telling me which way would bring me toward people.
Toward help.
A door slammed somewhere behind me. Heavy boots against the wooden deck echoed over my head. The wind carried the shouts of a very deep and very unhappy voice.
Shit.
The sun had almost fully sunk into the horizon. Although I couldn’t see in the dark, I had to get off the open road where I was a sitting duck.
I took off across the road. Pushing some brush aside, I jumped through the opening I created, stumbling over twisting roots and cypress knees. Finding my footing on the soft wet ground was almost impossible.
So was running straight.
Vines and brush blocked my every move. Spider webs stretched over my face as I tried to clear a path. Just a little further in, and I would be able to hide within the thick brush.
My foot landed on something sharp and I hissed, tumbling forward onto a narrow path. I leapt across the mud and used all my weight to flatten a bush. I’d just lifted my leg as high as it could go so I could step over it when I was tackled from behind, landing hard on my side. The wind left my lungs with a whooshing sound.
No matter how hard I tried to suck air back in, I couldn’t. Over and over again, I opened my mouth to breathe, and over and over again, my lungs failed me.
I was still gasping for air when strong arms flipped me onto my back. Massive, hard thighs held me like a vice on each side of my ribcage, threatening to snap them with one twist of his knees.
King leaned over me, his grip tight on my wrists, which he held together and raised above my head. I tried to gain control of my lungs. When I was finally able to pull in some air, my chest rose and fell in quick pants. My breasts brushed up against King’s hard chest.
The wind howled. The sky answered with a thunderclap that I felt in my bones. The rain started slow. Icy drops caused my skin to prickle. I was suddenly hyper-aware of the man lying on top of me. The rain quickly turned from drops to sheets. Water poured down King’s face and into his dark demon-like eyes, but he didn’t look possessed.
He looked like the devil himself.
“I thought I made it clear that I owned you,” he growled. His nostrils flared. “Your debt has yet to be paid, pup.”
“So, kill me already, and get it over with,” I said hoarsely, in the loudest voice I could muster, which was barely a whisper. “Either let me go, or just fucking kill me!”
King scoffed. “That would be too easy.”
“What then? What do you want from me? I heard you. Nikki’s dead. Your money is gone, and I can’t pay you back. I don’t have anything you want.” I struggled to throw him off, but I was as effective as a gnat to a tiger.
“Oh, but I think you can pay me back, Pup. You do have something I want,” he said, running his fingers up my arm to my shoulder. He grabbed hold of my throat in his large palm and squeezed with calloused fingers, not enough to choke me, but just enough to remind me he could.
“Please, just let me go! I’m nothing! I’m no one! You don’t want me. Last night, you walked out of that room because you didn’t want me. Remember? So just let me go. Please. I’m begging you.”
I’d stopped struggling because it was pointless, the only thing I had that could possibly get to him were my words.
And I was failing miserably.
“But that’s where you’re wrong. Last night, I thought you were a scared little girl, unable to handle what I want, what I can do, what I need. But that doesn’t matter anymore. Because now you’re my property, and I can do what the fuck I want with what’s mine.” He emphasized this by squeezing harder on my throat.
I opened my mouth to protest, to tell him that I wasn’t his and never would be when suddenly King’s lips came crashing down over mine with such force that the back of my head was pushed down further into the mud. There was nowhere for me to go, nowhere to get away. His full lips were soft, but his kiss was anything but. He sucked my lower lip into his mouth and licked at the seam of my lips with his tongue.
King was hard and scary as hell, so was his kiss. And if his words weren’t getting his point across, his kiss told me that he owned me. It made me forget for just a second that the man behind those lips was a raging psychopath.
The rain continued to assault us. For once it wasn’t my mouth speaking before my brain. It was my body. Because as much as I told myself that I didn’t want his kiss, my body was very much saying that it wanted it. Wanted him.
I opened my mouth to protest, but the second I did, his tongue touched mine, and he groaned. The contact produced a spark, an energy that radiated through my entire body, pooling between my legs.
King used a knee to spread my legs apart, then settled between them. Not once did he take his lips from mine as he rocked his erection against my core. My body hummed at the friction, and I moaned into his mouth. His hands flew to the back of my neck, pressing me up against him as he kissed me until I was dizzy.
It was an entirely new type of hunger.
With a deep, throaty growl, King abruptly ended the kiss. Sitting back on his knees, he reached down and ran the pad of his thumb across my cheek. He looked down at me as if he were seeing me for the very first time. His expression soft. His lips swollen from our kiss.
My chest heaved as I again tried to catch my breath. Without King lying on top of me to shield me from the cold rain, a chill ran down my body. My teeth began to chatter. His eyes drank me in as they skimmed over my face, then down the rest of my body. I could swear that it felt as if he were actually touching me, not just looking at me.
“Go,” King snapped, jumping to his feet like he’d been electrocuted.
“What?” I asked. I somehow managed to get to my knees, still holding up the now wet and heavy sweatpants, the draw string already pulled as tight as it would go.
“Just fucking go!” he roared, standing up fully.
He took a menacing step toward me. His sudden proximity forced me backwards. I stumbled over a rock and fell back onto my ass.
“That path will take you t
o the highway,” he said, pointing to the ground behind me. I turned and found the path, but when I turned back around, he was gone. The crunch of the brush under his boots faded quickly, swallowed by the sounds of the storm.
I was free.
But I was also truly alone. In the dark. And that clouded over the elation I should have felt.
My chest grew tight. I pressed my hands against my heart to try and physically tame it from leaping out of my body. Faster and faster it beat until I thought it would come to a screeching halt. Again, I couldn’t catch my breath.
Panic set in.
My vision blurred. The forest around me spun and spun until the foliage blended together into one big green and brown vortex, like staring up into the eye of a tornado.
I’d felt safer minutes earlier, staring into King’s hate-filled eyes.
I tried to get up. I sat up on my knees, but I slipped in the mud and fell forward onto my forearms. Unable to find the courage to try again, I turned onto my side and pressed my cheek into the mud, holding a hand over my exposed ear.
I needed to be invisible. I needed to disappear into the dark, and then just maybe the dark would disappear around me. I hugged my knees to my chest.
Twenty-four hours ago, I thought I would be set up in some biker’s bed by now, basking in the comfort of a roof over my head and food in my stomach. I wouldn’t have my dignity, but I hadn’t had the luxury of dignity since I woke up in the hospital. Instead, I was barefoot and cold in the middle of the woods. And as the moon disappeared behind dark storm clouds, I was enveloped in complete blackness.
I tucked my bare feet as close to my body as I could to keep the chill off my toes. My chattering teeth turned into a full body shake as the rain pummeled me. Each icy drop felt like a pin-prick into my skin.
Why the hell did he kiss me? Why the hell did I let him?
I was mad at myself. For not fighting him off, for liking it.
I’d done a lot of fucked up things in the last few months. Eating out of dumpsters. Sleeping in abandoned cars. But nothing I’d done left me more disgusted with myself then yielding to his kiss.
What was even more fucked up was, that more than anything, I’d hoped at any second the tall grass would rustle and he’d appear out of the brush to rescue me from the dark.
King wasn’t the rescuing type, I reminded myself.
He was the killing type.
My body shuddered. Still angry. Still scared. Still really fucking cold.
Still turned on.
In the light of day, it was easy to push things aside with the distraction of survival to keep me busy. But alone with only my own thoughts in the dark, I became more aware that without memories of the past, lessons lived and learned, I was a mere shell of a person.
I was a stranger to myself.
I was an alien, invading the body of a girl I didn’t know. I stole it from her, entirely by accident, a byproduct of a tragic event that wiped her from the earth and set me up in her place.
On nights like these, when the panic threatened to consume me, I talked to her out loud.
I know it’s weird But in an odd way, I miss you. I know I tell you this all the time, but I’m so sorry. I’m sorry if what I’m doing isn’t what you would do. I wish you were here and that I wasn’t, because starving on the streets isn’t a life I want for you or for me. I am so sorry that I’m failing you.
I hope every day that when I wake up that you will be back. And I’m so sorry about earlier, about trying to sell my body for protection. It was a moment of weakness, but I’m over it now. I can do this on my own. I can protect myself. And I’m sorry about what just happened with King. I don’t know how far I was going to take it, but I promise I wasn’t going to let him fuck me.
Or fuck you. Fuck us both?
Weirdest fucking threesome ever.
I laughed manically into the mud, accidentally sucking some into my mouth. I coughed and gagged until it dislodged from my throat, spitting onto the ground.
I’ll try harder. I promise. I can survive…for you.
Chapter Nine
Doe
The moment the sun made an appearance, I started walking.
I made my way to a road with more potholes than asphalt, and for hours and hours I trudged on, covered in dirt that grew tight around my skin as the sun baked it onto my body and it hardened like clay.
Each step through the hot grass lining the side of the road was nothing short of complete agony. They call them blades of grass for a reason, as each one felt like a tiny knives against my already bare, bloodied, and battered feet.
I was limping my way to nowhere when I finally came across the first sign of civilization: a one-story apartment complex.
I needed to get to a phone, or a police station, or a church. Anyone who could help me, but I didn’t have the energy to look any further and needed a place to sit and regain my wits because my mind was a cloud of confusion, exhaustion, and dehydration.
Why did King let me go?
There was something unsettling about his indecision that nipped at my nerves. I half-expected him to pull up along the side of the road at any second and drag me into the car. Maybe, it was the kiss that changed his mind. He thought he could use me for whatever perversion he had in mind, but when he kissed me, he must have realized he’d only be disappointed. So, he’d let me go.
That had to be it. But why, if he killed Nikki, wasn’t I dead as well? Why did he spare me and not her?
Nothing made any fucking sense.
After thinking I was seconds away from death more than once in the past thirty six hours, freedom was something I never thought I’d have again.
But being back on the streets was a captivity of another sort. Freedom meant you had choices.
I still had none.
I stumbled into the apartment complex. Old and unkempt, the building had about ten units and a dark shaker style roof. Half the shingles had been replaced with mismatched plywood. Knee-high weeds grew through cracks in the concrete walkways.
Unable to take another step, I collapsed against the wall of the breezeway and slid down until my butt hit the sidewalk. Finally sheltered from the blistering sun that still felt as if it were searing into my scalp through the center part in my hair.
I just needed to sit a while, catch my breath, and collect my thoughts.
“You can’t stay here, girl. Move along.” A husky man appeared, wearing a t-shirt three sizes too small that depicted a unicorn jumping over a rainbow. He stood over me and folded his arms across his chest. “You some kind of deaf, girl? You can’t stay here. I can’t be having the riff-raff lingrin’ about.” He nudged my thigh with his sneaker like he was trying to rouse a lazy dog. “Move along, now.”
“Please. I just need to use your phone. Please?” I begged, my voice dry and scratchy. I didn’t even care about the fact that when I called the police they would probably throw me into another group home.
I thought about one thing and one thing only.
I had a murder to report. Nikki may have been a whore and a thief, but she didn’t deserve to die for it. Somedays, I didn’t think she even liked me all that much, but she was all I had.
If there was such a thing.
The man sighed, clearly annoyed. “What you need it for?” He dug into the party-sized bag of Cheetos he’d been holding. After shoving a handful into his mouth, he sucked his fingers clean of orange powder.
“Please. You have to help me. I’d been kidnapped. I was locked in a room, handcuffed to a bed. I escaped and I spent the night in the woods. I’ve been walking all day. I’m thirsty and sunburnt and tired, and this is the first place I came across. Please, I have to call the police. My friend, my friend Nikki was murdered by the same man who held me captive.”
He shoved another handful of Cheetos in his mouth and wiped his hand across the unicorn. “Oh yeah? Well, you’re in luck, I’m the deputy in these parts. Name’s Crestor. So, you can report it to me.” He lifted th
e fat of his stomach and pointed to a previously hidden badge attached to his belt. Cheese sprayed from his mouth when he spoke. “And who is it that you’re thinkn’ killed your friend?”
“I don’ think he killed her. I know he did. I heard him confess. And I don’t know his full name, or even if it’s his name at all. I only know what they call him.”
“And what would that be?” He leaned up against the wall, focusing on a light bulb in the ceiling that turned off and on every few seconds on its own, completely disinterested in my story.
“They call him King.”
His eyes went wide and his fingers loosened around the bag. He dropped the Cheetos to the ground.
Within a second, he’d bent over and grabbed me under my arms, yanking me to my feet. “Wait, what are you doing?” I asked as he shoved me toward the parking lot. My right foot twisted when I stepped on an uneven section of pavement, and I fell forward onto the road, skinning my hands and wrists.
“Go on and get! And don’t you ever fucking come back here!” he shouted. With his hands on his head, he spun around and waved his arms in the air in frustration. “I don’t need that kind of trouble here. Go, girl! If I see you again, next time it’ll be my shot gun escorting you out.”
He left me on the road and hustled back to the building, his back fat bouncing up and down as he disappeared behind a door with a window marked OFFICE. He drew the shade the instant he stepped inside.
I stood on shaky legs and wiped gravel from the wounds on my hands onto my t-shirt. The bottoms of my feet stung. My twisted ankle sent sharp pains through my shin with each step. My already bad limp became much more severe.
King apparently had reach. But how far? If I had any chance of seeking help for myself, or for Nikki, I had to get the hell out of Logan’s Beach, but I didn’t even know if I was going the right way.
My foot dragged behind me as if it were no longer attached to my body, but hanging on, like cans tied to the bumper of a car.
Hours passed, and although I’d been walking the entire time, I don’t think I’d gone very far. I could still see the apartment complex in the distance behind me.
Not a single car had passed me all day. My stomach was again protesting its emptiness, twisting and groaning. My face and ears were hot to the touch. The soles of my feet were thick and swollen, thankfully becoming numb to the constant scraping.
I trudged on.
For every inch the sun sank into the horizon, my anxiety increased. A brutally sunny day was again about to be cloaked in the darkness of night.
I came upon an old, abandoned bank with boarded up windows just as thunder rolled in the distance. The sky flashed as lightning jumped from cloud to cloud. I smelt the rain before I felt the first drop splatter on the tip of my nose.
I hobbled toward the covered awning of the drive-through, but I didn’t make it. The sky poured itself over me before I could reach shelter. By the time I took cover, I was sopping wet from head to toe, the blacktop underneath me turning brown as the water rinsed off the mud from the night before. I settled against the out of order ATM machine and sat down on the curb, resting my forehead against my knees.
I felt defeated. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I wished for one of the bolts of lightning to jump from the clouds and reach under the awning to strike me dead. Dead was better than unwanted.
Dead had to be better than this.
“Why hello there.” A voice said from out of nowhere.
Chills spread from my spine to my neck. Goosebumps broke out on my forearms. I looked up to find a man with a dirty grey beard standing over me. The wrinkles around his eyes spread over to his cheeks. Some of his front teeth were missing, and his chin was covered in red sores.
“You lost or something?” He smelled of rotten milk, his clothes were torn and tattered.
“Or something,” I muttered.
“I’m Ed,” he said, extending a hand. His fingernails each about an inch long and yellowed.
Realizing I wasn’t going to take his hand, he kneeled down to me, and my heart sped. Ed reached out a filthy hand and attempted to run a knuckle down my