leafy coverage. It smells like damp twigs and fresh rain. The sun is hot as it beats down on my back as Travis carries me to…somewhere. I haven’t quite figured that out yet since I can’t see in front of him.
Travis steps up three rickety wooden stairs of the porch to some sort of cabin or shack out here in the woods, and I begin to thrash wildly. Once he gets me inside, I fear it will be even harder for me to escape, so I twist and writhe my torso, struggling against the hold he has on me. I smash my elbow into the back of his head, and Travis grunts in pain.
“Fucking bitch!” he shouts before throwing me over his shoulder headfirst onto the ground. My bound hands don’t provide much of a cushion, and my body crumples on impact. My neck screams in agony from the force of the forest floor, and I grit my teeth as to not give him the satisfaction of hearing me in pain. Instead, I remain still.
“Try that again,” he grits through clenched teeth. “I dare you.” He hoists me up on his shoulder once more. This time, I hang limply.
The creak of old hinges sound and the wood groans as he pulls open a heavy door. Stepping through the entryway, I can see we are indeed in some type of shack, maybe used for hunting. It’s too desolate for someone to live here. He thrusts his black booted foot back, kicking the door closed. He carries me through one room, a doorway, and tosses me down onto a damp mattress on the floor of a room. It smells strongly of mildew. Only one window is in the room, covered by a thick dirty board and a large spider web hanging from the ceiling above it.
I look back over at Travis to see him dragging a heavy chain up from underneath the mattress. He cuts the rope around my feet with one swift tug of a knife, and wraps the chain tightly around my left foot. Panic seizes me and I kick my legs, trying to free myself from his shackles. My flailing feet catch him on his left brow, breaking open the skin above his eye. A small trickle of blood leaks down his face, leaving a nasty path of rust down his cheek. He smears it away with the back of his hand, glancing at the smudge before rearing back and backhanding me full force across the face. My head snaps to the side, and I fall back to the mattress, feeling slightly stunned.
“Fucking bitch, hold still!” he growls, wrapping the chain tightly around my left ankle once more.
By the time the dizziness passes enough to right myself, he has the chain locked.
“I was going to be nice and untie your hands once I was done with your legs, but not anymore,” he says, sniffing some snot from his throat and spitting it towards the corner of the room. “You’ll stay here until I’m ready for you.”
With that, he leaves the room, shutting the door behind him. I hear the scrape of a lock from the other side before the sound of his footsteps disappear.
I swallow down the panic rising in my throat. So far, everything is fine. Sure, I’m chained to this disgusting, stained mattress in a tiny rotting shack out in the middle of fucking nowhere, but let’s consider the facts.
The alternative is dead.
He must want to keep me around, for a little while at least. He’s given me a bed, sort of, when he could have left me in the trunk. He mentioned ‘being nice,’ although I apparently fucked that up, but if he wants to be nice that means he’s not going to kill me right away.
I need to buy time. Whenever he decides to come back, I need to talk to him. I need to get him to talk to me. The longer he waits to do whatever he’s planning on doing, the longer I have for the police to find me. My phone is still on in my purse, and he bought that inside with us. If it’s not dead, hopefully they’ll be able to follow it right here.
As revolting as it is, I lay on that dirty old mattress and stare at the ceiling. Patiently waiting, hoping I can somehow convince him to let me go. My mind starts wandering the longer I wait.
Is this where he brought Katie before she died? Did