“Do you need a ride?” the man yelled out the window.
The last thing I wanted to do was to meet his eyes. His voice was older, chipper, one that made my skin crawl. No one could be that happy. No one was that genuine.
“Aw, come on darlin’, I ain’t gonna bite.”
The way that sentence ended told me he would.
I walked faster, and the car sped up. My heart pounded with paranoia. I still didn’t look, but the tentacles of darkness, of ill wishes, wrapped around my body and held on tight. No, seeing the man in the car would be a mistake. I guaranteed he had bad intentions all over him, and they were aimed right at me.
“I said get in the fucking car, bitch!”
Run.
I looked over my shoulder as I tried to put as much distance between me and the man in question. I couldn’t see his entire face through the windshield. The old white car had rusted sides, and the grill was damaged. He wore a baseball cap, had a cigarette in his hand, and his knuckles had tattoos, but that was all I could see.
The car sped up, and the engine buzzed like a bumblebee as it followed me. I hung a right into the woods, a place where a car couldn’t come. A door slammed shut, and his footsteps were swooshes in the grass. He chased me.
I knew the woods like the back of my hand. That was one thing I could say for myself since I had to be the reason for my survival.
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” he sang, the smile in his voice impossible not to hear, and the words nearly made me trip and fall.
I righted myself, but with every three strides I made, his one made up for it, and he grew closer. My arm stretched out to push the branches out of the way so they wouldn’t hit me in the face. Sharp ends of the twigs and briar bushes hooked onto me, slicing my skin. Leaves slapped against my face as I headed nowhere in particular. My feet killed me. My toes, my ankles, the soles of my feet, everything felt raw and open.
His heavy breaths drifted through the wind, promising harm and death. I ran in a zigzag pattern and then eventually hung a hard left, almost backtracking to where we came from. He wouldn’t expect that. Whoever this person was, he knew me.
And that was enough to freeze me in place if I didn’t need to run for my life. My skin was hot and sweaty, my lungs burned, and I came to the edge of a pond with nowhere to go.
“I know where you are. I can hear you.” He coughed, wet and harsh like a lot of people who smoke.
I had nowhere else to go.
Except in…
With quiet steps, I walked my way into the murky water until my feet no longer touched the sandy bottom. I opened my mouth and inhaled the deepest breath my lungs could hold. I sank the bottom, opening my eyes to see if he was there. The dirty water clouded my vision, but I saw him, standing at the shore and peering over the pond for me.
I still couldn’t see his face.
I moved slowly, crawling on the bottom, gripping slimy grass. The last thing I wanted to do was look because if I saw what I was touching, I’d freak out.
“I know you’re here,” he shouted. “I can smell you.” He wore dark blue jeans and a black t-shirt. That was all I could make out.
My eyes burned from keeping them open in this dirty water, and his head jerked to the side. A noise of some sort must have gotten his attention because he left, stepping into the other side of the forest. Good.
My lungs burned. My head felt like it was about to explode, and if I didn’t get air within the next minute, I’d die. I kicked to the top, the light of the sun teasing me the closer I got, and right before I broke the surface, I made sure not to splash out of the water and be too loud.
Like an alligator, I popped my head out of the water, took a few deep breaths, glanced around, and when I noticed I was alone, the only thing left for me to do, was to get the hell out of there.
My feet struggled to gain traction on the pond’s earth. When I did, I fell forward and clutched fistfuls of sand in my hands, pulling myself up along the shoreline. I coughed and shivered; the sun was gone and replaced by grey skies. My nightgown stuck to me; every curve of my body was on display. I felt weighed down from the drenched material, but I had to keep going.
I had to get to Logan.
In the last year, he was the only person to make me feel safe, and now I had this person chasing after me. Maybe I took his spot in an alley for a night? But not a lot of homeless people had cars, so I’m not sure what this man wanted with me.
I wrung the bottom my gown out, gallons of water puddled on the ground, and brown dirt stuck to the hem of the gown, ruining it. I’d have to soak it to try and get it out. Peeking over my shoulder, I studied my surroundings. I was alone.
The trees swayed, their leaves brushed together from the wind and the shadows between them hid a man that wanted me, and not in a good way.
Holding onto the length of my gown, so I wouldn’t trip, I ran again and dove under a fence made of wood. My feet sunk into black mud, and once I was on the other side, I sprinted away from the pond, away from the villain, away from all the bad.