His driveway must have been a mile long. It took so a while to walk down the snowy hill. It must have been an hour when I officially declared I was lost.
Because I was so tried and weak, I slipped and slide everywhere. I should have planned better. The snow was starting to fog up my glasses. The snow came down a little, like slow rain. It made my hair wet, my feet freeze, and my poor little Hope was shivering. He was stuffed in my jacket inside pocket.
He was keeping me warm, and my human heart pumping blood in and out was keeping his tiny, fragile body going. We were keeping each other alive, we needed each other.
I tried not to hit the trees, but the hill was so steep. I wondered if he chose this spot to build a cabin because it was so hard to escape from, if he had done everything on purpose. The feeling crawled on my back like a bug. I could not wipe it away.
Was I really and truly that drunk? I shouldn’t have been. I only had four sips at the most. Maybe I did, I was not sure. It was all a blur.
I started to think how I could have escaped.
Rory came to mind. He looked at me as I was being hauled away; he was the last person I made eye contact with before disappearing. I wish I had got up from my table and just made some stupid friends.
Maybe I could have made myself normal and tried to act like everyone else, then I wouldn’t have been singled out, I wouldn’t have been an easy target. I should have done something different that day.
No, that was not my life, not at all. I was just another girl that got kidnapped, another victim. It’s not a rare thing to be in this world.
As I walked around that snowy forest, I thought about every soul in the world that had to go through something that was bad. When it hit me that there was a lot worse in the world, I wanted to cry.
I had thought about how William said they called off the search. It scared me how he was getting inside my head, how I believed his words. They all seemed to have truth behind it, the way he told me everything. Shaking my head, I moved on farther into the forest.
Voices were starting to haunt me, and it was his. He was getting stronger, laughing, and teasing, and mocking me.
“Hope, I think I am going crazy,” I told my kitty cat. He was the only thing that understood me.
I was starting to see things in the forest. The trees were talking to me, laughing. They were mocking me and making fun of me in every way possible. I started to see faces and bodies. The trees were moving.
They were moving trees, moving to cover me so I could never escape the forest, to be fed on by bears and wolfs and everything else with big sharp teeth that could have ripped me apart into a million tiny pieces. Alternatively, worse; be founded by William.
“Stop it,” I told them.
“Meow,” Hope told me. It was his way of saying, “Come on! We have to make it!”
“I know Hope, I know. The trees are not talking. I am Tavi; you are Hope. Oh Hope, how did you get stuck into this?”
The trees were moving. I was not on the dirt road anymore. I was not anywhere. The road was covered by snow. I just kept walking straight, slowly, and surely. I did not know where I was going. I did not have any idea where I could go. I wanted to go home.
“It is okay,” I heard a mother like voice. It was like the doe I saw in my window when I was starving. I looked around. “Tavi,” the voice said again.
“Am I insane?” I said stopping in my tracks.
“No,” the voice said again. I turned around and saw a doe staring me right in my face. I blinked. I did not move or scream. “Tavi,” she said, “You cannot escape this way, and you must fight. Return to the cabin, if you don’t, he wins.”
“Who are you?” I asked holding Hope tighter.
“Tavi, I cannot help, for now. I will come back when I can,” she said.
“I need help. Can you help me? Please,” I begged. It did not sound right coming from the way I was standing. I should have screamed it, but I just stood there. There was a noise. We both looked around. It was someone walking. I knew somewhere in the back of my mind I was screwed.
I knew I was in trouble, fear knocking at my chest. I did not want to go back to the cabin of fire and lies and unholy hell.
“Tavi, stay where you are,” the doe ordered.
“No, I have to run.”
Something was stepping on the branches, making crunching sounds. I thought it was a bear, but then I heard it scream my name, “Tavi!”
I shook my head. It was worse than a bear.
“No,” I whispered. The doe ran away. I watched her with wide, scared eyes. I watched as she ran away from the hunter. “Help me!” I screamed this time.
The footsteps were getting closer, evil black shadow starting running toward me, and I could hear it. “No!” I screamed.
I started to run as fast as I could. “Tavi!” it screamed.
I ran harder than I did before, but the shadow was faster. It attacked me, and I fell on my side. The figure was on top of me, its sharp teeth in my face, its’ pure evil eyes staring and sucking out my soul.
“Get off!!” I screamed. I screamed louder.
“Tavi!” it said.
“Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! Please!”
“It’s me! It’s William!”
I was shaking, trying to get free. Hope did not dare move from my jacket pocket inside.
I finally kicked William hard in the chest, and he fell over with a thump. I ran harder. I jumped off a hill with him on my trail.
I hopped like a rabbit on the steep hill. Even though I had fallen a few times, I got up, and I kept moving.
“Tavi!”
“Help me!” I screamed to the freezing sky. I held on to Hope as tight as I could. I ended up tripping on a root and rolled down the hill until I had a tree to stop me. I walloped my head, and stars danced around my head. Sitting there, the black figure came closer. My vision became clearer when he came up. I could see William’s face.
“NO!” I found myself screaming, shaking my head, and trying to crawl away. I lay on the ground.
“Tavi! Stop it!” he yelled.
I was shaking like a leaf. I crawled into a ball and laid on the forest ground, with his shadow standing over me. He picked me up so easily, so gently. He carried me for a while, and I felt myself inside his car. He covered me with blankets and turned up the heat. My kitty cat was still with me. I held him.
I gave up. I was gone, spirit and mind. I could not feel anything. It was as if my soul had just walked away from my body at that moment, as if it had gone on vacation.
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