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It’s a gorgeous night out, all clear skies and stars, the air brisk and cool, and I swallow more of the drink down as I walk through the maze, getting purposefully lost in the twists and turns as I feel my heart rate start to return to normal. When I’ve gotten far enough in that the sounds from the house aren’t quite as loud, I stop and lean back against one of the hedges, finishing my drink and closing my eyes as I breathe in the cool air and the scent of grass and flowers, feeling it run through my blood until I feel almost dizzy with it, the world swirling around me in a pleasant spiral of—
My eyes fly open, and suddenly it’s not so pleasant. I feel as if I’m leaning sideways, but I haven't moved when I throw my hands out to catch myself. The sky is starting to wheel above me, the stars spinning in a nebula of tiny pinpricks in the dark sky, and my stomach twists with a heave of nausea as I realize that I’m not almost dizzy. I am dizzy. The world is twisting all around me, even though I’m standing perfectly still. Then, I am tipping forward, the cup falling numbly from my fingers as I crumple to my knees.
I want to throw up, but I can’t. My head feels as if it weighs a hundred pounds suddenly, and I roll onto my side, feeling the cool grass underneath my cheek as I look out across the maze. I can hear a rustling, but I’m no longer entirely certain what’s real and what’s not. When I see shoes headed in my direction, long jean-encased legs, the sound of a man’s voice and the higher pitch of a woman’s, I don’t know if it’s real or just part of this strange, spinning hallucination that I seem to be having.
And then I remember the guy at the foot of the stairs and the drink he handed me, the drink I took without a second thought because I was caught so off-guard by the sight of the stalker worming her way through the crowd.
The same stalker that now, as I roll onto my back and look up, I see blurrily above me, her hair scraped back now so that I can see her sharp face and green eyes, and something twinkling above her lip like a star.
You fucking idiot. What’s the one rule that every woman knows?
Never take a drink from a stranger.
“You have a star on your face,” I slur nonsensically as the girl leans over me, and she starts to laugh.
“Jesus, Blake, she’s fucked up good. How much did you give her? I don’t want her to die out here before we have some fun.”
“Enough,” the guy growls. “She won’t give us any trouble with her brains this scrambled.”
Something about that makes me just angry enough to clear the fog for a split second, and I lurch upwards, grabbing at his leg and yanking with all my strength—which isn’t much in my current state. But it does catch him off guard, enough to make him stumble sideways with a yell.
“Fucking bitch!” He rears back, kicking me hard in the ribs, and the world swims above me again. The girl drops to her knees next to me, her hand fisting in my hair and twisting so hard that my eyes water as she turns my head towards me.
“You better calm the fuck down, Saint,” she hisses. “Blake here doesn’t have as much patience as I do.”
I make a strangled sound that’s something like a cat hissing, spitting in her face as I feel my stomach lurch again. I have a momentary flash of that night in the library when I puked on Cayde, and if there was ever a time I wish I could repeat that, it’s right now. But instead, I just feel the girl’s hand strike my cheek, a stinging slap that sends me reeling.
“I’m going to have so much fucking fun cutting you up,” she hisses back and then jerks her head at Blake. “Come on. Help me get her to the fucking truck.”
No. No, no.That’s the next rule every woman knows—never let them get you in the car. Once you’re in the car, your chance of surviving drops by some statistic that I can’t really remember right now, but that I know isn’t good. But I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do about it. They’re half-picking me up, half dragging me, and my limbs feel heavy and dull like I can’t really move. It’s only by sheer will that I haven’t passed out yet. My body wants to sink into that sweet thick darkness that I can feel growing around the edges of my vision.
But it’s coming, I know it is. My body feels heavier by the second as they drag me towards the back of the maze, and I see headlights gleaming. There’s a truck waiting there, alright, and my heart lurches into my throat as I see what else is there.
Motorcycles, a lot of them, and men are sitting astride them wearing leather cuts that I can’t see the patches on clearly, but I don’t need to. There’s only one biker gang that would be waiting to kidnap me.
The Devil’s Sons. Here to finish what they started when they killed my father and burned down my home.
Mom.Tears swim in my eyes as I wonder if she’s still alive, if she’s been picked up too, if she’ll be waiting wherever they’re taking me. I can feel the tears dripping down my cheeks, gathering in the seam of my lips, but I can’t seem to move to lick them away or even really fight. I want to, every part of me wants to make one last valiant effort to struggle before they put me in that truck, but I can’t move. It’s like I’m paralyzed while watching all of this happen, while I’m fully aware. It’s the most terrifyingly awful thing that’s ever happened to me.
“Help me with her,” I hear Blake say, and two of the younger guys get off their bikes, swaggering towards me. I feel strange hands on me, grabbing and groping as they lift me up while someone else drops the tailgate of the truck, and I’m thrown in like a sack of feed, hitting my chin on the floorboard so hard that I taste blood.
“Tie her up,” a voice says from somewhere, and I do struggle then, trying to make my arms work, push myself up, but I can’t. I can’t fucking move, and I can’t even scream; my vocal cords feel just as paralyzed as the rest of me. All I can do is whimper helplessly and curl my fingers, trying vainly to scratch at the hands that are binding my wrists and ankles.
I hear the sound of the tailgate slamming shut, and I squeeze my eyes tightly closed. I can’t smell the grass or the flowers anymore. All I smell is engine exhaust and grease. All I can feel is the rough texture of the floorboard under my cheek. It smells like oil and grease, too, like someone moved car or motorcycle parts in it before I was tossed unceremoniously in here. It makes me vaguely sad that my memory of those smells is going to be different now, that it won’t be the memory of my dad or rides on Jaxon’s bike that I think of, it’ll be the time I was abducted by the gang that used to be like part of my family.
If I even live long enough for this to be a memory.
My pulse lodges in my throat at that thought, making me feel sick all over again. I’d thought I was living the worst possible scenario, but now I’m facing the very real possibility that I might die tonight. At the very least, they’re not planning anything good. Nothing that I’m going to enjoy.
They definitely don’t make any effort to make the ride comfortable, either. I swear they hit every bump on purpose as hard as they can, and after what feels like we’ve driven for a long time, I start to wish that I would pass out just so I wouldn’t have to feel the constant lurching and bumping of the truck. We’re going somewhere on the outskirts of town, I can tell, as the more normal streets turn to treelined back roads and the smell of pines fills my nose along with the engine grease.
It feels like the trip goes on forever. It gives me plenty of time to think up all the worst-case scenarios, all of the awful things that they could be planning for me. Plenty of time to worry about my mother and if she’s been caught up in this too, or if it’s just me. I hope she’s safe, and I can feel the tears starting to run down my face again as I slump into the floorboard, wanting more than anything for this to just be over. To just know what’s going to happen, so I can steel myself to get through it, resign myself to my fate.
When the truck comes to a lurching halt, though, I’m suddenly not so sure I’m ready to find out what happens next.
I’m half-conscious as the tailgate drops behind me, and I feel rough hands on me again, dragging me out unceremoniously. “Throw her in one of the back bedrooms,” someone says dimly, and I want to say no, don’t throw me anywhere, particularly not in a bedroom, but nothing works anymore. I can’t move at all. I can only stare up at the spinning sky as I feel myself floating towards the house, carried by men who used to sneak me cookies when I was a kid, who watched me grow up, some of whom I grew up alongside. Men that sometimes made comments that they shouldn’t have made about a teenage girl, or who looked at me when I got older in ways that made my dad uncomfortable, who were crude and loud and often drunk, but who I’d never, never believed would hurt me. Some of the younger guys I’d thought, once upon a time in high school, that I might date one day.
And now they’re carrying me like a side of beef into a cabin that I can see blurrily ahead, more than likely to be carved up like one.
The inside of the cabin smells like firewood and tobacco, scents that make my heart lurch with painful nostalgia as I feel all of my happy memories of my childhood being shredded one by one, replaced with the awful paralyzing terror of this night. It doesn’t end until they’ve dropped me on a mattress in one of the rooms, which smells more like sweat than anything else, still bound and dazed.
I see them looming over me, but suddenly their voices are garbled as the exhaustion and drugs swirl together in my head to finally, finally pull me further down into that darkness, closer to the sweet release of nothingness.
Part of me wants to fight it because I have no idea what I’ll wake up to. But I can’t anymore. I just want it to stop, for now, and that urge is stronger than anything else.
So I close my eyes and let the darkness take me.
