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“Daniel, please,” I beg. “Don’t do this to me. Don’t hurt me. I’m not going to do anything bad. I’m not going to hurt you. Daniel… Daniel!”
I screech his name as he finishes binding my ankles with the tape and throws me up and over his shoulder. It’s so horribly easy for him to handle me, especially now I can’t really do anything more than caterpillar kick. I’m no longer his willing partner in evading the law. I’m his captive.
“Daniel! Let me go! Daniel!”
He doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t even respond to me. He acts like he can’t hear me at all.
He sits me down next to the car and I watch as he pulls out the pack he brought and fills it with the tent, our food, water, other stuff. He’s getting ready to go deep into these woods, and that terrifies me because these are the kind of forests you can absolutely get lost in and never come back from. I try to talk to him, beg for forgiveness, plead for mercy, ask ever so nicely for him to let me go. I half expect him to gag me with the tape too, but he doesn’t. It’s like he’s turned off a switch and he no longer cares what I say.
He shoulders the pack on one side of his body, then pulls me up from the ground with his other arm and tosses me over his shoulder. He is so much more powerful than any man should be. He doesn’t grunt or bow under the weight.
He carries me into the woods, each one of his great strides taking me further and further from civilization. I start to panic, but that doesn’t matter. There’s nothing I can do against his strength.
It’s a very long time before he stops walking. We head down into the forest, then up a gully, across a ridge, and down the other side. It’s as if he knows where he is going, though there’s no way he possibly could.
By the time we stop, I have no idea where we started from. The world has been upside down and mostly green since we started. He hasn’t put me down for what feels like hours, though it’s impossible to tell time out here. There’s no TV shows to measure the passing of the day. There’s no neighbors coming and going to indicate it’s 8.30 a.m. or 5.30 p.m. All the rhythms of modernity are gone. Even the light is different, dappled and golden through leaves. It’s as though we are somewhere outside of time, and out of place. There are no references to go by. No street signs, no shop windows, no square blocks. Everything is a blooming confusion of green and brown and blue and I could be anywhere in it.
He sets me down at what feels like random, but probably isn’t. We’ve found a clearing near a brook, a place Daniel seems to think will be good for setting up the tent. He puts me down and sets to work. It’s been so long since I heard his voice I’m almost starting to think he will never speak to me again.
This is the world I find myself in, where everything feels endless and eternal, where escape doesn’t even make sense. Where would I be escaping to? Into the embrace of yet more wild places? I’d heard you can navigate by the sun and the stars, but I’ve never understood that. They’re just generally up. How does that even work?
I sit there as Daniel pitches the tent, builds the fire, and starts boiling some water from the stream. Watching him is frighteningly fascinating. He’s so utterly confident in everything. Before the drugs, he used to be unsure of so many things. It was an aura that used to hang around him, a repellent to women. He’s been transformed by the drug. I wonder if it’s permanent. I wonder if he will always be a beast of a man, willing to do whatever is necessary to get what he wants. He seems to think so. He said after thirty days, the treatment is finished.
Don’t you dare fucking find this hot, I lecture myself.
“This is fucked up. Even for you.”
I break the silence that had fallen between us after I realized he wasn’t going to respond. I’m surprised when he looks right at me and replies.
“We’re in danger. Even if you don’t understand, or believe, we are. And I’m going to protect you, even if you don’t know you need protecting.”
It’s a relief just to hear his voice again. Then he picks up a knife, and some of that relief drains away.
“I’m going to take that tape off,” he says. “You’re a smart girl, so you know that if you go running off, you’re in a place where you likely won’t make it out. There are mountain lions, coyotes, and bears out here. Don’t leave the fire without me.”
