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She heard her watch automatically start timing as she stepped outside of the car. It would beep when her torture session was complete.
She closed the door but kept a hand on her vehicle as everything began spinning around her. She made it ten seconds before her breakfast ended up vomited on the pavement.
She reached for the car door, desperate to escape this torment, but then stopped. She had to do this. Five minutes.
She forced herself to complete one of the grounding mechanisms a therapist had given her to ward off panic attacks.
List five things you can see.
She could barely see anything with her eyes so runny from the vomiting, but she completed the exercise.
She could see the mountains.
The blue sky.
Her car. The house. Her…feet.
Whatever, it still counted.
List four things you can hear.
Her breathing. It was hard to hear anything over her breathing. She held her breath for just a second and found she could hear other things.
A bird.
And then maybe a car off in the distance.
That was only three, but it was close enough.
Three things you can touch.
She touched her own shoulder. Okay.
The car. Okay.
The mailbox was only a few steps away. She could touch that too. She let go of the car and walked toward the mailbox.
Mistake.
Immediately, pressure slammed into Jenna’s chest, making it impossible to breathe. Her fingers ripped at her throat, but she couldn’t get any air in.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re ever going to get out of here.
Jenna pushed her hands over her ears, but it didn’t help. The voices were inside her head—covering her ears wasn’t going to stop them. She stumbled back toward the car.
You will do exactly what we tell you to do, or you will discover there are worse things than dying.
Fists. Kicks. Curling into a ball and trying to survive.
She fell hard against the car. The world was blacking out around her as she was swallowed by the past. If she didn’t get inside her vehicle in the next few seconds, she wouldn’t make it inside at all.
A broken jaw. Concussion. This guy is going to be eating out of a straw for quite a while.
She let out a low moan with the oxygen she had left. No, that was even worse. She couldn’t think about that.
She punched in the code on the driver’s side door, getting it wrong the first time. Damn it, she had to concentrate; there was only a one-time grace period. She focused all her waning attention on the keypad and typed in the code again.
Maybe the animals will finish you off this time. We’ll see if you’re still alive tomorrow.
