AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This won’t take long, so just relax a bit. Don’t try to run off, you’ll get lost for sure. Just do the smart thing and stay put,” he warns, adjusting his coat and closing the door just a bit harder than necessary.
Why did he feel the need to say all that?
I hadn’t given him any reason to believe that I would sneak away. I wasn’t being combative or untrustworthy, at least not any more than I should have been given the surrounding context. The fact that he felt like he had to reiterate the need to stay in the car makes my stomach turn a bit.
I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. A lot of guys fear that women will take their kindnesses and advances in a hostile or demanding manner at the least, and they overcompensate in their apologies. I do feel for these men, but they’re few and far between. Most of them mean exactly what they say, and needing to reiterate that hewon’tkill me seems performative and unnecessary.
Right now, I’m more angry than ever that I wasted my phone battery. I was doing nothing but taking video conference calls all day while IT fixed my webcam. I spent five hours doing that shit, and absolutely nothing was accomplished. Just more ass kissing from the middle managers and the overuse of meaningless corporate buzzwords.
But now I’m at the mercy of a stranger that I don’t know anything about, and I’m stranded without a phone at all.
Besides, who would I call? I can’t call my family, because what would they do about it? Just be nervous and crying to me on the phone? At least I could give them my location in order to track me, but that would do no good.
I could have maybe called the cops, but now I’m afraid that police involvement would likely cause a shootout. This guy could be a wanted criminal, and I’d be giving up my anonymity and safety if I were to call the authorities on him.
There’s nobody to help me, and I’m running out of reasons to stay here.
What kind of man is so willing to extend a hand to a woman in need without an ulterior motive? Men already think that women owe them sex just for buying them dinner. What could he think I owe him for rescuing me from a car crash? I was told for my whole life to avoid men who seem too eager to assist me, to never accept help from a man I didn’t know. Every woman I’ve known throughout my life has made it abundantly clear that my life is worth more than the convenience of a strange man’s help.
Not only that, but this guy’s aesthetic is pretty conflicting to me in a way that has me restless. He’s wearing a coat that looks like it costs twice my rent at least, but he has two face tattoos that I could see in the low light. I can imagine he has even more over the rest of his body. He simultaneously looks like he owns a Fortune 500 company and also sets buildings on fire for insurance money. The contrast is so drastic that I have no idea what to make of him.
This whole situation is so far off the routine path of my life that I feel a little bit separated from the reality of it. I’ve been doing the same thing every day for so many years that the feeling of deviating from the life I know is almost dreamlike in its absurdity. Given the unusual appearance and demeanor of the person who picked me up, I’m halfway convinced that Iamin a dream at this point.
What could my brain be trying to tell me with something like this?
If my mother knew that I had let a strange man in an extremely expensive car drive me to an abandoned lumber yard, she would fly into a hysterical, unintelligible screaming fit. It’s like I’ve done everything I can to go against everything she’s ever taught me about personal safety. I mean, I want to believe that she trusts my judgment and that I did what I had to do in the moment. Depending on how this pans out, I might never have the chance to explain. She’ll dig her way down to the underworld and beat my ass for eternity if I end up getting killed.
It’s unwise of me to let my imagination run free with the potential of such a precarious situation, but I’m unable to redirect my thoughts once the fear takes over. Could he be the leader in a human trafficking ring? Is that why he’s all the way out here? If so, I bet I was the easiest target he’s ever had. How stupid of me.
My mom spent every weeknight watching shows and documentaries about kids getting kidnapped or women being found dead in a stormwater pond. The fear of the outside eventually consumed her to the point that she would break down in tears if I was even ten minutes late on my way home from school. When I was younger, that obsession seemed unwarranted and unhealthy. Now, however, I can see why she was so hopeless about my self-preservation skills.
If I had only charged my phone, this could all have panned out differently.
Maybe he’s one of those types that preys on vulnerable women in order to lure them back to his torture dungeon. Now that I think about it, an abandoned lumber yard in between cities is an excellent place to keep a victim. I bet there were already fifty-gallon drums out here when he chose this place, perfect for dissolving bodies in acid.
I need to get hold of myself. But is suppressing fear the smartest thing to do? Isn’t fear a tool of evolution?
While I wait in the car, the silence of the night compounds as I grow restless within my own thoughts. I can practically hear my heart racing as I watch the door of the warehouse where this strange man has disappeared into. I’m glad I forced myself to stop watching true crime TV last year, or I would have certainly started running down the road by now.
The man’s voice rings in my head as I begin to come to my senses.Don’t run, you won’t make it that far.I wonder if this is the same as people pretending a sheep is fenced in so that it won’t escape. Stupid and naïve is a bad way to be in this world, and I’d be better served dying frozen to the ground than folding so easily to the whims of a potential madman.
“God, fuck this,” I say to myself as I lean down to look through the glove compartment for a phone charger. He hadn’t said whether he had one, which I found suspicious and annoying when he picked me up. However, it doesn’t hurt to look, and it might be the difference between me getting home safely without my car and never being heard from again.
Feeling around the inside of such an expensive vehicle feels wrong somehow, like I’ve broken in to steal whatever I can find. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of car to begin with, so that must be a sign that it’s invaluable. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was custom ordered, as if he was so bored with his money that he decided to waste it creatively.
What an asshole, having such a needlessly opulent vehicle when some people ride their bikes to work in the rain. I’ve met people who would fight to the death for a car like this, even more so for the money it took to purchase it. It could change most people’s lives, and what is it to this guy? Just another testament of his wealth?
When I open the glove compartment, it’s initially too dark for me to see anything by the light of the streetlamps. As I feel around, I wrap my hand around what feels like the shape of a handgun. I don’t have much experience with guns, if any, but the feeling of the cold metal against my fingers is unmistakable.
I jerk my hand back, my blood running cold as my fears are confirmed. Something is up with this person, and I might have just bought myself a ticket to an early grave just from being too curious.
At what point was he going to shoot me? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to kill me already? This is making less and less sense the longer I think about it. Now would be a great time for me to try to escape before he comes back out. He said he’d try to get through the meeting quickly, so time is running out by the minute.
I figure that if I at least find a cord, I can steal it and run off with it until I find a gas station along the road. Stealing from this person’s car feels like a death sentence, but I’d be angry at myself if I didn’t try. Besides, even strange wealthy men still need to charge their phones. It’s not like his whole entire being is shrouded in mystery or anything.
Feeling deeper into the glove box proves an even bigger mistake when I realize that I feel a brick of something wrapped in plastic. I’ve never seen any illicit drugs in my life, but given the last thing I discovered, it’s not hard to figure out what I might have found this time.
I pull the package out of the glove box, feeling the slight give of the powder inside as I press my fingers into it. It’s just a mysterious black brick, but the possibility that I’m holding thousands of dollars’ worth of hard drugs feels so foreign to me.
