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I repeat the mantra in my head over and over again as if that will make it happen.
Mom used to tell me that if you believe in something strongly enough, it’ll come true.
And just like magic, the brown shoes walk away. I release a breath of relief, but it’s cut off when a strong hand yanks me up from behind the car by my hood.
The force is so strong that I’m momentarily suspended mid-air, before a bulky man with scary features says with a Russian accent, “Got her, Boss.”
4
Winter
Got her, Boss.
I don’t pause to think what those words could mean. My first and most important role in life is survival. I’m not living for myself. I’m living on behalf of my baby girl. For the life she couldn’t have.
The man who’s captured me is bulky and as big as a mountain. His expression is stern, harsh, like he was born with a permanent scowl. His hair is short, white-blond, and his light eyes are as cold and merciless as ice.
As soon as he puts me on my feet, I wiggle to slip out of the hold he has on my hood. Twisting and squirming, I grab his hand and try to yank it away, but I might as well be a mouse fighting a cat.
He appears utterly uninterested as he pulls me along, my struggle not deterring him at all. I step on his foot, but he merely grasps my hood tighter as he continues to take me away. My feet drag on the floor and I lose one of my shoes.
“Help!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Help—” The man places a stone-like hand on my mouth, cutting off any sound I can make.
Unlike the stench of my rotten gloves, his hand smells of leather and metal. Despite the somewhat tolerable odor, it’s still stifling as if I’m being stuffed in a small place where I don’t fit.
My limbs shake at that prospect. I attempt to wrench my mind from it, but it’s already grown and expanded, tearing through flesh and bones to materialize in front of me.
I’m in a closed space, it’s so dark, so verydarkthat I can’t see my own hands. The odor of urine fills my nostrils and my own breaths sound like the red-eyed monster from my most terrifying nightmares.
I’m trapped.
I can’t get out.
“Let me out…” I whisper with hoarse desperation. “Please let me out…”
“Where is the little monster?”
No!
I scratch at the hand holding me, at the one who will kill me. I won’t let them.
Ihaveto live.
Before I know it, I’m shoved into the back of the black car. I must’ve been so caught up in that moment from the past that I didn’t pay attention to the distance he’d dragged me. Bulky Blond releases me and slams the door shut.
My fingers are shaking, and the remnants of the flashback of that dark, tight space still beats under my skin like a demon about to rear its ugly head. Usually, after such episodes, I run into an open space and keep running and running until the air burns my lungs and erases the image.
Not now, though.
Now, I need to force my body to be on a high so I can survive.
Survival comes before everything. Before pain. Before mental prisons.
Everything.
I attempt to open the door before Bulky Blond can get in the driver’s seat and take me to God knows where.
But he doesn’t climb into the car.
