AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But I don’t find Astrid’s similarity soothing. If anything, her direct stare makes me squirm. She looks at me with an obvious lack of sympathy and an unsettling sort of confidence—like she knows something I don’t.
“Define unharmed. I haven’t had a shower in days, and that’s my bathroom.” To emphasize my point, I stab a finger at the bucket in the corner, my cheeks flaming with humiliation when I think about how many times I’ve had to squat above it. “I’m traumatized. I’ll probably be in therapy for years if I make it out of this alive. This is entire situation is barbaric and cruel.”
“Oh.” She shakes her head. “No, you don’t know the meaning of barbaric and cruel. This living situation is just unsanitary and a little inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient?” I parrot, losing hope of being saved.
“I assure you, she’s being taken care of,” the man claims. “It’s not that bad if she has to wait a bit longer for a bath.”
Easy for him to say. He’s all fine and dandy in that department. Wherever he goes, he always comes back freshly showered. I’ve seen the water dripping from his wet hair. Plus, I haven’t found a bucket in his “room” and he’s not using mine.
“I just want to go home,” I say, a tear streaking down my cheek.
The man steps toward me.
Automatically, I recoil.
His face is stricken with devastation as his hand hovers in the air like he wants to touch me, but then he drops his arm with a defeated sigh.
“See?” he says to Astrid. “She’s terrified of me.”
“Can you blame her? What did you expect?”
“I thought a part of her might recognize me.”
“Why would I recognize you?” I ask incredulously. “Have we met?”
“The shadows…” the man says to me, his voice trailing off like he wants to say more, but he’s not sure how to explain it.
“Yeah,” I deadpan. “Shadows are the problem. It’s so dark, I can’t see shit in here. I don’t even know what you look like.”
Sighing, Astrid takes a large ceramic bowl out of her sack and sets it on the floor next to my blanket pile.
I swallow hard, and my tone is defeated when I conclude, “You’re not here to rescue me, are you?”
“Depends on what your definition of rescue is. I don’t want to be here anymore than you do.” She jerks her thumb toward the man. “This asshole took me, too.”
It’s then that I realize I don’t even know this guy’s name. He probably told me at some point, but yeah, there was the screaming on my part. Not so much with the listening.
Astrid pours a clear liquid into the bowl before sprinkling in some sparkly dust. “Brace yourselves. This isn’t a pleasant process.”
Showing signs of anxiety, the guy rakes a hand through his hair. “Will Hannah be able to handle it?”
“Handle what?” I ask, getting ignored by both.
“Eh.” Astrid shrugs.
Shrugs! Like she’s not even sure if whatever she’s about to do will be harmful to me.
The man gazes at me with his shadowed face and pale eyes. He looks conflicted. Concerned, even. Which is so confusing.
He doesn’t care about me. How could he, when we’ve never even met?
Astrid called him lovesick. Maybe he’s been stalking me for a while.
After all, the sleeping bag he brought for me is from the hayloft in one of our barns where we keep our camping gear. The other blankets are from the second floor in the machine shed. And they’re all my favorites. How could he have known where they were or that I prefer them? Simple answer: He’s been watching me.
Astrid nods to the blankets I’m currently clutching. “Are these hers? From before? I’ll need an object from her future time.”
