Chapter 8 Marla
MARLA
“Pin her down.”
“No!”
That earned me a punch to the jaw.
“Hold her legs open.”
“No! Please! Don’t! I’m sorry! I won’t do it again!”
Someone grabbed my hair and wrenched my head back. “You didn’t listen the first time. The hell makes you think we’d ever believe you’d listen a second time around.”
“Ple-e-e-e-eeeease,” I sobbed out. “You don’t have to do thiiiiiiis.”
My head was slammed back into the ground before someone rucked up my dress.
No. I couldn’t let it happen again. I promised I’d never let them do this again.
My nails dragged across the floor. I felt a couple of them lifting from my nail beds.
I had to get out of here. I just had to get onto my feet. If I could just get onto my—
“No!” I shrieked as they dragged me across the floor.
“Chain her up.”
“Noooooooo!” I shrieked out.
I tasted blood before darkness overcame me. Safe. I was safe when it was just darkness. Everything was silent for a while. Silence and darkness, and nothingness.
I heard the crack of the whip.
“AAAAHHH!”
“Again,” a voice said.
Oh my fucking god, this was so much worse than what I thought they were going to do.
“You.” Strike. “Will.” Strike. “Listen.”
I hung my head and sobbed as the pain ricocheted through my body. It felt like I had been lit on fire and tossed into quicksand. I struggled against the chains around my wrists and ankles. The world tilted with another crack that came down right against an open wound.
“Oh my Goooooooood,” I sobbed out like a child.
“Cry all you want, you stubborn bitch,” a man growled as another thwack came down against my back. “No one can hear you all the way out here.”
Everything stopped, and then I ran. My back was on fire and I ran. I tripped over a tree root and came down onto my wrist. A sickening crack shot a heatwave of pain up my arm.
Just keep moving.
I had to keep moving.
I got up and ran. I ran into the darkness. I ran into the forest. I ran while branches slapped me in the face and dug into my measly excuse for clothes. I cradled my wrist against my body while my back burned. My legs wobbled and fought against me every step of the way, but I refused.
“Spread out and find that bitch! Bring that pussy of hers to me!”
“Oh God,” I whimpered out.
A gunshot fired into the treetops and birds scattered. Or maybe bats? What time was it? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. All I knew was that I was free.
I had to run.
My lungs heaved for air. I heard the angry voices mounting behind me. No, I had to get away. Was I running in the right direction?
“I see her! Get her!”
No.
Oh no.
I tripped over another tree root and came down against my dislocated wrist. I couldn’t hold back the cry of pain that bubbled up from my throat. I heard footsteps. Huffing and puffing. Another gunshot smacked its way through the air as I scrambled to my feet.
Only to feel a hand in my hair.
“Got her, boss!” someone yelled out.
I screamed as I unleashed my hands, my dislocated wrist just flopping about. I caught my nails against something and raked, but the hand in my hair only tightened. I heard a belt buckle. I heard them laughing.
Someone wrapped their hand around my throat and hoisted me into the air.
“No. Please,” I choked out as my legs kicked in midair.
I couldn’t see their faces. I never saw their faces. But I felt their presence around me. Surrounding me, like the worst kind of porn video was about to take place.
“Cry all you want,” the man glowered as he dropped me, shoving me to my knees. “I like the tears.”
Oh my God. They're going to rape me again. I have to get out. I have to run. I have to get away from them. I have to –
"Marla."
Somehow, I scrambled away and kept running.
I don't know how I got away, but I didn't question it.
My legs pumped beneath me and I ran and ran until the sounds behind me changed.
The voices dropped away. The footsteps turned wrong.
Too heavy. Too slow. Like whatever chased me had forgotten how to be scary and was just.. . lumbering.
I looked back.
They were still there, but the shape of them was off now.
Wrong proportions. Heads too big for their bodies, arms dragging on the ground, moving like something that had never seen a human run before and was doing its best impression.
One of them ran directly into a tree and just.. . stayed there. Stuck.
My brain, even inside the nightmare, clocked how stupid that was.
"Marla. Wake up."
Huh?
"Marla, it's me. Wake up. You're having a nightmare."
I turned back around and found the ground dropping away at my feet — a cliff I hadn't seen coming.
I looked back at the lumbering things behind me and felt the strangest, most inappropriate urge to laugh.
One of them had lost a shoe somehow. How did it lose a shoe? It didn't even have feet a second ago.
"Marla!"
I jerked awake with a harsh blue light covering me. “No, please. Don’t.”
I bolted upright, feeling something dribbling down my face. My head snapped in every which direction, trying to get my bearings through the light that shined in my face. What was that man’s name?
Did I know his name?
Where was he?
“Please, don’t,” I said breathlessly, “I’m sorry. Whatever I did, it’s—”
“Marla, hey, it’s okay,” he said, his voice piercing through the hazy sleep of my thoughts. “It’s just me. You’re okay. You’re at the clubhouse. Hey.”
I didn’t even realize I was shivering until I heard my own teeth clattering together.
It took a while for the world to fade in, but eventually, the light was moved.
There were spots in my vision, and it took some blinking in order to clear up.
My body shivered. I thought it was tears pouring down my cheeks, but when I reached up for my eyes, they weren’t wet.
“You’re sweating,” the man said.
When I finally got my bearings, I found myself lying down in the closet. Only instead of the door cracked open at my feet, it was folded open at my face. The harsh light? A phone flashlight. I watched as he tossed his phone to the floor before he sat down beside me.
Something dabbed at my forehead.
“What is your name?” I croaked out.
“Most just call me Ranger.”
“Is… that not your name?”
“It’s a nickname.”
“Oh.”
I felt him dabbing at my neck. “My real name is Miles. Most people just call me Ranger because of my time in the military.”
Why did I feel like I should already know that?
“Have you already told me that?” I asked softly.
He didn’t respond for a moment. “The type of trauma you’ve been through does things to the mind, Marla. I don’t mind repeating myself.”
Ugh. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize at all.”
The dabbing was a washcloth. A cool washcloth. And I had to admit, it felt good on my skin. My teeth clattered for a little while, but eventually, the images of my nightmare faded away.
“Just a dream,” I whispered to myself.
“Just a dream,” Ranger repeated.
Ranger. Ranger. Ranger. Ranger. Don’t forget again.
I repeated his name in my head like a silent prayer. I didn’t want to forget this time. How much else had I forgotten?
Would it even matter?
“There,” he said as he pulled the washcloth away. “How are you feeling?”
I swallowed hard. “Stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. Are you thirsty?”
I licked my lips and grimaced. “A bit.”
“Can you hold on for a few moments while I go get you something?”
He had to leave?
Why didn’t I like that?
“Um…”
“Hey, look at me,” he coached softly.
I slowly turned my head, and for the first time in two weeks, I got a really good look at his face.
Everything for the last few days was a blur.
And if I had forgotten his name already, there was no telling what other gaps my memory held.
But there was one memory that no one would be able to take from me.
One memory that stood out among the rest.
Oh.
My.
God.
“What?” Ranger asked.
My eyes focused on his face. On those beautiful brown eyes that reminded me of the forest that concealed me while I was running for my life.
In a flash, the memories bombarded me. That night at the bar.
Staring into my wine glass. It was such a rough week at work, that I remembered clearly.
One of the kids that came into the library regularly, had come in with bruises all up and down his arms. I had noticed over the last few weeks at work that something was off about him.
He was typically such a happy kid, but for some reason the smiles he would give me were not reaching his eyes.
When I asked him if he was alright he broke down crying explaining that some kids at school were picking on him and he was worried because he thought his parents were going to be so angry about the fuss he kicked up in school.
A kid, covered in bruises, worried about what other people would think.
Sometimes I just couldn’t comprehend the horrors this world had to offer.
It all crashed into me like a freight train as I gazed into those wondrous eyes.
The way he approached me with that disarming smile of his.
The way he was genuinely interested in talking to me before everything popped off.
The way he so effortlessly smiled around me, and the way it elicited smiled from me in return.
He was my last good memory. The last wonderful thing to take place in my life before it all went to hell in a handbasket.
The way he kissed me stole my breath away.
His hands, rough with calluses, were so soft against my skin.
He worshipped me that night, getting down onto his knees before hefting me against that metal rack like I weighed nothing in his grasp.
Holy fuck, my savior was him. The man whose arms I collapsed in… was him. The man from the bar that night. The man who rocked my world in ways I’d never experienced.
Before I left the bar and had been kidnapped.
“It’s you,” I whispered.