Februarys 14th
2:16 P.M.
She was about to die.
She knew it.
Had known it ever since she woke up in that cabin in the woods with the lunatic sitting watching her. She knew he was a lunatic because he constantly rambled complete and utter gibberish. Other than abducting her, he hadn’t laid a hand on her until tonight.
Tonight, he had finally let her out of the wooden box he had kept her in and taken her into a bathroom. Unnerved when he had finally unlocked her filthy, stinking box, Zoe hadn’t known what to expect.
Was he going to rape her?
He hadn’t seemed interested in putting his hands on her in a sexual way, he had just taken her elbow and led her where he wanted her to go. The thought of running had obviously entered her mind, but her body was so cramped from being squashed in the box that it was all she could do to stumble along behind him and try to breathe through the agony of blood finally returning to her numb limbs.
Now she lay here in a huge clawfoot bathtub. There was a metal collar around her neck, and he had attached a pair of handcuffs from a ring in the front of her collar to the metal faucet. Zoe had already tried to see if she could wiggle the cuff free, but the faucet and tap assembly was a complicated thing with curved overlapping pieces of metal. She wasn't getting free. She knew that.
She couldn’t really move. The short handcuff chain allowed her to sit but not comfortably. Still, she could lean back against the cool side of the bathtub and stretch out her legs, which after spending days squeezed into the too-small wooden box felt like heaven.
Unable to get away she just sat there, waiting for him to return.
Waiting for him to come back and kill her.
Waiting to die.
Right now, so many emotions were battling inside that it felt like they were choking her. Fear was topping the list. Not just fear of dying but fear of the pain that would accompany her journey to the other side. She was afraid of that too. What exactly would she find when she passed from the land of the living to the land of the dead?
There was sadness that her life was over so soon, she was only thirty-three, and there were so many more things she had wanted to do with her life. She was sad for the people she would leave behind too.
There was some relief there, too, that her suffering would soon be over. Since she had woken up here, she had known she wasn’t leaving alive, she had seen his face, and she knew enough to know that a kidnapper didn’t let a victim go if they could identify them. The anticipation had made her stomach swirl and her chest tighten, but now it was almost over.
Fear, sorrow, relief, then add some terror and horror, and it pretty much summed up what it felt like to stare death in the face.
It was funny she thought, kind of philosophically, that death was the end for all of them, none of them were exempt, it would claim them all in the end, and yet none of them gave it much thought.
Zoe Kitter was ready.
At least she thought she was until the second the man walked back into the room.
Then her innate drive to survive kicked in and she began to kick, thrash, scream, beg, and plead for her life.
The man just stood there.
Looking at her.
His head cocked to the side and an inquisitive glint in his eyes. He studied her like she was his science project, and he was trying to figure her out. Zoe hated when he did that. It totally creeped her out.
“I just want to go home.” She gave a single sob and then sunk back against the tub. The gesture was tantamount to giving up. Admitting it was over and that he had won.
She had to accept her fate.
She kept thinking that she had, but then when it came down to it, she realized she hadn’t. She still wanted to live, to fight, to find a way to save herself.
But she had to face facts.
She couldn’t keep deluding herself.
It was time.