She felt blood trickle down her arm from where she’d scraped it. She bit her lip as she pumped her arms and focused all her attention on the street corner just one building length away from her. After that, she would be on her street. Not long after that, she’d be home. She’d be safe.
She heard a loud curse close behind her, but dared not turn around to see. It was the one word she’d never say herself, even in the worst of situations, and just the sound of it curdled in her ears until it was almost all she could hear.
She tried not to think about it as she closed her eyes tight and poured on the steam, willing her legs to pump harder and faster than they ever had before. She didn’t know what they wanted with her, but she knew she didn’t want to find out anytime soon. She heard something in her knee pop like when her Biology teacher cracked his knuckles. Fresh pain shot up her leg and into her spine, burying in deep and making a home there.
When she opened her eyes again, she was almost at the curb. She could see her next-door neighbor’s house, dissected by the wall she was about to pass. The windows were dark and the blinds were closed tight, their usually inviting porch now looking cold and desolate. Someone had taken all of the flowers inside and she realized, strangely, that they were on vacation. She didn’t know why that occurred to her at that moment, only that it did.
Behind her, one of the footsteps stopped and was replaced by very loud breathing and panting. Without even turning around, she could see the thinner of her two pursuers hunched over with his hands against his knees. He was trying to catch his breath, sweat getting caught in his short brown hair. The other set of footsteps just got louder and faster, as if he had only been moving at that speed so that his friend could keep up. If they were any indication, he’d be on her in seconds.
She turned the corner, ready to dart across the road and into her driveway faster than she ever had before, hoping that there were no cars coming. Instead her nose crashed into something hard and she fell backward. Her backbone slammed against the pavement. She felt her entire body quake with the sudden impact, aching from the base of her skull right down to her ankles.
The man she had bumped into also fell to the ground and looked to have skidded out his elbow in the process.
Stunned, she wasn’t fully aware of the passage of time until she felt two massive hands clamp down on her shoulders like vice grips. They brought her to her feet.
“Get the car,” the man behind her said with a high-pitched voice. It was not the man that was holding her -- he was the one that had lost his breath. By the sounds of things, he still had yet to regain it.
The lanky man in front of her smirked as he rose to his feet. Then turned and looked over his shoulder at the row of houses behind him.
“No!” she screamed as the man who held her pulled her close. He forced her to walk with him toward the nearby alley. She tried to hit and kick at her capture, but it seemed to have as much effect as hitting solid stone. She continued to scream even after they dragged her away. Eventually the screaming stopped, long before her terror was over.
It occurred to her that nothing would ever be the same again. Someone had told her once that every time that happens in life, it was like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. A transition and transformation into something different.
This time, she thought, it was a transformation... in pain.
CHAPTER ONE:
CONFESSION
He awoke on the floor, his body shaking with shock as all his senses seemed to scream at him at once. At first he wasn’t quite sure where he was, something that happened so often lately that he was almost getting used to not being used to anything he saw anymore.
Everything around him was red and his eyes stung terribly, like he’d gotten twigs in them as he always did as a child while running through the forest behind his house. He didn’t understand why at first. He blinked several times. When the dark crimson didn’t fade, he started to become afraid. Sweat dotted his brow and tears welled up behind his eyes, making them hurt even more. He reached up with his right index finger to stop the salt water from spilling onto his cheeks and was surprised to see that red goop, not unlike the type he used in his Creepy Crawlers oven as a child, had come off on his finger. It hung there for a moment, dangling and dripping a viscous fluid before he realized what it was.
It was blood.
A congealed layer of blood covering his entire body, naked beneath the covers. Now that that much was gone and he could see, his room and everything in it was clear to him again and he knew where he was. He saw his television propped up in the corner – the remote on top of it meaning his father had been upstairs watching the game again at some point yesterday afternoon. He saw his computer, which was the top of the line with all the best video capabilities and nothing to put those capabilities to good use since the screen had been blown out a week before. He was convinced that the air around it still stunk of carbon monoxide and charred plastic.
He wiggled his toes along his thick, matted carpet that reeked of a thousand odors absorbed into its
