“Well, well…” the man, Steve, smirked. “Well… looks like our little friend was telling us porkies, eh Zita?”
Zita’s voice tickled the back of Minnie’s ear as she leant forward, the strong stench of her strange perfume attacking the teenager’s nostrils. “He says he don’t have any friends,” she whispered, sending a shock of lightning down Minnie’s spine.
“Where’s Ronnie?” Minnie croaked, clutching her elbows, her lower lip wobbling uncontrollably. “Please, I have money; just let us go,” she hated herself for the fact that tears were already dribbling down her face. “We have lots of money; I’ll give you all of it. Just let me and Ronnie go.”
Steve folded his arms and paused, seeming to contemplate Minnie for a moment. He looked her up and down, licking his lips thoughtfully.
“How old are you kids?” he demanded, eyes gleaming. “Can’t be older than eighteen, no?”
Minnie’s cheeks burned red. She felt foolish. How stupid of her to bowl in there, just a silly little girl who knew fuck all about this dark, sinister world they’d so foolishly got themselves sucked into.
“Please, please just let us go,” she begged, her vision blurring.
Steve sighed and leaned against one side of the doorway, gesturing for Minnie to come through. However, Minnie’s feet remained fixed tightly to the ground where she stood. She wanted him to give her Ronnie, and she had no desire whatsoever to go any further into this unpleasantly smoky abyss.
“If you want him, you go get him,” Zita drawled, her words like blades of glass in Minnie’s ears.
“R-R-R-Ronnie?” Minnie heard herself calling out as she swallowed back a huge, tight lump of acid in the back of her throat. Her skin prickled as she dragged her feet along the manky carpet and furiously blinked back tears that continued to obscure her vision. “Ronnie?” she shouted again. The girl slowly ascended down the last part of the passage and then past Steve. As she went, she could feel those two sets of cold, unfeeling eyes boring into her and two delighted, an evil smirk dancing on two sets of lips as she fell further and further into the trap. Briefly, she considered running, but she knew she wouldn’t stand a chance. With every fibre of her being, she hated herself for being so fucking stupid and wished more than anything she could just go back in time.
But alas, she couldn’t.
She’d sealed her fate from the moment she’d lifted her hand to knock on the front door.
And the horrifying, blood-curdling sight that awaited her beyond Steve and his narrow doorway was visual confirmation. Visual confirmation that Minnie had most definitely made the most epic, most deadly fuck-up of her entire life.
“Ronnie!” she gasped, her knees knocking, immediately giving out beneath her body so that she collapsed onto her side, her palms slapping the cold tiles of the floor beneath her. She widened her shredded lips to scream, but the breath had been sucked out of her by sheer terror so that all she could do was stare. Inside her skull, every cell and inch of her shrieked, raced, pounded, and spiralled into sensory overload until she felt that her eyeballs would pop out of her head, and her heart would squeal into overdrive and eventually die out.
The room she had stepped into was a kitchen. Poorly lit by a solitary desk lamp which was sat atop of a wooden dining table. At the dining table, taped by his wrists and ankles to a chair, sat Ronnie. Where his thick, dark tufts of hair had been, there was now nothing but a soggy red mess that dripped and drizzled all down his gaunt, clammy face.
His eyes were rolling into the back of his head, but something ignited in them when he caught sight of her there on the floor, watching his suffering and agony.
An involuntary groan of grief rolled out of her mouth as her horrified gaze travelled downwards towards his exposed chest, where three thick, bloodied gashes were emblazoned deeply across his torso.
“Goodnight, princess,” a foul-smelling voice breathed in her ear, jolting her out of the horrific daze before something soft was clamped tightly over her face, making the edges of her vision dissolve and turn to black.
Chapter Thirty-four
2019
Sunlight blazed behind Stella’s thin eyelids, the rays of light penetrating the skin and stinging her unmoving pupils. The skin around her wrists burned and ached, and her fingers seemed to groan in protest as she attempted to move her hands.
Fuck.
Slowly, she breathed out, as quietly as she could, then untightened her eyelids, allowing in just a thin sliver of her surroundings.
She was outside, and the sun was out.
Swallowing, Stella continued to open her eyes until she could see that she was slumped up against the trunk of a tree, somewhere in the middle of a woodland that she did not recognise. Hurriedly, she glanced around, looking for any sign of movement. When she realised she was apparently alone, she began to jerk and twist her body, a hiss of pain leaking from the corner of her mouth as restraints pulled tightly at her bones. Looking down, she instantly realised why.
Thick black rope made of something hard, like a metal cord or wire, was wrapped tightly around her hips, keeping her attached to the tree trunk. Judging by the stinging sensation in her wrists, the same material was also tying her arms.
FUCK!
Clamping down hard on her lower lip, the young woman wriggled and leaned as far forward as she could, making as wide a sweep as possible of the surrounding area.
The area of forest was denser than
