She bent face down in the water, counting the seconds before he pulled her head up for air. She was trying not to focus on how little oxygen she was getting and tried to focus on what she was going to do next.
He had been at this for only a few seconds, but it felt like hours. Your brain works in weird ways when you’re in fight or flight mode. It is both the quickest and the slowest time you’ll ever feel. He pulled her up, and she quickly looked around at the surroundings to see what she could use. Her hands were still free, he hadn’t had much time from the abduction until now to secure her. She felt around the container that was holding the water while he was in mid-focus on the suffocation.
She realized it was big, but it was made out of wood. It reminded her of one of those huge barrels you dove for apples in. She noticed there was a handle and it felt solid. She continued to do this while thrashing around even though she had detached from the physical form to avoid the pain of this reality.
She went limp, she had hoped he didn’t have much experience with a dead body and she could use this to her advantage. She waited for the slightest release, giving her that window to fight back. And it came, she took her elbow and nailed him in the face and turned around and kicked him in the groin. She ran to the nearest source of light, getting a faded understanding of her surroundings.
“You better get back here! If I don’t catch you, she will!”, she heard his yelling becoming more distant as she got further in the darkness. She could see a door up ahead; it looked like a cellar door. She ran up the stairs and into the field and ran as fast as she could, faster than she could have ever known to be able to run. She saw a forest, looking around for signs of familiar surroundings, she noticed the cherry orchard out by the old wine cellar. She remembered there was a river a little further ahead.
“I‘ve got to make it, I just have to make this!”, she whispered over and over. “We can do this, we can do this, come on Sadie, we can do this!”
Her body hurt like hell and was exhausted, but whatever lay on the other side was way worse and that kept her motivated enough to pull through the whole way. Her house was on the river, she practically lived on it during the summers and knew every inch of it. As she followed it, she kept hidden so no one could trail behind her.
She came to her house and ran inside straight to the phone and dialed the police. She was out of breath and her brain was still playing catch up from the run. She just decided to grab her keys and drive down there instead so she felt safe.
She walked into the station; there he stood in handcuffs. “But how?!”, she thought.
“This man, this man RIGHT HERE just attacked me earlier, he tried to drown me in a barrel. In a place near the cherry orchard, down in what looked like a cellar!”
“This man right here? We picked him up earlier. He was wanted in connection with the “penny murders. We tried to keep it from the news, but they beat us to it. By the time we got there, they had been there for a while.”, the police officer explained.
“That’s impossible, then they were there when I was there. WHY DIDN’T THEY STOP IT?!”
“And now a look into a serial killer attempting to murder his next victim, we’ve got it on tape. But first, we called in the lead that got him caught, how the stake out all went down.”, the newscaster said on the little television in the small office off the side of the main hallway.
“How long were they there for?! Were they just going to let it happen?! No one helped me, I escaped on my own!”, her voice grew the more she moved further along.
She watched the tape; they started taping at the very beginning, right before he abducted her and they followed them up until she got away.
Comments