by Angela Foxxe
Something about this entire situation made me feel a little strange, like I was being watched, but I had no idea where I was being watched. I could see no evidence of cameras, though I have to admit I’m not exactly an expert at spotting them. Still I checked all of the corners and hidden places, ran my hands over everything that I could to find a peephole or something like that, and looked under and around the low quality furniture that looked like it had been in the room for ages. The fine layer of dust seemed to help me on my mission. It was easy to see where I had already looked and where I hadn’t. I found nothing, but I knew that I could have missed something. I’m not exactly a super spy.
It was time to move. I carefully folded up my cot and did my best to quiet the annoying little voices that seemed to want me to sit there rotting in my own fear. The worst that could happen would be my own death and I figured that my chances to live were a little better if I tried to escape. Not many kidnap victims ever made it out alive. I decided that it wasn’t going to happen to me. I had to do something about it, something to fix this entire mess that I had found myself in.
I piled up everything that I could. It was going to be a precarious climb, but I was sure that I could make it, especially if I moved with surety. I drew myself up the ragged combination of steps and a ladder that I had built.
It wasn’t something that I had done. I looked out the window. The sun had just come up and it looked pretty clear out of the tiny window. I carefully judged the size of the window. It would take some squeezing, but I could get through the tiny space if I sucked in my breath and prayed that I hadn’t put on any water weight in the past couple of days. I jiggled the lock, it seemed to shift fairly quietly, even if it was a little tough to move originally. Once I wrenched the hook out of its nice comfortable position, I had to deal with the fact that the window was stuck. Once again, a little bit of muscle power got me through. From here on out, of the brain was going to be more important than the muscle.
I pulled myself up and out of the window. It was a little tighter than I thought that it was going to be, but it didn’t matter much. I was out, breathing the cool morning air. I didn’t take more than a couple of relaxed breathes. I still had to get away from the building. I sunk into my body, trying to make myself appear as small as possible. It was time to go.
*
It was going well, a little too well for my comfort. It was starting to make me feel a little uncomfortable. I managed to make it to what seemed to be the edge of the property. All hell broke loose. I knew it was going to be a hard road when I heard people start to shout. I guess they had figured out that I was gone. Looking up at the sun, it was pretty easy to see that it was on its way out of the sky. I could hear the shuffle and hustle behind me as I forced myself to make a decision.
It was time to run for it. I burst into the open air out of my tiny little hiding place and ran as fast and as far as I could. I didn’t know if it was going to work or not, but still it had to be done. I wasn’t going to just be dragged back to the hole they had trapped me in, and I wasn’t ready to die for Torrance and the world that he lived in. It wasn’t right. Nothing about this made sense, but still I ran. It was the only option. I knew that already. I had to get away.
I knew it wasn’t going to work before I realized what was going to happen. Somehow, I could feel something watching me. The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention and I shuddered involuntarily. I couldn’t help it. Something was coming and it wasn’t going to be something nice. I glanced around, my body wanting to freeze. I didn’t let it; I forced myself to keep moving, figuring that it was my best bet to survive this entire mess. I looked at myself, carefully considering exactly what my next move was going to be. I had to do something, make some sort of decision. My decision was to keep my body moving.
It didn’t mean anything. It should have. I should have been able to make it. The fight seemed to be taking place in another part of the land that I was on, but someone had found me. The great cat came flying out of the denseness that surrounded me. I hadn’t even seen it coming. The powerful body slammed into me and turned, bracing my fall. I struggled to get up, to get on my feet, so that I could keep running from a faster opponent. I knew what had to be done, but at that moment, I didn’t know how it was going to happen.
I guess I can admit that I didn’t know how close the creature chasing me was. I cared about how close they were, but not enough to risk looking backward. That could lead to a lot of problems. I could trip or something like that. It just wasn’t worth it. I had to watch where I was going. It was too important to keep moving forward. My mind tried to convince me to give up, to look around and search for whoever was pursuing me. But I didn’t do that. I managed to keep my head forward, to keep searching for an open path to wherever I was going. “Damn it.” I groaned as I ran. I was starting to get tired. I was going to have to stop soon, but I needed to find the right place.
My eyes started to search the landscape frantically, looking for somewhere that I could hide. I nearly stopped when I saw it, an old log up against a hill. It was hard to see, but there was a small hollow behind it. I knew that I would have to figure out how to get behind there without being seen, and I was sure that whoever was chasing me was right behind me. I took the risk and looked over my shoulder. There was no one there.
As I turned my head back toward the log, I saw something that made my blood start to curdle. There was a great beast rising out of the hollow, a yellow furred creature that I couldn’t identify at first. My instincts screamed predator, telling me that I had to escape. A mane, it had a large fluffy yellow mane. A lion. That was the word. My heart raced and I stopped in my tracks. There was nowhere to go. No, I was wrong. I could turn around and run that way. That was my only chance. I made my decision before we managed to make it out of the thought process. I was going to run for it. I didn’t see any other option for me to take. I had to do something and I wasn’t just going to lay down and die because of the ridiculous nature of the situation that I had found myself trapped in.
Shifters, mad people, kidnapping, and exotic animals getting in fights. The beast in front of me lowered his body. He was getting ready to pounce. I could sense it about to happen. I turned, hoping that some miracle would happen and I wasn’t going to either die or be dragged back into that hole that they had held me in for so long. I didn’t really want either of those options to happen. I still hoped that I was going to get some sort of choice, after all who wouldn’t try to escape in the position that I was in. I knew that it was going to happen. It was futile, but I had to try.
When I finished my turn, I saw another beast, a great prowling tiger with a scarred face. I recognized her immediately. It was the woman who had spoken to me right after I had arrived in captivity. I knew that she must have been a powerful shifter. There was something about her that spoke to me, exuding a ferocity that stole the breath from my chest. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I could easily see that I was trapped between a lion and a tiger, and I felt like this was the kind of situation that the phrase, between a rock and a hard place, was formed from.
After all, neither of these choices was something that I relished. Still I had to make one, or the two people on either side of me would make my decisions for me. If I gave away my ability to make decisions, it would be nothing but trouble. I froze, knowing that it could spell doom for me. I still couldn’t move. Nothing could make me do it. I tried desperately to make myself do something, anything. I had to make a decision. I fought with my feet, but my mind was already against me. There was no way that I could do anything.
I stared, my head swinging back and forth, as my eyes lighted back and forth between the two giant beasts that were following me. I backed up, just a bit, forcing every step with a little too much effort in every motion. The creatures swung around me, staying around me. They were both staring at me and I was facing the scarred she-tiger now. I could see the beast lick her lips at me. She just needed a chance, and I was
probably going to die.
I had thought for a moment that I was too important to be killed for this ridiculous feud, but it was clear that it wasn’t true. The tiger looked ready to kill and I was directly in her path. My eyes locked into hers and I knew that it wouldn’t be much longer. For some reason I gulped and pondered about my last words. What were they going to be? How many chances would I have to leave a last impression?
In that moment, the decision was made. I wasn’t going to die screaming. I was going to fight and even if I died, I was going to keep that knowledge with me in whatever existed for my soul beyond death. I wasn’t just going to lay down and die. I clenched my fists, ready for the fight of my life. I knew that the lion was still behind me, but I could only focus on one problem at a time. I closed my eyes, but only for a moment before I ran screaming at the animal.
The white tiger backed up, out of my reach as she stared behind me. It was the first time that I had noticed her eyes flickering to the lion that I knew I was in deep shit. There really was no other way to describe this kind of thing. She leaped toward me, her body flying forcefully in my direction. I knew that I wasn’t going to make it through the attack, but I knew that I didn’t have much choice. I clenched my fist again, bringing them up to my shoulder level. I was ready to fight. It was what had to be done. I gathered my courage and swung my fist when the beast flew in my direction.
I missed. I had closed my eyes and I missed my target. I couldn’t think of any way that it could have happened, but it did. It should have been guaranteed, after all, the tiger was flying into my fist. There was no way that I should have missed. Something must have gone terribly wrong. Then I heard the thump of a hard body hitting the ground.
When I opened my eyes I realized that it was two bodies tangled together that had slammed into the ground. The lion had taken the tiger out of the air. I knew that it was only a matter of time before everything went to shit and I had to get away. I didn’t pay attention to the rolling bodies on the ground and instead took off at a quick run. I had my chance and I was going to take it.
The trees seemed to whiz by me, quickly shifting from the still and powerful wooden beams to blurs rushing on either side of me. I didn’t know what direction I was going, but I did know that the world felt like it shattered around me in that instant. It was like going into warp speed, rushing out of the reality that I had always known and into the strange new world that the existence of shifters and creatures like that seemed to suggest.
Did that mean that there were vampires and other creatures that seemed to say a thousand things existed that I had previous believed were fairy tales? I didn’t believe in the boogie man before. It wasn’t supposed to exist. We didn’t live in a world where superstition ruled anymore.
I could hear the fight continuing behind me. It sounded like a thousand bombs were going off inside of my head, but it didn’t matter. I kept running, running away from the screeching and crying of the large animals. I knew that it had to be done. We had to get away. My hand flew to my stomach as I ran and I remembered the promise that I had made to the child that I carried within me.
I promised that kid that I would keep him safe. It was my job until he was born. Well, I couldn’t say for sure whether the child I was carrying was a boy or a girl at this point, but he just felt right. Something about it just felt like it belonged that way. The forest was still whizzing by me and I knew that I had to figure out where I was going to go from here. On a whim, I turned left, still zipping through the trees that surrounded me.
I thought about my job. Would I still have it after this? Could they fire me for being kidnapped? They had already been displeased with the fact that I was becoming a surrogate. They didn’t want me to take time off work so that I could take appointments and other ridiculous things that a pregnant woman might have to miss work for. I knew this, and kidnapping might make it even worse. “What are you doing?”
I turned. Torrance was there. “I’ve got to get away.”
“Let me help.”
“What the hell kind of thing have you gotten me into?” I yelled at him, stopping and wheeling around to face him. I was angry, and I knew that my entire life felt like it had been destroyed. There was something that went bump in the night and his name was Torrance. I stared at him.
“Would you please slow down so I can get you out of here?”
“What makes you think that I want to go anywhere with you?”
“I know you don’t want to go anywhere with me, but I’ve got to get you out of here. It’s not safe for you to be here. We can talk about this whole thing as soon as we get to safety.” He reached out to me. “Just come with me. We’ll get you out of here then we can figure out what to do with what you’ve just found out.”
“This stuff isn’t supposed to exist.” I was freaking out, but I slowed down as I looked at him.
His face softened. “I suppose a lot of people think that way.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” Suddenly I had found myself on the defensive. There were a thousand things that I wanted to do. A thousand little things that I knew would bother me, hiding in the back of my mind to jump out at inopportune times. I suppose that the best thing that I could do would be to change the world that I lived in to compensate for this new truth, a new truth that blew the old way that I saw things out of the water. “It’s not fake is it?”
“No, it isn’t. It’s real, all too real. I’m sorry.”
I stopped, turning towards the man who had fathered the child that I carried. “How can this be true?”
“It is, it’s always been true.” He shrugged. “It’s hard to explain, and this really isn’t the right place to do it. Can we go back to my place and I’ll tell you everything that you need to know.”
“Didn’t I need to know this stuff beforehand?”
He chewed on his lip. “I guess I should have told you. I just didn’t know how to say it. How does anyone know how to say something like that?”
“This is the stuff that they told me about as a kid when they wanted to frighten me.” I shook my head. “I was never frightened. I wanted to get to know the monster, understand why they did the things that they were doing. I wanted to know about the fear that they lived in.”
He interrupted my verbal thought process. “We can go through this later. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Why did all of this happen to me?”
“I don’t know how to explain it, not here anyway. We can talk later.” He reached his hand out to me and I took it. Something about his grip was comforting. He was going to protect me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“If you have any questions, feel free to ask.”
“That makes it sound like this is some sort of strange class that I’m taking at the local community college.”
“It’s not like that.” He frowned.
“I know it’s not. Nothing like this would ever be taught in school.” A part of me wanted to laugh and a part of me wanted to cry. My face had contorted itself into a strange mix of the two emotions and I knew that my smile was strained. This might have been too much for me to handle, had I not been shoved into this world completely without my knowledge. It should never have happened, but still I could almost understand why. If he had just told me the truth, I would have called him crazy and walked out of the entire mess.
This was just too much. Too much to take in and too much to believe. Shifters existed and they lived in a world that was under ours, the kind of place that existed only in shadows and nightmares. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that yet. It was just too much, too many problems in our world that would do nothing but cause problems with the way I lived my life.
He had told me that I was now marked as a woman who could bear shifter young. That was something that would be hard to live with, because I would always be a target. “We’re dying out,” he told me, gently explaining the fact that as more and more of the non-shifters are moving out of the ranks it causes problem
s in their world. There isn’t enough people to help continue on the shifter traditions and life. The shifters were dying out.
The human world called them too much and no shifter children were being born. If the shifters died, an entire way of life would follow them. It was the type of thing that history classes spoke about in hushed tones, the destruction of an entire group of people. I drew in a thick breath, heavy with the knowledge that he was sharing. “Shifters can’t breed with other shifters; the children are born deformed and broken, unable to live a decent life. Most of them die at birth.”
His hand held mine as he told me the story of his people. “Only certain humans have the gene that allows them to breed with shifters.” I was one of those women, even though I felt the pangs of injustice that had been placed upon Torrance due to his declining people. I felt sorry for him. I have to admit it, but I still couldn’t see what it had to do with me. I didn’t belong in his world. None of what he said made sense. How could I have been born of this world and not know anything about it? I tried to ask, but he couldn’t answer my questions. Truth be told, he couldn’t tell me what I didn’t know.
In that moment, I wondered about my missing father. Was he one of these shifters? Or maybe he was someone that held the blood that the shifters seemed to be just starting to appreciate. From the history that Torrance told me in those long hours, I was able to see him clearly. The man that had abandoned my mother before I was born. He had said nothing, made no effort to see me, but every month, some money would arrive.
I wondered why he had run; maybe it had something to do with this world. Maybe he hadn’t wanted me to be pulled into it. Maybe he hadn’t had a choice but to go back to this kind of life. Perhaps, but there was no way to know. I had received word a few years back that the man had died, but I hadn’t gone to the funeral. There was no point. I had never known the man. It would have been awkward.
