Forced To Kill The Prince

by Hollie Hutchins

  Moving into the dorms as a freshman girl who looked like every other bobbly-headed bimbo in the place, I definitely got my fair share of looks from the guys (and some of the girls, hey now). Everybody was nice to start, apparently, they were all looking to have either a good time or a restart to a shitty high school life like me. I was right in the thick of it all living on campus, but my game plan was probably a bit different than the other people around me.

  Raging parties, study groups, random adventures (I skipped out on ice skating AND bowling, sonofabitch!) plus all of the other shenanigans that happen in a college were offered to me on a regular basis, but I always politely declined and made the effort to stay in my dorm as much as possible. I’d had enough of being the butt of everyone’s joke, Karma included, and I just wanted to focus on my education and get the hell out. My plan didn’t last too long, maybe about three months into my first year, before I caved and said I would tag along to a few parties with my roommate. I should have just stuck to the plan.

  They were fun and I made friends at these parties, but I always made sure I was the one to volunteer as designated driver. Call me Olive Double D (it would have been funnier if I actually had the boobs to go with the nickname) because I was sober as a church mouse at every party we went to. For some reason that I swear I will never understand, my college friends though having a guaranteed, safe ride back home after every party was lame. They wanted me to get skunk drunk with them. I could only hold out for so long before that demon named peer pressure got to me. I’m not proud of it, though it did shove me down a rather unexpected path.

  I had been pacing myself the whole night. Trying to keep myself to one drink an hour so I didn’t end up blacking out or worse. Either someone was spiking my drinks or I was more of a lightweight than I thought, because around midnight I found myself hugging the toilet of a frat house bathroom, spilling my guts in a not so flattering way. That wasn’t the part that sucked though. The part that sucked…was that I was in there totally alone. Even my dorm mate had left me to my own devices when she saw me go green at the gills. It was pretty obvious they didn’t give a damn about me at all around here. Not a single person. Even though the painful heaving and what felt like a blood vessel threatening to pop in my forehead I was able to come to the realization that this all just sucked. That and I had no friends.

  What did I expect, really? That these people I barely knew would bother to stop their good time to make sure I wasn’t dead in the bathroom out back? Hell, even the horny couple banging on the door for me to get out didn’t seem to give a shit beyond me being able to leave the bathroom unaided (they didn’t want to touch the pukey weird chick. Can’t say blame them.). Once I was up and out they practically kicked me on my way down the hall all while laughing and giggling with one another. Gee, thanks guys. Enjoy the smell of my vomit while you’re banging in a frat bathroom.

  I only made it about ten steps down the hall before I had to stop and lean against something to make the world stop spinning. Unfortunately, that something was a random frat boy who lived in the house and he took my need for a stable anchor as a need for vitamin D.

  “Hey baby. If you want some of this all ya gotta do is ask” He shouted, obviously at that drunken point where he had lost volume control. “My rooms just upstairs. I can carry you if ya want.”

  “I swear to Christ I will barf all over you.” I announced to him matter-of-factly while pushing myself away, making rather disturbing noises as I did so.

  Thankfully he took the cue and let me go without bothering me further. I proceeded to wade through the sea of sweaty, drunk bodies in an attempt to find a way out into the cooler and far more refreshing air outside. No one seemed to care that I was trying to push through, all the while looking like I would toss my cookies at any moment. These people were assholes with some serious problems and I made the choice then and there to never hit up another college party again. This shit was not worth the hassle.

  I managed to make my way into the kitchen, knowing that the living room and then the front door weren’t that far off as far as my booze soaked brain could remember from when I was sober. A handful of girls were doing jello shots and tried to get me to join them. After trying to be nice about it I snapped, saying a few things that I’m sure sealed my fate as a weird asshole…but I didn’t care.

  Breaking into the living room I had to avoid the tangle of arms and legs that was protruding from the couch. How could people be so casual about practically having an orgy in the middle of a huge party? I mean, I totally get being comfortable and free with yourself and not having any hang-ups…. but come on. When does it become a thing of crossing the line of decency?

  Averting my eyes, I did my best to breeze through without drawing attention to myself. But when can I ever be that lucky? No, I have to knock over one of the speakers as I stumbled over a pile of red solo cups and beer cans that had overflowed from the garbage. Groaning as I picked myself up off the floor and waited for the world to stop spinning, ignoring the jackasses from the couch griping at me for knocking over the speaker, I overheard a girl I recognized from my dorm floor announce that she was leaving. I moved as quickly as my drunk, bruised up and unbalanced body could manage in an attempt to beg for a ride back home. I needed to get away from this chaos, nurse my mental and physical wounds and get some sleep.

  Chapter Two

  When I found her she was standing over near the front door, arguing with one of the frat-boy hosts over whether or not she was sober enough to drive home. Despite the countless drunk kids around him he seemed pretty serious about her not driving drunk. I wondered if they knew one another in some way and he was just being overprotective. Either way, she was very loud, very obnoxious and very sure about being plenty sober to drive home without having to hear a riot act (maybe something about him not being her dad?) and so the guy trying to play security let her go. I managed to reach out and grab her just before she turned to leave.

  “Hey, sorry. Would you mind if I hitched a ride with you back to the dorms?” The words came out a bit slurred and I’m sure my breath smelled like booze and vomit, how nice. What a wonderful first impression

  “Uh…” She said as she looked from my face to my hand that was on her arm, her face making her mild disgust pretty clear to even me. “Yea, sure I guess so. Just no puking in my car, ok?! If you do you’re paying for a full detail, got it?” She agreed as she shook me off.

  “No…” I paused, hiccupping a bit and forcing down the urge to spill my guts again. “No problem. I promise.” Lies, all lies.

  She started out the door and I followed close behind like a lost, drunken puppy. My only thoughts were getting back to my dorm, putting on my P.J.’s and spending the rest of the night hugging a toilet I was at least familiar with. In my drunken state, my mind started to wonder about why I felt better about the dorm toilet over the frat house toilet. I mean….both of them had a large number of people using them regularly. I suppose it was because my dorm toilet was a girls-only one. I felt a bit better about planting my face where asses had been when they were girl asses. Not to be sexist, but I had been purging into a mostly-used-by-men toilet all night and it was a memory I hoped to dear God would be washed away by the booze.

  I’m not sure how long I was sloshing about in the car before I realized she was definitely NOT sober. Not at all. But I remember seeing a sign for the highway leading back to the dorms at one point shortly after so it couldn’t have been that long. Either way, her swerving, speeding and almost constant chatter was making me even more nauseous, not to mention I was starting to have an anxiety attack from the fear of her crashing up the car and us with it.

  “Hey, uh…..I don’t...” I paused, taking a breath to hold back the urge to puke all over her dashboard. “I don’t think you should be driving. Maybe…..maybe we should stop and…and call someone?” I managed to burble out.

  “I am not drunk!” She said with a giggling laugh, swerving as she snapped her head to look at me
as if I was her annoying little sister. “I’m not about to stop and leave my car out here! You crazy?! Someone will steal it!”

  So I shut up, figuring she must just be a shitty driver and decided to take her at her word about not being drunk. I made sure my seatbelt was pulled tight and tried to ignore the world zipping by as she tore down the road. A few minutes went by before I felt the car swerve hard again. Lifting my head from the seat rest I looked over to my driver from hell, only to see her fiddling with both the radio and her phone, paying zero attention to the road in front of her. I groaned, sitting up a bit in my seat so I could talk without sounding like a fat, drunken frog.

  “I don’t think I want to be in the car anymore…” I could hear myself saying the words, but the scared and whiney voice they came out on didn’t sound like mine at all. “Can….can you pull over? I think…I think I might puke…” That last part was an excuse but I figured it would work to gain my freedom from this surefire death trap. Thankfully, even though I was drunk I wasn’t wrong.

  “Ugh! Fine!” She snapped at me. I could almost hear the sound of her eyes rolling at me. “I can’t take all you’re fucking, irritating nagging anymore anyways…” The amount of contempt in her prissy voice made me feel about two inches tall. But it also made me want to punch her in the throat.

  “Sorry…..” Was all I mumbled out in response. I wasn’t about to start a fight when she finally agreed to pull over.

  Unfortunately for me, or rather…on par for me and unfortunately for her, she wasn’t even sober enough to pull over correctly. The combination of her drunkenness and irritation with me caused her to yank the wheel hard to the right, pulling the car too swiftly towards the side of the road and the gutter dug out alongside it. The motion sent me lurching sideways towards her and the center consol. At that same moment I heard a soft yelp come out of my driver, looking up I saw her yank the wheel hard to the left in a poorly executed attempt at correcting course. What happened next I should have expected.

  The car was already on its way into the gutter and her sudden correction had only made physics, or maybe some random God of Travel, pissed off at us. The front passenger side tire of the car caught the edge of the gutter just as she yanked the steering wheel to the left. This, of course, caused the tire to hook itself against the edge of the road and the momentum from it all sent us spinning through the air and over the edge of the road.

  Now when I say spinning I don’t mean like a 180 circle done on an icy road. I mean spinning as in side over side, the car going like a turbine on crack from the sheer force and speed. I could see the street lights on the road get farther and farther away as we spun and bashed our way down the embankment alongside the road. The last thing I remember was seeing the world go topsy-turvy on last time and I had just one thought for all of it. Shit. This is my kind of luck.

  BAM!

  Chapter Three

  When I woke up the first thing I noticed was that my body felt like it had gone through a blender and then mashed down and used as a hockey puck for a few hours. Every inch of me was sore and even the slightest movement was full of aches and shocks of pain through me. My head felt like someone had whacked it a few times with a sledge hammer before wrapping it in dirty cotton. I lay there for who knows how long, my head swimming in and out of the pain like it was a wave pool. When I finally managed to shake off enough of the pain fog to look around I realized that my bruised and battered body was the least most interesting thing in the room.

  The bed I was laying on was about as far from a hospital bed as you could get. To be honest I’m still not sure why I didn’t begin to panic right then and there. I should have known that being anywhere other than a hospital after a wreck like that wasn’t a good sign. But everything around me was so…so…opulent and lavish that I didn’t even bother to register that concern. Silk sheets that had to easily cost more than my entire wardrobe from my first day of high school all the way to today, smooth as butter against my skin and yet cool to the touch at the same time. The pillows felt like puffs of cloud stuff under my head and I knew they had to be the super expensive kind filled with the downy feathers of golden swans or some nonsense that only rich folk could get their hands on. Hell, even the bedframe itself was impressive enough to leave me awestruck and staring at it from where I lay on the bed.

  It was easily a king sized bed, considering how much room I had on either side of where I lay in the middle. But it was the massive posts at all four corners leading up to a gorgeously draped peach and gold fabric canopy that had most of my attention. The wood of the bedframe looked like the richest cherry oak available, or at least that I had ever seen…but it was the carving that was the most intense. It all looked to be handmade by a master craftsman, someone who had spent a lifetime dedicated to one skill. Intricate vine details wove and wrapped their way up along the posts as if nature were taking back what belonged to it, they led towards little crescent moon shapes at the top of each post where, I assumed, the braces to hold the canopy up was hidden. The detail on each one of these posts was breathtaking to say the least. Each vine and each leaf had been given so much attention that they looked like real plants preserved in amber. I was a bit jealous and made a mental note to get something like this when I grew up.

  The rest of the room was nothing to turn your nose at either. From the matching dresser, vanity, nightstands and a ridiculously massive desk…to even the extra plush-looking carpet it was clear to me that, wherever I was, it was someplace that a lot of money had gone into. I started to wonder if this was all a dream so I pinched myself. Not a wise move, considering when I looked down at my arm I was so badly covered in bruises and welts it looked like I had been beaten by a bag of rock-solid plums. Meaning; every inch of me was beaten to hell and had a lovely purple tone. I hissed and groaned at the sight of it, let alone the pain I caused myself, and that was when I heard footsteps outside of the bedroom door somewhere in the hallway nearby.

  I felt my heart leap into my throat and suddenly an unexpected and intense fight-or-flight response kicked in. Even as battered and bruised as I was, I knew that I could move and so I did. Considering there was nowhere I could see to run besides what looked, from here, like a bathroom, my brain went into Fight mode. Jumping out of bed, completely ignoring the shock of pain that it caused me, I started frantically looking around for a weapon. I found nothing, and wound up just standing there staring wide-eyed at the door, the only thing between me and whoever was coming would be the massive bed I had been admiring. It was only then that I realized I was wearing what I can only describe as a long, lacy white nighty. Like something women would wear back in like the 30’s and stuff. That only made me freak out more, but then the door opened and I didn’t have time to think about it anymore.

  The man who walked into the room was not what I was expecting, though I have no idea what I was expecting to be flat out honest with you. He was tall, maybe 6 feet and a few inches at most, and very well groomed. His dark hair had been cut into a short but stylish and very professional look that framed the strong, square features of his face perfectly. His eyes, even from the distance across the room, were the most vibrant shade of green I had ever seen on a man. The fact that he came in carrying a dark wooden tray laden with what smelled like a delicious breakfast, which he served with a lazy little smile and a casual strut, threw me off my defenses a little bit. He seemed way too nonchalant about everything while I was ready to have a cow and launch into a full-blown conniption fit. The only thing I could think to do was just…stand there. Talk about freezing up at the worst times.

  “Good morning. I hope you feel well.” He said in a warm and soothing tenor while setting the breakfast tray on the large desk, turning to face me once his hands were free. “I want you to know I won’t hurt you. I have no intention of it whatsoever.”

  I just stood there staring at him as if he had three heads. I’m sure he could tell by the look on my face that I didn’t quite believe him and was more than a little u
pset about… well… everything. He pursed his lips for a moment, looking me over before sighing. With a slightly warm smile, he gestured towards the tray of deliciousness on the desk beside him.

  “Scrambled egg whites with spinach, wheat toast, bacon strips, coffee and orange juice… if you’re hungry. There is also aspirin in the cup there, it should help with the soreness and a bit of the pain.” He watched me with what looked like both pity and caring in his eyes. It was… unnerving. The ridiculous breakfast he had brought me was unnerving too. Why was he feeding me?

  Again, I stood there in dead silence. My body was tense and ready to spring in any and every direction at once should he move in a way I didn’t like. I could tell that he sensed my tension and high anxiety because he took a single step back and lowered his eyes a moment before glancing and gesturing towards the bathroom.

  “I’ll give you some time to wake up and eat. We will talk more after you’ve gotten in a shower and taken some time for yourself. I’m sure you need it.” He seemed to want to add something else but chose against it, shaking his head slightly before continuing to talk in that same warm tone. It reminded me of a father talking to an upset child. I didn’t like it. “There are cloths that will fit you in the armoire there in the bathroom, choose whatever you like. They are all yours now.”

  With that he nodded towards me as if to say goodbye and turned to head back to the door. I watched every step he took, noting when he turned his head to look at me once more before exiting the room, closing the door behind him. The click of the doorknob latching was like a gunshot off the block to me.

  Immediately I scuttled around the bed and inched towards the door with all of the high strung anxiety that had built up inside of me. With every move I made I paused for a second to listen for him, my heart pounding like a drum in my chest. When I reached the door, I stood there for a while, my ear close against the wood as I listened for any hint of a sound. My eyes strayed over to the tray of food and medicine on the desk and I scrunched my face at it a bit. There was no way I was eating whatever Mr. Abductorman had put in that stuff. That probably wasn’t even aspirin! I would have put money on there being a roofie in there or something and the last place I wanted to wake up was back in that bed…. or worse.