Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
It seemed impossible to do what I’d heard many other true crime survivors do. Try to endear themselves to their attacker. To make them seem like a person, like someone they should care about.
I was pretty sure this guy was too far gone for that.
If someone wasn’t capable of empathy, why try to make them see you as a human being? And there was no way a man who’d done the things this man had done to those women could have empathy of any kind.
“You’re kind of big mad about me getting the better of you, huh?” I asked, forcing a smile even as my belly did sick little flip-flops at the way his eyes blazed. “I mean, building a whole cage for me? You must have no life at all.”
The growl that moved through him was both terrifying and satisfying, as it was proof of how fragile he was, how easy it was to get a rise out of him.
“Shut up. Shut up,” he hissed, throwing open the cage top, and reaching inside.
He wouldn’t shut me up, though.
I was somehow sure of that.
He wanted to hear me cry and scream and beg.
That was all part of the fantasy.
Why else would he be so sadistic?
So, he wasn’t going to gag me. Which meant I got to keep poking at him, keep ticking him off, keep getting under his skin. In the hopes that it made him sloppy. And allowed me to escape.
His fingers dug into my wrists as he started to pull me out of the trunk.
I ignored the sting, focusing not on my attacker, but on what was behind him, and around us.
The dirty cement floor.
The windowless space.
The chill.
A garage.
He was parked in a garage.
Which meant there was a button somewhere to open said garage for a quick exit. If I couldn’t find that, all garage doors could be manually pulled up for a less quick, but just as workable escape.
I was so focused on the plans that I barely registered the way my leg slammed into the cage as he dragged me out.
I didn’t help him.
I forced my body to be lax and boneless.
If he wanted me out of the trunk, he had to carry my dead-ass weight the whole way. Even if it meant I banged my leg, and he bruised my arms, and my knees hit the ground hard.
He was big, sure.
But he wasn’t as strong as I’d thought during my last attack. Not strong enough to easily carry around my weight.
He would struggle.
And that was fine by me.
The more winded he was, the more his muscles ached, the better my chances for survival.
“Get up!” he snapped, chest already heaving.
I fought back the lifelong teachings the world gives girls about being nice, being polite, not hurting feelings, or bruising male egos, and spoke.
“Maybe less time in the Incel groups and more time in the gym…” I started.
The sentence was cut off as my attacker pulled his arm in, then swung outward, the back of his hand catching me so hard across the cheek that my body fell.
I managed to catch myself before I fell on my side, possibly compromising the integrity and placement of the pen.
Pain ricocheted across my cheek, making my eyes tear, but I blinked it back hard as I lowered myself flat on the garage floor, splayed out right next to an old grease stain.
If he wanted to move me, he had to drag me.
“You stupid fucking bitch,” he snarled. “Get up!”
My cheek was throbbing, and he must have split my lip, because I tasted blood.
I said nothing, though, just crossed my arms over my chest like an insolent child.
He’d make me pay for all of this, I knew.
If it got that far.
It wouldn’t.
It couldn’t.
I didn’t survive one attack by him to die after another.
The sound that came out of him then reminded me a lot of this one guy I’d briefly dated in college who was obsessed with gaming, and when he lost or got killed or whatever happened to make gamers rage-quit, he would get out of his chair, rip off his headphones, and make this shrieking, growling sound.
I had him at rage-quit level anger.
That was both terrible and good at the same time, depending on what came next.
Folding downward, he grabbed my ankles, and seemed so lost in his own frustration that he didn’t even notice my lack of laces.
I actually relaxed a bit. Some part of me had been expecting him to drag me by my hair. And if you were going to get dragged, by the hair was definitely the worst way.
Ankles wasn’t bad.
I’d have to tuck my chin to my chest as we went up the step that led into the house. But other than that, this part wouldn’t hurt.
Which gave me more time to think and observe and plan.