Escaping the Rescue

Summer was dying.  It was beautiful, but that’s what was happening, and it was sad.  Angelina had had a good summer; a bit of travel, a couple flings at the beach, and an amazing tan.  Now she was back in her studies full force, and life was getting boring and even a little stressful.

            So she put an ad up online, looking for a guy to go on a weekend road trip with.  It wasn’t easy going through the two hundred replies she received, but she forced herself to do so.  She only met up with five of them, and only one met her standards.

            Jacques wasn’t all that tall, but he was taller than Angelina at five foot ten.  He had a chiseled chin and strong jaw, his nose was sharp and his brow not too deep.  He had short dark hair, not quite black, and hazel eyes.  And he was ripped; she could see that through his hoodie.

            She had planned on renting a car – an unnecessary expense living downtown – but Jacques insisted they take his.  She was up all Thursday night making sure she was caught up on her work.  She made it through her only class Friday morning, and then went back to her place to grab her bag and meet up with Jacques.

            The afternoon sun beat in through the windows, and she curled up in the passenger seat, basking in the warmth.  The conversation dwindled off awkwardly and Jacques turned up the radio.  He had it tuned to an obnoxious top forty pop station that Angelina didn’t mind when it was one of her girlfriends, but it wasn’t.  It was a guy.

            She dozed off.

            She woke when the hit a dirt road.

            Angelina had planned this trip, and there weren’t any dirt roads on the route she had picked.

            “Where are we?” she asked as she opened her eyes.  The sunshine had gone; it was now foggy and drizzling slightly.

            “It’s a shortcut,” Jacques said.  He didn’t elaborate.

            “Okay,” she said, though she certainly didn’t feel okay.  A red flag had gone up.

            The further down the road they went, the closer the trees got on either side, and they got bigger and darker.  Instead of a beautiful array of autumn colours, they were now threatening silhouettes in the fog, most having lost all but a few of their leaves.  Angelina definitely wasn’t feeling comfortable anymore.  She hugged herself and leaned against the door, trying not to shiver.

            When Jacques turned down an even narrower road, Angelina got really nervous.  For one thing, she was sure he would scratch his car, rocks and trees were so close.  If they broke down, how would they get help?  She checked her phone; there was no cell service out here.

            “Are you sure this is a shortcut?” she asked.

            “No, but I’ve been here before.  You’ll love it.”

            “It’s not where I wanted to go.”

            “Yeah, about that….”

            The car stopped.  They were next to an old cabin, little more than a shack.  Several shakes were missing from the sides, and the roof was so covered in moss she couldn’t tell what the roof had been made of.

            Angelina got out of the car and stood, not thinking.  The eerie silence of the place and old sense was awe-inspiring, but not peaceful.  It made her spine tense up.

            A hand grabbed her elbow, and another settled on the small of her back, pushing her towards the door.  She panicked for a second, and then recognized Jacques.  She tried to pull away, but he had a good grip, and at the moment he was all that was familiar.

            The inside of the cabin smelled musty and earthy, but also as if something small and furry had been living there.  There were spider webs everywhere.  Jacques gently propelled her towards a bed covered in ratty blankets.  She tripped and fell into them, rolling so she could see him again.  A cloud of dust hung around her, and she coughed.

            Jacques lit a fire and stood to face her.  He wore a creepy smile and stalked toward her, placing a hand on each knee and pulling them apart.  She tried to kick him but she didn’t have the room.  She couldn’t get away, she was backed against a wall and he had her by the legs.  She noticed a rusty knife embedded in the wall, but couldn’t reach it.

            “What do you think you’re doing?  This isn’t cool, Jacques!”

            He paused, looking hurt and confused.  Then he flipped her skirt up over her stomach – why hadn’t she worn tight jeans? – And ran a hand down her thigh to pinch her panties and start to tug.

            There was a loud bang behind him.  Angelina was blinded by a flash of light, and Jacques fell on top of her.  She struggled and rolled him off of her, then fell to the floor and started crawling toward the door.  Her eyesight returned but was of no real use; a cloud of smoke and dust hung in the air and she couldn’t see anything but the door and a broken window.

            She was having trouble breathing.  Her head was spinning and she felt like she had been drugged.  A pair of small, filthy, callused feet walked by her, and another pair stopped just out of her reach.  Rough hands with a greenish hues grabbed her arms; claws dug into her skin.  She blacked out.

            The next thing Angelina was aware of was that she was in a cage.  It was dark, and she was in a cage of branches lashed together with leather.  Her first thought was “that bastard!” but when she turned her head – which hurt – she saw Jacques was in the cage as well.  Seeing he was also a captive inspired a slew of conflicting emotions that left her so confused she pushed it away to study what was around her.

            There was a bonfire on the ground in front of her.  She could see that.  The figures that sat around it were humanoid but not human.  Not unless they were a group of dwarves who didn’t wash and routinely mutilated themselves.  They were talking, but Angelina couldn’t understand a word of it.  It almost sounded like arguing.  Suddenly the whole lot quieted down and one particularly large and ugly one stalked triumphantly to the cage.

            Jacques was hauled out and dragged to the fire.  There a jagged knife was drawn and his clothes ripped off.  Jacques’ genitals were sliced off, but it wasn’t a clean cut.  Blood gushed out into a bucket, but before he could lose enough blood to be in danger, a hot metal rod was jammed into the wound.  The scream set Angelina’s heart racing, the stench of burned flesh her stomach turning.

            The grotesque creature held the severed piece of Jacques in tongs and thrust it into the fire, turning it this way and that, taking it out a few times to inspect it.  He then shook it, blew on it, and shoved it in his mouth whole.  Angelina nearly vomited.

            A second of the things forced some concoction down Jacques’ throat while a third picked up the knife and removed a finger.  The process continued again and again until all that remained of Jacques was a skull and a ribcage with the vital organs still inside.

            And the whole time, Jacques screamed.  They kept him alive and awake.

            Then they drove a spit through him and laid him across the fire.

            Fed now, the cannibals sat around, joking and drinking what Angelina assumed to be some sort of alcohol.  She started looking around; examining the cage she hung in.  Suddenly the door was yanked open again, and rough clawed hands grabbed at her and pulled her out.  She was pinched, poked, stroked, fondled, caressed, groped, and even licked by the time she was sat down in the middle of the gathering.  Her clothes were tattered.

            One of the torturers approached with a large bowl.  He put it to Angelina’s lips and tipped it up until its contents splashed down the front of her and it covered her face.  Unable to breathe, she couldn’t help but swallow some as she gulped for air.

            Whatever the liquid was, it was disgustingly sweet and sticky.  It was also quite heady.  She saw all the leering faces magnified and distorted by the sharp contrast of the flickering firelight.  She fell and felt something metal under her arm.  The knife, she realized.  They didn’t seem to care.  One ripped off her shirt, and she leapt to action before she could even think.

            She had the knife in her hand.  She swung wildly, and felt it catch in flesh.  Kicking and screaming she got to her feet and stabbed and slashed blindly, startling her captors.  She turned and leapt through the fire, charging off into the trees and running as fast as she could.

            Hooting and whooping followed her as she ran, and she fell more than once.  She just got back up and kept running.  She lost the knife at some point, but that didn’t slow her.  It had made it harder to run, anyway.  Her stamina was starting to run out when she jumped over a rock and landed in water over her head.  She hadn’t heard the river; she was so focused on the sound of her pursuers.  She came to the surface and sputtered for breath, then let the current pull her downstream.

            She saw them a few times, running along the riverbank.  They ranged ahead, but didn’t try to enter the water to intercept her.  Afraid of getting clean, she thought to herself, and laughed.  She wasn’t feeling right, but she didn’t care.  She just had to get away from the monsters.

            She was numb and soaked through, with wrinkled fingertips she couldn’t feel and hair plastered to her face that just got worse when she tried to push it aside.  She wasn’t swimming; she was just keeping her head above the water.

            The current all but stopped, and she snagged on the muddy bottom.  Angelina forced herself to make it to shore, crawled out, and headed into the woods.  She heard howls but ignored them, moving steadily away.

            At some point, Angelina had made it back to her feet.  She knew this, because when she came to the house, she fell to her knees.  She couldn’t have done that if she hadn’t been standing.  A dog barked at her.  She crawled forward and tried to kiss it, but it kept backing away and growling.

            A sleepy old woman opened the door and snapped at the dog loud enough to get Angelina’s attention.  She looked up and the woman’s eyes went wide.

            “Get in here dear, these woods aren’t safe at night, even for the locals.”  Hands like sandpaper helped her to her feet, and she went inside.  It wasn’t until the door was bolted behind her that it occurred to her that the woman might know just what sort of things were going on in the woods.  That maybe she knew, but didn’t report it.