Page 6 of Trapped

The horn blows again and I tremble on a whimper.

This wasn’t mentioned in that fucking NDA.

What, the use of an instrument? I try to taunt myself, but my brain doesn’t receive the message. My mind is slowing down, failing to catch up with the accelerating events that come tumbling past my hiding place without any sense of mercy.

A movement on my right catches my eye. Someone’s moving fast, his uniform giving him away. He’s a participant. He shouts something, and my eyes turn to slits. What the fuck is happening? My eyes scan the darkness. Fuck! I can't see.

My back presses deeper against the tree. In the madness of the last two seconds, fear takes hold of me. It feels like tentacles sprouting from the trunk of the tree, gently digging into my bask. I give my head a firm shake. No. This is crazy.

I frown, my eyes narrowing even further, skin rumpling until it’s about to tear.

“A horse?” I whisper, staring baffled into the shadows.

There’s another blow of the horn that has me glued tighter, if possible, against the tree, followed by a terrifying shout. And then there’s only the clacking sound of the rider creeping into my foggy brain, only to transform into a sharp, clattering sound that makes my ears buzz.

“Mon Dieu,” I whisper. What exactly have I gotten myself into?

2

ROBIN

For the sweetest of seconds it’s like the entire world has been paused.

The forest with its rustling leaves and foreign sounds. The horse with its rider, completely disguised in black and bronze. Even his swinging arm, leather ropes carrying that ball seems to have stilled.

There’s nothing.

Somewhere deep inside of me, my mind tells me to flee. To turn around and run as far away as I can. But my pride, my aversion toward anything that is related to the Pinault family name, keeps me grounded to grass and sand. To tree roots that feel like living entities as they appear out of nowhere, meandering organisms that wrap themselves around my ankles.

I can’t move.

The thought brings a grimace onto my lips. Of course you can move, I tell myself, but my own voice is nothing but a metallic resonance inside my mind. It’s weird. They’re fucking with your head.

White pill.

I think of that song by Jefferson Airplane, a band my mom used to love.

One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you

Don't do anything at all

Go ask Alice

When she's ten feet tall

She’d sit in her workshop, kneeling in front of countless canvasses, with her paint and brushes, and she would cradle her body to the rhythm of the song. Like that, looking disheveled in a big dress with splashes of colourful stains on the fabric, her long hair pulled into a loose braid and those freckles that decorated her cheeks and nose, she’ll stay branded in my memory forever.

Precious. And gone somewhere far away.

“Mom?” I call out, but there’s no reply in the darkness.

That’s when the world is put back to “play.”

The horse’s hops quickly morph into gallops as it dives off from its spot in the shadows. It can’t be further than fifteen meters away from me, and I let myself slide down and crawl even closer against the shelter of the tree.

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