Page 108 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

The burning reaches my head, roaring through my senses like a wildfire, turning everything bloodred. I don’t know how I manage to move silently. I feel everything in strangely disconnected sequences: the sand under my feet, then the water, the rising moisture of the lake.

Lou is standing right in front of me, separated only by the leafy curtain of willow branches. She doesn’t notice anything.

Again, the throaty laughter echoes over to us. A few swans flutter up. The last canoe reaches the level of the willow.

I can’t think straight anymore. It’s like that time right before I drugged Lou. This miserable feeling of losing something important if I keep going. Her shy smile. Her gained trust. However, I can’t stop this red burning and the chaos in my head. It consumes everything. Before I can stop myself, I slide through the branches and, from behind her, cover her mouth with my hand. With a hard, merciless jerk, I pull her behind the branches of the willow.

Chapter

Twenty-Eight

“Not a sound!” I hiss in her ear, but it’s all wrong. I shouldn’t hold her like this, with my arm wrapped around her waist like a damn rope, but I can’t help it.

Resigning to her fate, she collapses in my grip, and through the silence, I only hear the paddles diving into the water in a nerve-wracking rhythm. In, out, in, out. Foreign words bounce over the waves. Dark laughter, like mockery. Still, my mind is filled with red fire. Roars, screams, burns. I just can’t let go of Lou, can’t loosen my arms. They’re stuck like the latch inside me.

The canoes slide on, away from us. Away from Lou.

Suddenly she fights back as if only now realizing that her chance is rowing away. With all her strength, she throws herself against my embrace. Her bare feet splash in the water as if they were oars that could take her away from me. Water sprays around us.

Another laugh in the night. Then, abrupt silence, a pause.

“Hush!” I pull her closer to me and press my fingers even harder over her mouth. The sound of swan wings floats across the lake.

Lou whines behind my hand. Her resistance weakens as if I sedated her a second time. It scares me even though I can feel she’s still breathing. She will hate me again. With every passing second, I grow more aware of what I’m actually doing to her. I’m hurting her. I hold her like a perpetrator grabs a victim, not like someone who cares about her. Not like someone who has already shared so much with her. Everything is wrong.

Fear and self-loathing choke me. The red fire flows from my head into my eyes. It glows like lava gutting my sockets. There’s a scream inside me that can’t get out.

Laughter rings out again softly, almost an inkling, and louder shouts follow, a jumble of voices, and then all is quiet.

Too quiet.

I still can’t let go of Lou. I hold her, cling to her like I don’t believe she’s still there. I don’t know how much time passes. She could be gone now, with the strangers. Happy and saved.

The thought numbs me. My arms and legs buckle and I let go of Lou, more gently than I thought I could.

For a moment, she stands there, motionless. Her breathing is ragged and the sweater sticks to her back like a second skin.

Lou, I want to whisper. Forgive me. I’m sorry. Forgive me.

But she runs away from me step by step as if I had beaten her and kicked her while she was on the ground. Nothing is the same anymore, I can feel it in the way she moves.

Lou…

When she has almost reached the trunk of the willow, she turns to me abruptly. As I look at her, I clench my hands and only now realize how much my fingers are shaking. She seems even smaller than usual, even more fragile, even more worthy of protection. Her face is flushed and covered in frantic red spots. Incomprehension, anger, and hurt pride shimmer in the mirror of her eyes.

“You didn’t have to do that.” Her voice trembles, but it’s not fear.

“Yes, unfortunately I did,” I whisper, feeling like I’m the prisoner of both of us.

“No!” She yells so hard I jump. “I wouldn’t have screamed.” She shakes her head wildly. “If I had wanted to, I would have done it. Long before you grabbed me so tight like I was merely the prey you obsess over.”

I don’t understand anything anymore. Her words don’t make any sense. “You wouldn’t have screamed?” I repeat, stunned. “I don’t understand…why… I mean, that was your chance…wasn’t it…” A deep fear takes hold of me, I don’t know why. The rest of the red raging in me dies down. “Lou,” I beg, helpless from incomprehension. “Why not?”

She looks at me with half-open lips. You know why! she seems about to scream, but an invisible force holds back her words. The moment I see her standing there, fragile and strong, I realize what it truly means.

She would have sacrificed everything for me. Her freedom, her past, herself. Because if she can’t go back, she’ll never be the Lou she used to be. She betrayed her brothers for me. Her friends, everything that makes her special. It is too much.

A raw pain surges from the bottom of my soul to the surface. When she wanted to prove to me what I mean to her, I mistrusted her. I have no reason not to believe that she had time to scream.

---