Page 61 of Chasing Lynda

14.

Fire And Brimstone

––––––––

Lynda

––––––––

I CAN’T BREATHE.

There’s something constricting my throat, something forceful and tight.

I claw at it, grabbing and trying to loosen whatever is preventing me from filling my lungs with air.

I can smell him. Aaron. I know he’s here and I know he found me. The strong scent of his cologne invades my nostrils, cloying and overpowering, completing the job of choking me just as much as his hands around my throat.

I feel his weight on me. He’s hard and he’s trying to get me to part my legs by wedging a knee between my thighs.

Why can’t I open my eyes? Why can’t I wake up?

“You’re mine, Lynda. My wife! How dare you giving what belongs to me to another man? A complete stranger? Women like you were burned at the stake! You’ll pay for your sins with your life! After I make you mine again.”

Why can’t I move? I want to fight him, but I can’t. My body feels as heavy as a boulder, I can’t lift my limbs, it’s like they’re made of stone.

He roofied me again, I think panicking and knowing that he’s going to rape me again, like he did on our wedding night. He’s drugged me and this is why I can’t move.

“Dodge!” I manage to grind, still trying to fight against Aaron’s death grip. “Dodge!”

Aaron laughs, the cruelty in his voice is just as scary as his hands around my throat. “Aww, how pathetic! Do you think your new ‘boyfriend’ will save you? Do you think he fucking cares? You were just a convenient fuck. What do you expect after you made out with all his friends? After you showed your tits to a crowd of people hoping to win a few hundred bucks? He saw a cheap whore, and he took advantage of you. You’re nothing, Lynda. You’re just a hole to plug. What do you think these men want from you? They’ll do worse, much worse than what I did to you.”

No! No! It isn’t true.

Why is he so heavy? Why can’t I get free from his grasp?

“Dodge!” I cry out again.

But he doesn’t answer. The only voice I hear belongs to my worst nightmare. Aaron is surrounded by a mist, something between fog and smoke and I can see him even if my eyes are closed. I can’t escape his soulless brown eyes, the eyes of a cold hearted predator.

“Dodge is dead. Burned by his own sins. Open your eyes, whore! Look at what you’ve done! You killed him like you killed Harold. Like you kill everything you touch with your bloody hands! Open your eyes, Lynda!”

“Lynda! Lynda, open your eyes! Wake up! Lynda, we have to go!”

My eyes finally fly open. Where am I? Where is he?

“Aaron!” I wail, sitting up, finally free of the death grip that was keeping me down, nailed to the bed. “Dodge! Dodge!”

It takes me a second to make sense of my surroundings. I’m still in Dodge’s room, in his bed.

The person yelling my name is Bennett. Zane is behind him. They’re surrounded by the same weird foggy smoke that surrounded Aaron in my dream.

“What the fuck—guys? What?” Dodge is right beside me; he sits up, rubbing a weary hand on his face, as if to scrub the remnants of sleep off of him. He’s still naked, the bedsheets pooled around his waist as he looks at his best friends.

“We have to go, fast! The hotel is on fire! You need to get up and we need to run.”

I look around, still panicked from my nightmare and I realize that Bennett is right. The floor is hot as my feet touch the carpeted floor of the hotel suite and there’s smoke rapidly filling the room.

---