Page 1 of Secrets Within Us

Chapter 1 - Hadley

Cold

Cold.

It was so cold. The tormenting kind of cold that settled into my bones so efficiently, that I suddenly found myself not cold at all.

And that was when I knew it was time to panic.

Yet I couldn’t rouse the energy to worry, not even a little. Everything I had left inside of me went into picking up my feet and placing them one step ahead of the other in the snow.

When had it started snowing?

Shit, that wasn’t good. I was losing my grip on reality; I could feel it slowly slipping from me as the icy wind blew the branches around in the trees above me.

I needed to get out of the cold, but no matter where I looked, all I saw was forest and snow. It closed in on me from every side.

The sun had gone down hours ago, I no longer had any way of knowing what direction I was walking in. I could go in circles, and I wouldn’t know it because the falling flakes were filling in my tracks faster than I could make them.

I grabbed the lapels of my jacket to pull it closer to my body, trying desperately to ward off the ice as it spit from the sky. The zipper on my jacket had long ago broken, and I’d never in a million years thought I’d be using the cheap brand to ward off the frigid temperatures of a forest. Being trapped in the freezing depths of hell wasn’t on my bingo card for the year, or else I would have bought another one before I left.

I hadn’t known I’d be needing it; I was on my way to Florida where I should have been watching the sunset from the sandy beach with my toes in the ocean.

The knee-deep snow was definitely not the ocean, and there was definitely no warmth shining down on me.

Everything inside of me hurt, every muscle, every bone, every fiber. I had little strength left to keep going, but I knew if I stopped moving, I’d die.

I came up to a low branch in my way and rather than walk around it, expelling more energy than I could afford, I tried to step over it. My feet and legs, numb from the cold, caused me to clumsily catch it instead of clearing it. My sides screamed in pain as I lurched forward, falling face-first into the powdery hell. The pain of my broken ribs and beaten body paled compared to the excruciating pain I felt as my hand connected with hard metal on the ground. I didn’t have a second to think before the metal folded in on itself, locking my hand in the razor-sharp teeth of an animal trap chained to the branch I fell over.

The sound that escaped my throat was a scream, so horrifying and otherworldly, it seemed to vibrate through the naked branches of the winter-kissed trees. An involuntary gasp escaped my lips as I instinctively jerked my hand away from the searing pain. Unfortunately, my suffering only intensified as the trap became entangled in the chains. The flesh and bone of my hand ripped with the jarring motion, eliciting another gut-wrenching scream from my lips.

I had screamed way too many times over the last six days; more than the rest of my twenty-three years combined. My throat burned with the strain as I continued to wail into the dark emptiness of the forest.

I crouched down in the snow next to the trap, careful not to disturb it anymore than I’d already done as I tried to control my breathing. The glistening metal teeth of the trap became covered in blood as it poured from my flesh.

I tried to open the trap, but it was impossible with only one free hand, and my efforts resulted only in the teeth digging further into my skin. “Fuck!” I screamed to the treetops as I cried and tried to come up with a plan to get free.

I couldn’t tell if the blood coating both hands was from the gruesome wounds I had just inflicted on myself or from the day before.

Was it my blood?

Or was it his?

Falling to my bottom in the snow, my energy once again waned, and the adrenaline retracted from my nerves.

I sat there in the snow for hours, trying to get my hand free. Without both hands and with little strength left in my body after living in captivity and walking all day and night, I couldn’t make it budge. I had a small duffle bag of clothes next to me, but there wasn’t anything in there that would help me. The sun started creeping over the surrounding hills when I finally accepted defeat and laid back in the snow. It was all too much. I’d been through too much the last few days. I couldn’t take it anymore.

Laying there, feeling the wet cold snow soak into my back and shoulders, having lost feeling completely in my lower extremities from sitting on the ground hours ago, the numbness began to burn. I felt a sort of calm lay over me like a blanket as I drifted into idyllic blackness.

I’d come so close to getting away; to winning. I’d overcome so much to have it end in the bitter loneliness of defeat.

He had won.

I had lost.

And no one would ever know what really happened to me on that mountain now that both of us were dead.

Chapter 2 - Kip

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