Page 57 of The Outcast
My body was sore from being locked in limited positions on my back. My wrists and ankles were also hurting from where the rope was gnawing into my skin.
The sound of Keith’s footsteps made my stomach hurt with fear. The man was delusional and dangerous.
“It’s ready.” He said the words with pride and kneeled down next to the bed bringing with him a smell of the outdoors. “My beautiful bride. You’ll appreciate what I did for you.”
“What did you do?” I asked, unnerved.
“I built a beautiful bonfire for our ceremony. It’s heart-shaped and I know that you’ll find it glorious.” Smiling, he reached out to touch my face. I jerked back and turned away.
I expected him to hit me again, but this time he laughed. “Soon, you and I will be lying together in bed after hours of hot sex and we’ll laugh about how much you disliked me in the beginning.”
Closing my eyes, I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat. Keith was far gone in his delusional fantasies. To him it probably all sounded like a romantic fairytale, but to me his dreams of us together were a horror story leaving my body tensed up with dread.
“Sparrow, look at me.”
When I didn’t, he forced me to.
“Don’t you appreciate that I’m doing the right thing?”
My eyes widened. “You’re letting me go?”
“No.” He frowned. “I’m waiting for us to be married before I take you.”
Sneering back at him, I raged, “If you rape me, I’ll kill you. I don’t know when or how, but I’ll find a way to kill you.”
With an offended expression, Keith pulled back and moved to the foot end of the bed where he untied my feet. I kicked at him and felt adrenaline fuel my body for a fight, but it was futile with my hands tied and his being so much stronger.
Despite my attempts to resist, Keith tied both my ankles and wrists together like yesterday before he carried me outside and through the forest. I had the white duvet around me but no shoes, so when he set me down, my socks soaked up the wetness from the ground.
“I thought about waiting to do our wedding ceremony until it gets darker. A fire looks beautiful against the night sky you see, but I’ve waited for this day for twenty-nine years and I can’t wait any longer. It’s time for us to become one.”
I didn’t hear half of what he said because I was distracted by the massive raft on the bank of the lake. Instead of making a bonfire in the middle of the raft, he had placed twigs and sticks along the edges in a loop with the shape of a heart.
“Did you think about your vows?” he asked me and pulled me closer to the lake.
“No.”
“That’s okay. As long as you declare your loyalty and devotion, you don’t have to say much.”
“I’m never marrying you, Keith. How many times must I tell you?”
He ignored my words. “Don’t you like the fire I built for you? Here, let me get it going and you’ll see how beautiful it’ll be. I shaped it like a heart.” Squatting down on the bank of the lake by the raft, he began igniting the sticks and branches.
The fire was slow to take and when smoke blew into my face, I turned my head and coughed.
“It’s coming, you’ll see,” Keith said and kept working on the fire.
Looking around, I searched for an escape route. My best chance was to get to the drone and fly out of here. With my soaked feet, I moved backward. I couldn’t walk or run with my ankles bound together, but I still moved back slowly hoping that by some miracle Keith would forget about me and focus on his stupid fire.
“That’s it!” He looked back with a proud grin. I froze to the ground not wanting him to see that I had moved.
“Give me two seconds and I’ll be with you,” he told me.
My wildly optimistic plan of getting to the drone wouldn’t be possible. Leaning my head back, I looked to the sky hoping that the smoke from the fire would alert someone to our location.
In the distance four birds lifted off from a tree, making me envy them. If I could, I would take off and get as far away from the insanity of Keith’s wedding ceremony as I could. Following the movements of the birds with longing, I noticed a black dot that seemed to grow in size. The moment I realized it was a drone approaching, I gave a loud gasp and obscene hope spread like wildfire in my body.
“What is it?” Keith asked from his sitting position.
