Page 35 of Born in Depravity

Did they leave? Where did they go?

I shook away the question. It didn’t matter where they were.

They weren’t here and I was leaving.

I half expected the front door to be chained or blocked in some way.

The men didn’t seem like the type to make such a careless mistake.

But the handle gave way and I walked out to the bright, shining sun.

I squinted, trying to bring my vision back to focus.

We were at a dingy motel, as I’d thought.

The first thing I noticed was an old navy blue car with the wheels missing.

I blinked.

Then I took off at a run, despite not having any shoes on.

The bare skin of my feet burned from touching the hot asphalt, but I didn’t care. I was so close to freedom, I could taste it. I came up to a dead-end street. I didn’t even remember how I got here, but the motel was still only a small distance behind me. I could still see the sky-blue building. I wasn’t in the clear just yet.

I looked to my left, which led to an empty street, and to my right, which looked like it led to a residential building or shopping mall of some sort.

I picked right.

I was hoping to run into someone.

Perhaps they could help me.

Or perhaps they were worse monsters than the ones who took me.

I shuddered despite the heat blaring down on me, and kept running.

Just keep running.

Running…

Running…

I slammed right into a hard chest.

I let out a small scream in fright when I fell backward.

“What do we have here?” a dark, unfamiliar voice asked.

American, from the sound of it.

I looked up, blinking away my disorientation. I was in the back of an alleyway somewhere. Trash littered the narrowed space as the smell of piss and rotten food mixed in. And I was flat on my ass, peering up at two rough-looking men.

They were probably in their late twenties, early thirties.

Both were wearing leather jackets of some sort with the symbol of a skull on the breast pocket—it was the most distinguished feature about them.

Everything else was forgettable. One had brown hair, the other a dark blond that came down to his chin. Both had brown eyes and nasty smiles as they looked down at me.

The one with brown hair, the bigger of the two, adjusted himself.

---