chapter 8: a road trip to hell

The chemical odor still lingered in her nostrils.

Numbness covered her body like a blanket, wrapping her up in a state of paralyzation. Queasiness rumbled her stomach, causing her to dryly swallow it down. She had to pry her heavy eyelids open to just a squint, her eyes immediately watering and causing tears to fall from their corners. She couldn't see anything through the tears that blurred her vision. She never remembered having allergies this bad.

Out of instinct, she went to move her hand up to her face to wipe the tears away, but her wrist only budged against metal, a jangling sound coming from behind her. Her eyebrows threaded together in confusion as she tried to move her wrists again, this time being met with a sharp pain on her wrists.

She hissed, attempting to squirm in response to the burning pain, but her body wouldn't budge. She realized that she could not move. An attempt at moving her feet only made her realize a pressure on both of her ankles keeping her from being able to lift her feet.

Her body went into fight or flight mode, as her breathing loudly accelerated and she began squirming as hard as she could, only getting the constricted feeling of being trapped. She managed to finally open her eyelids, being met by blackness. After blinking hard a few times, she realized that either she had gone blind or she was blindfolded. Horrified by either one, she began thrashing her body as hard as she could against the restraints and screaming as loud as she could, ignoring the burning sensation in her terribly dry throat.

The blackness was abruptly stripped away, a bright and unexpected light filling her eyes and blinding her. She yelled out at the pain of the light invading her pupils, the muscles in her eyes contorting at the feeling, and she let her head hang downwards to get relief from the light that was in front of her.

Finally, she blinked her eyes open and looked down at her body. She was in her grey sweatpants and black tank top that she had fallen asleep in the previous afternoon, her arms bare and cold. As she looked down to her feet, she saw that they were both cuffed by chains that were attached to large, circular weights. She tried to yank her feet up, but the weights must have been eighty pounds or more, for she could not lift them up in the slightest. Her eyes trailed up her own body, as she realized that there were ropes tied around her upper waist and her shoulders, keeping her firmly tied against whatever it was she was sitting on.

Raising her head up and finally looking around, she realized she was in the passenger seat of a car. The seat was a beige leather, and so was the door to her right. To her front was a black dashboard, and she could see that the car was driving on some road she had never seen before. It was a completely empty highway.

Her mouth watered as she felt sick to her stomach. If the car was moving, that meant there was a driver. She didn't want to know who was driving the car she was restrained to, mostly because she didn't want to be right about it being the first person she guessed it to be.

Taking an easier gulp due to the saliva building in her mouth from nausea, she slowly turned her head.

There she was. The jet black hair that had been haunting her life was pulled up into a bun, a few long strands hanging out over the woman's ear. Two green eyes stayed fixed on the road, lightened by the broad daylight flooding the inside of the car. Perfect skin grew two small dimples as two dark pink lips spread into a closed smile that was unreadable to the half-dazed August. The two green eyes turned to meet hers and, along with the batting of eyelashes, the two lips parted and revealed white teeth that seemed to mock the girl sitting there staring at them in fear.

"Good morning!" Willow exclaimed, turning her head back to the road to turn left at the next turn. She had been waiting all morning for the girl to wake up, because she was honestly getting really bored just sitting in the quiet car without anyone to talk to. But, she wasn't expecting her company to wake up in a very talkative mood. "Well, more like good afternoon," she corrected herself, glancing at the clock that read 2:13 P.M.

August couldn't find the words. She didn't know what to feel or what to think. She only let her body fall slightly to the left as the woman turned the Ford Mustang left onto an even more deserted road that was lined by dead plains looking as if they hadn't found life in years. She again tried to move her wrists, being accompanied by that same burning feeling that prompted a hiss from between her teeth. She turned her head around as much as she could, peering into an empty backseat. Looking down, she saw that her hands were handcuffed behind the chair, her arms squeezed between the chair and the armrest and the chair and the door. Her wrists were almost glowing red and rubbed raw by the handcuffs that were too tightly cuffed around her small wrists.

"Sorry about the handcuffs, by the way. I would've used my pink fuzzy ones, but I thought that would be too tacky," Willow spoke with playfulness in her voice, looking over at the girl who stared at her with red, teary eyes and chapped lips that were bright red. She had watched her bite her lip repeatedly in her sleep. "But now that I think about it, you probably could've used the laugh."

August let tears fall down her eyes, confused by the whole situation and by all of the feelings inside of her. "W-Why..." she began, her body squirming against the ropes, "What are you doing?!" Her croaky voice grew in volume, and her body's thrashing grew in aggression along with it.

"Calm down," Willow warned, "You're just going to rub your wrists even more raw." She sighed deeply, leaning her left elbow against the window beside her and keeping her right hand on the wheel, placing her hand against her warm forehead. She was expecting the screams that were about to come.

"Let me go!" August screamed at the top of her lungs, tears flowing from her eyes as her adrenaline peaked. "Let me go! Let me go!" She began moving so violently against the seat that the whole car shook.

Willow thrusted her foot against the gas pedal, causing the sports car to speed up really quick within seconds. The force caused August's body to hit against the back of the seat, momentarily freezing her as the engine revved loudly.

"Listen to me when I tell you that fighting against it isn't going to help. You're stuck. Accept it and get over it," Willow told her, becoming aggravated at the girl having a psychotic break next to her.

"Accept it?! Get over it?!" August yelled, turning towards the woman to direct her screeching voice right into her ear, causing Willow's eyebrows to raise. "Why the actual fuck do you have me tied up right now? Where the fuck are you taking me? Did you fucking knock me unconscious? You degenerate, perverted, repulsive, psychotic cunt!" August screamed at the top of her lungs until her throat was burning like flames, begging her to give it a break to cool down.

"Oh, well, lookie there! Someone's been reading her word-of-the-day's! Big girl loves vocabulary, huh?" Willow mocked, sneering at her own joke.

"I'm gonna fucking kill you! You can't just fucking kidnap me and tie me up to your fucking car chair and then take me wherever the fuck you're taking me!" August yowled, sobs filling in the spaces between her words. She was hyperventilating to the point where she was almost gagging, still thrashing against the seats.

A cold, metal object was placed against her burning, red hot temple, and after hearing the click that could only come from a gun, August froze, her sobs and squirms turning into trembles inside her.

Willow kept the car going on the road, steering with her left hand and holding a pistol up to the girl's temple with her right hand. Her eyes stayed on the road, her finger on the trigger.

"If you don't," she growled in a voice so low that August had to hold her breath to be able to hear it, "shut the fuck up and stop moving around so much, I will paint the interior of my car with your brains," she slowly finished, making sure the girl heard her every last word.

"Now, nod if you understand, and shake your head if you always wanted to be a literal car decoration." The woman scowled as she looked over at the girl, her eyes threatening and shooting invisible daggers into the girl's own eyes.

August slowly nodded, aware that the gun was pressed hard against her head.

"Good. Because I never really liked red seats." Willow spoke, her tone suddenly calm and happy, as if she was casually small-talking with an old friend.

Licking her dry, quivering lips, August turned to stare out the right window, her breathing slowing but still shaky. The handcuffs behind her were jingling around her shaking wrists. A slow, silent tear fell from her eye as she stared at the cornfields they were passing. She wondered if she was going to end up as a fertilizer for that corn, buried seven feet deep and never to be found again. She didn't doubt Willow's capability of covering up a murder. She didn't doubt her capabilities of anything; she couldn't, if she wanted to live and get out of the horrible situation she was in.

"Nebraska's such a shit hole," Willow remarked, reaching over to the glovebox which caused August to jump as much as she could, being tied so tight against the seat. She didn't want the woman or her hands anywhere near her. Willow noticed her jumping, but decided to ignore it as she pulled out a wrapped up sandwich and a cherry Coke from the glove box, holding both in one large hand as she closed the glovebox with her knuckles.

"Nebraska..." August quietly gasped. She fell asleep in New York, now was suddenly in Nebraska. Her face contorted as she began to cry, realizing her impending doom. The woman really was going to throw her into some backroad Nebraskan creek or cornfield.

Willow, noticing the girl's cries, held out a diagonally-cut half of the peanut butter sandwich to her. "Here, crybaby. If you wanted some you could've asked instead of spelling out code words on my car seats with tears."

August didn't even look at the sandwich held in front of her face. "I don't want your fucking sandwich," she whispered in despair, a hopeless undertone in her voice as she started thinking about her family. She was praying to a God, no matter who was listening, that her family would stay safe and happy after she was gone.

Willow took a huge bite of her sandwich, causing her cheek to poke out in a lump as she chewed. "Y'know..." She looked down at her sandwich, then back at the road again. "Abducting somebody really works up your appetite."

The sickness in her stomach twisted around her intestines at Willow's words. She wanted to scream at her to shut up, to keep thrashing in her seat, but she had lost hope. Her shoulders, wrists, and ankles were all throbbing from the pain of being tied down, and there was a fire in her throat. She closed her burning eyes as she listened to Willow sip on cherry Cola.

Abducted, she thought to herself. She would be one of those girls who vanished from her college dorm and was found nine months later, her body decomposing in a river or something, all of her limbs probably sawed off. She wished that Willow would've just shot her brains out right there so maybe she would escape the terrible fate of feeling her body being cut up into tiny pieces. She cried more, thinking about Daisy. The girl had thrown a full-on tantrum when August went off to college; she could only imagine how she would react when her father would have to tell her that her sister wouldn't be coming home for Christmas.