Page 3 of Tied

She stands painstakingly slowly, picks up her tattered backpack, loops her arm through it, then shuffles hesitantly towardthe dangling leash. Her feet are bare, poking out from a pair of threadbare sweatpants that look about four sizes too big for her. A very thin once-white T-shirt is barely visible beneath her tangled waist-length blond hair and the furry dog she’s got in a bear hug.

“It’s okay. I’m going to help you,” I say when her eyes dart from me to the leash, then back to me again. Her teeth clamp down on her bottom lip as she grasps the leash.

“Hold on tight,” my voice growls. “Don’t let go. I can pull you up.”

Pulling her out of the hole is easy, and it’s not because I work out a lot. The truth is she weighs next to nothing. The wordsstarving,malnourished, andanorexicspring to the forefront of my mind. I’d be surprised if she weighs ninety pounds, including the dog and whatever she’s got in that backpack. With both hands, she hangs on to the leash with the dog against her chest, his paws over her shoulder as if he somehow knows he should be hanging on. Her body scrapes and bounces along the rough dirt side of the hole as I pull her up, but she doesn’t let go, not even when I pull her onto the ground next to me.

“It’s okay,” I repeat as softly as I can, but my voice isn’t very comforting with its fucked-up, hoarse, raspy tone that I can’t change.

She leans against me as I kneel next to her, one of her hands gripping my shirt, the other holding the dog at her side, her forehead pressed against my shoulder. I can actually feel her heartbeat, beating wildly in her chest like a hummingbird.

“Shhh… You’re going to be okay now. I promise.”

I can’t ignore what I see. Scars, some old and some new, mark her arms and the tops of her feet and, no doubt, places I can’t see. But when our eyes meet, the damage and torment I see there is far worse.Just like me.My heartbeat skips when she stares up atme, at my face, and she doesn’t recoil at what she sees. She looks right in my eyes, unwavering, and she seesme. She lets out a deep, shuddering breath that sounds like it’s been bottled up inside her for a very long time.

But the moment quickly passes, and I tense up when her entire body begins to tremble, her arms wrapping tighter around her little dog as her pale blue-gray eyes slowly slide away from mine and shift to something behind me, widening with new fear.

I realize we’re not alone.

I turn to see a man coming toward us, his lips set in a grim line, fists clenched at his sides.

“No… no… no,” the girl whispers frantically behind me as I rise to my feet. “The bad man is coming.”

He quickly closes the space between us and throws a punch at me before I have a chance to block him. His fist crashes into the side of my face. I shake my head, then throw my body against his and take him down hard to the ground. Suddenly, he’s clutching an eight-inch blade in his hand that he must have pulled from a hiding place on his body before I took him down.

He came prepared.

His eyes are dark, blank pits, and if the saying that the eyes are the window to the soul is true, this man definitely has no soul. I can almost feel the evil radiating off him, and his determination to win this fight. I wrestle him for the knife as he tries to sink it into my gut, knowing without a doubt that he’ll definitely kill me if I don’t get it out of his grip.

Fighting to twist the knife out of his hand, I get on top of him, my knees pinning his shoulders down. Suddenly the girl appears, holding a large rock in her shaking hands. A scream erupts from her as she brings the rock down hard on his head. He lets out a surprised grunt, his eyes rolling back into his head, and slowlygoes limp. He drops the knife, which she grabs and throws a few feet away. She’s panting and shaking from the effort, but her eyes meet mine for a second. There’s determination and strength there as she stares back at me. There is silent agreement.

The little dog makes those pitiful sounds, its whole body wriggling and wanting to attack, but it stays near its master: the girl. When I hear low moaning, I look back down at her captor. At a face I’ve never seen before with eyes that don’t deserve to see the light of day. Amazingly, the hit to the head doesn’t faze him for long, and I don’t even see any blood oozing from him. Once again, he focuses his venomous eyes on me. A strange sense of déjà vu comes over me as I grab his throat with both hands and squeeze.

It’s going to be him or me. I knew that the moment I saw him coming for the girl. He isn’t going to allow her to leave him, and he isn’t going to be caught.

I make a choice.

I commit to it.

I execute it.

There’s no going back. No second thought. No momentary hesitation.

I squeeze his throat harder as he struggles beneath me, grabbing my hands with his own, kicking his legs up. But he grows weak and I grow strong, and I win.

The girl sobs on the ground behind me, and the dog lets out its pitiful howl, which sends a chill down my spine as years of anguish break free from the cage of my heart. It swirls up inside me like a tornado and unleashes its destruction as I choke him to death.

I witness his last breath, hear his last gurgle, and feel him go lifeless beneath me.

And fuck… it feels good.

I stand and slowly back away from the well-dressed body of the man I just killed. I try to catch my breath, my heart racing from the rush of adrenaline and this sick shock coursing through me like lightning.

I just killed someone with my hands. A total stranger. He could be anyone—her father, her boyfriend, a kidnapper. I have no idea, and the fact that I don’t care is both surprising and concerning. Regardless, he tried to hurt me and I stopped him, and it’s given me a euphoric high that hasn’t subsided yet.

I flex my sore fingers, continuing to eye him to make sure he doesn’t get up.

The sound of scurrying behind me forces me to tear my gaze off the body to find the girl running farther into the woods after the dog, which has suddenly bolted.

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