Page 62 of The Deeper Game
Still, my heart pounded in my chest. Everything seemed surreal. Even the slim crescent moon in the sky. I could hear highway sounds, but it was hard to pinpoint the direction they were coming from.
I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling woozy, breathing deeply, trying to clear the cobwebs from my brain.
Determine where you are,I told myself.
No city lights were visible to orient me. If I ran the wrong way, I’d be going deeper into wilderness. I gazed up at the moon, sitting senselessly on the side of the sky. Unlike the sun, which rises in the east and sets in the west, the fucking moon just flits all around.
Thanks, moon,I thought. Thanks a lot!
I tried to listen, smell, straining to figure out if I was maybe near the ocean. Could I be in the Santa Monica Mountains?
I swallowed, afraid to make a move, like I might alert my captor, who surely was out there, watching. Was this some part of a sick game? I’d seen a few movies where people were dropped in the wilderness as human prey. Could that be what was going on?
With a sick feeling, I remembered the feather guy. But he was in the hospital, right?
I sucked in more huge breaths, trying to wake myself up, thinking I should focus on finding a weapon.
It was then I noticed my clothes. I’d been dressed in some sort of a skimpy, tattered little dress, like a figure skater might wear if she were playing an impoverished waif or something. Maybe skating to the theme song ofLes MiserablesorPeter Pan.The skirt had jagged panels of fabric, and I had no panties on. And pointy cloth moccasins.
Well, there was one clue about who had done this. It was somebody who hated good fashion!
And then I took another look at the outfit. Because it looked strangely familiar. I realized then that it was what the elf girl in the forest wears in the woodsman cartoon porn.
Was it my guys behind this? I couldn’t be sure. I kept coming back to the smell of my abductor.
The smell had been all wrong. And the way he touched me. And drugged me. Did my abductor know my cartoon porn habit?
Somewhere in the distance behind me, a stick snapped. Then there was a crunch. A footstep.
Adrenaline shot through me, and on instinct, I took off running—no easy thing in the thin moccasins.
More footsteps sounded behind me—crunch, crunch, crunch.The footsteps increased, both in volume and number. Suddenly a dark, hooded figure stepped into my path.
I screamed and turned, heading back the other way, only to run smack into the very solid chest of another hooded man.
“Zeus?” I said. He felt like Zeus.
Hands grabbed me from behind and a sack was thrown over my head. It was scratchy, like burlap.
“You guys?” I cried out. “Come on,” I pleaded.
Surely it was them, cleverly fooling me.
“You have to tell me if it’s you or else it’s not fun!”
I was carried a ways and laid onto a strange, rough wooden platform. I tried to wriggle and kick away. A third man had joined the first two, or at least it seemed like a third one was there. He was trying to lock my kicking feet into cuffs.
“Come on,” I said. “I know it’s you.” Or, I was pretty sure.
A pair of hands stood me upright on the wooden platform; another pair of hands locked each of my ankles into a wide stance, via a spreader bar, it seemed.
No way could I run with that thing on. I flailed wildly; at one point, my knee connected. Somebody grunted, gripping my ankle harder and forcing it into place, until I was locked onto this strange platform.
“Odin?”
More hands lifted my hands up so that they were level with my ears. Something smooth and wooden grazed the front of my neck and the front of my wrists, like my neck and my wrists were being eased into semi-circles that had been cut into wood.
“I know it’s you,” I said hopefully through the hot burlap.
