Page 77 of Ensnared
She stumbles, muttering loudly, and I notice something. Her right leg isn’t quite right. When I look closer, I realize that it’s a prosthetic. I’ve been so preoccupied with where we were going and with trying to escape that I didn’t pay enough attention to my captors. My teacher had a fake leg, so I know what it is. Something happened to her real leg, and they had to replace it, probably.
If she wasn’t so horrible, I might feel bad for her.
Beer Can and his driver clap and shout and point, dragging me little by little to a massive stone doorway. It’s dark inside, and I don’t want to go, but nothing we’ve done has been my idea, so what’s new? Once we pass through the doors, I hear something strange.
A lot of people are there already, and they’re chanting the word hjartanu.
Beer Can’s smiling now, and he drags me along, tugging, tugging, tugging, until I see where he’s taking me. It’s a long, narrow ledge that overlooks the volcano’s crater.
It looks like a scene out of a cartoon or something. Only the blasts of hot air that smell like ash and coal convince me that this is really happening. You can’t dream that kind of heat up.
“No.” This time, I’m more forceful. This time, I’m not going to let them drag me. I claw at the rope around my neck.
Beer Can’s driver gets tired of waiting, I guess. He leans over, knees me in the stomach, and then throws me over his shoulder like I’m a sack of potatoes. A few dozen paces away, he drops me on the ground.
The woman pulls a knife from her pouch and brandishes it. She starts to yell, and the chanting falls silent. Then she leans over, and thrusts toward me with the knife. I try to scramble out of the way, but the driver won’t let me move.
Her blade slices through the thick fabric of my new coat, and she shoves it off my body. With as warm as this area is, I don’t mind that much. But she’s not done. With Driver’s help, she slices through my Hello Kitty hoodie and my My Little Pony nightshirt. She drops the knife on the ground to her left, and then she grabs both sides of my nightshirt and pulls them back. She shouts something else, and then she exposes the front of my body.
It looks nothing like my mom’s, but I’m still horribly embarrassed that the dozens of people gathered have all seen most of the front of me—naked.
Until I realize what they’re looking at. It’s not my flat chest.
It’s the bright red birthmark above my left chest that’s shaped in the form of a perfect heart. Mom always told me it made me special. The hospital actually did an article on it, because I was born on Valentine’s Day so no one could believe I had a perfect heart-shaped birthmark. Mom wanted to name me Valentine, but Dad got first pick.
Thank goodness he did.
The people watching us start chanting again, and it gets louder and louder. My actual heart’s racing, and I start thinking about what these people could be planning to do. It doesn’t seem like it’ll be anything good, but I’m starting to worry they’re planning to throw me into the volcano.
No one could really be that crazy, right?
Only, the woman grabs my arm and starts to drag me that way. “No,” I shout. “No, you can’t do this. I don’t want to go. Stop!”
No one’s listening to me. The woman’s looking at the bubbling, popping lava, beaming. She’s clearly insane.
“Stop,” I shout again, my throat so shredded that it emerges as a faint rasp.
But we’re nearly to the edge.
By the time we’re just a step away, I’m out of options. I lean away from her, and then as hard and as fast as I can, I jump and kick with the force of my whole body behind it, aiming for her bad leg.
She goes down like a battered piñata, and then, before she can regain her footing, I shove her as hard as I can. I wasn’t sure it would work, but it does. She slides off the ledge and goes right into the volcano below. I watch her screaming, her arms flailing, and then I hear the explosion as she hits the lava.
It’s as awful as I thought it would be.
Maybe worse.
But it’s not me. It’s the lady who deserves it.
Driver and Beer Can clearly don’t agree, and now they’re coming toward me. I pretend to run toward Beer Can, but at the last minute, I dart right beneath Driver’s legs. He tries closing his legs around me, which slows me down, but I squeeze past as fast as I can.
Right as someone grabs my leg, my fingers close around the woman’s discarded dagger. I don’t even think. I pull in close and then spring outward, stabbing with the dagger for all I’m worth.
It stabs Driver in the hand, and he screams.
For a moment that seems to stretch forever, I stare at him. I drop my eyes to look at his hand, where the dagger slid between two of the bones of his palm. Then I pull it out, and I use even more force to stab him in the chest.
I think about leaving it there, but I can’t. There’s Beer Can and all those people. I yank the dagger out, ignoring the fountain of blood that follows, and run away as fast as I can.
