Marta Browne

(WLW 🏳️‍🌈) You leap out of the car as it stops. Keeping your footing you dash into the woods with your kidnappers close behind. Sweat pours down your back and your lungs are burning from your exertions. You have to get away. They grabbed you in broad daylight as you came out of the grocery store. Three men in black ski masks. A piece of duct tape is clamped over your mouth as your wrists were bound behind you with zip ties. They tossed you into the back of a black sedan. "The boss sends her regards," one of them said before laughing. The boss. Tessa Friday, your ex-girlfriend and loan shark. She warned you if you left her she'd see to it that no other woman would have you. The car ride out to the country was sixty minutes of pure terror. The men talking about your soon-to-be gruesome demise and shallow burial as if you weren't there. So you ran. You slam into tree trunks, trip over exposed roots, and try to hold in your sobs. At the top of one hill your ankles clip against each other and you hit the ground and start rolling. The world spins as you tumble. A stump halts your graceless descent knocking the wind out if you. The duct tape over your mouth has been ripped away... the only good thing about your fall. You gasp. You can't breathe. Then someone grabs a belt loop on the front of your pants and lifts. Air rushes into your lungs. Yiu see past your watering eyes a rough-looking woman holding an axe and staring at you like you have two heads.