The Cabin

There I sat, barrel of a gun nearly touching the space between my eyes. Peering around the metal I could see the demented glee displayed on the girls face as she began to speak,

"Oh, how cute!" she began in a squealing, condescending tone "The little man is trying to be diplomatic!" she cooed.

I swallowed nervously, my mind running a hundred miles and hour. I had absolutely no idea what this girl could want with me. Money? Sure, I put in my time and had some nice things, but every penny spent was a penny hard fought to be earned. My car? I doubt it, while my '07 VW wasn't the ugliest thing on the road, it wasn't the kind of car you steal at gun point. I came to the only logical conclusion I could reach with the information I had, there was no logical reason. The silence in the car continued on, drawing to an extremely awkward length. The tense air and the feeling of making no progress forced my brain into its awful approximation of a self preservation mechanism. Awkward humor. I swallowed hard and began in a stressed shrill tone,

"Heh, yeah, I do what I can to... you know... not get shot in the face." I choked out. She cracked a grin at my remark and pulled the gun back a few inches, keeping it firmly trained on my skull.

"Very good!" she jeered "I want you to listen very, very closely" she continued "In just a moment, you're going to start this car, turn around, and drive right back down that road. You'll follow my directions exactly or you'll end up a few slugs heavier tonight. Capisce?"

I nodded slowly, doing my best to avoid any quick movements. She gestured towards the steering wheel with her free hand. I slowly lowered my hand back to the key resting in the ignition and cranked the engine back to life. Placing my hands on the wheel, I slowly began to complete the turn earlier started by my spin and drove down the road the way I had come. As I drove I began to realize how well and truly screwed I was, this particular night happened to be a Friday. No one would find it strange that a twenty-something didn't return home from work on a Friday night. I was stuck with this girl and unless I could alert someone to my situation, no one would consider me missing for the better part of a day at least. I swallowed hard and shot a sidelong glance at my captor. She was just staring at me with a wide, almost predatory grin as she kept the gun aimed cleanly at my right temple. She noticed me looking and smirked.

"Eyes on the road, Steven" she cooed.

I swallowed again. How did she know my name? I didn't wear a name tag at work, nor did I work in the kind of place you could just walk into and inquire about an employees personal information. Could she be some kind of crazy internet stalker? The prospect seemed very unlikely, as I wasn't much for social media and tended to avoid it like the plague. After several more minutes of driving and considering how this psychopath knew who I was and what road I drove home, I decided that if she had wanted me dead in my car she'd have shot me by now. Following this line of logic, I decided to strike up a conversation, rationalizing that the worst she would likely do was wave the gun and tell me to shut the hell up. I went for it.

"I-If you don't mind my asking" I stammered "How... do you know my name?"

"You're goddamn adorable Steven." She cooed in her condescending tone "Not to mention a pretty damn good actor."

"I- what?" I stammered out, utterly confused at her insinuation.

"See!?" she exclaimed "A fucking Oscar worthy performance from the prodigy himself!"

She seemed convinced that I knew exactly why she would abduct me in my own car, and that concerned me. More than that, I realized that because she was so thoroughly convinced that I was just playing dumb, this line of question wasn't going to get me anywhere. I decided to pursue a more immediately relevant line of questioning.

"Where are we going?" I asked meekly.

She giggled, the sound like something from a horror movie. I guess what they say about never judging a book by its cover is the kind of truth you can't fully appreciate until you come face to face with it. Here I was with the prettiest girl I'd ever had in the passenger seat of my car. The only caveat being that she has periodical blood chilling giggle fits and a smile that could unnerve Satan himself.

"Well, if you absolutely MUST spoil the fun" she said through her fitful giggling "You and I are going to go off to a nice secluded spot in the woods and have ourselves a nice time" she said, her voice trailing to a near seductive tone.

"Well" she began, all traces of her sultry drawl instantly evaporating "By we, I really mean I'm going to have a wonderful time. and you're going to wish you had ran when you had the chance."

She burst into another powerful fit of laughter. I sat frozen in my seat, keeping the car centered almost without thought. What did she mean by that? Was she some kind of sick freak who got off to chopping people into little pieces in the woods? Maybe some kind of cultist or practitioner of some kind of freaky murder religion? All I knew for sure is that the hole I found myself in just kept getting deeper. We sat in silence for a long time, the only sounds being the asphalt passing by beneath me and the girls heavy breathing to my right. After some time, she directed me to take a turn onto a dirt side road that led off into the woods. I did not like where this was going. A few more minutes of driving revealed that the road led to a cozy little cabin in the woods. In reality, the cabin was little more than a shack that I imagined was used by local hunters who wanted to overnight. As we drew closer, I noticed a flickering light in the window. Someone was there, and they must have been awake. My heart leapt, maybe I had a chance. If I could get to whoever was in that cabin, maybe they could shelter me from this girl, if not outright gun her down.

"This will do just fine" the girl said "Pull in."

Had she not realized that the cabin was occupied? Was the light something she had left there earlier? Was she taking me to whoever was inside? My mind raced with the possibilities as I pulled off to the side of the road a few yards from the front door of the ratty structure. I parked the car and waited in cold anxiety. What now? What was she going to do? Being this close to facing the reality of what she had in store for me, though I had no clue what it was, was a much more real and visceral kind of fear than the kind I had felt driving here. I was practically dripping in cold sweat. The lump in my throat had escalated to the point that it was hindering my shallow, shuddering breaths. The girl looked to me and spoke.

"Don't move an inch, I'll be right over to let you out." she cooed in a faux sweet tone.

She walked around the car and as she approached, I felt the speed of my heart escalate until I thought I was going to die before she made it halfway around the hood. She didn't open the door immediately, instead she stared through the glass for an awkwardly lengthy moment, the predatory grin from earlier returning to split her face. As she grinned, I noticed something off about her appearance, he teeth were stained... no, they were spider-webbed by what appeared to be red cracks. My time to think about the implications of what this might mean was cut short as she opened the door and took a step back, waving for me to get out of the car. Gun still trained at my head with unfailing precision, she marched me to the front door of the cabin. As we approached the door, she shifted around my side to try the handle. To my relief, it was locked. That made my guess that she was taking me to whomever was inside the cabin a lot less likely. The last thing I wanted to add on to my problems were more mentally unstable psychopaths. What happened next took my completely by surprise. With strength that belied her small form the girl lifted one leg and with little effort kicked in the heavy wooden door. A commotion sounded from inside the building as I saw two older men scramble from their bunks and snatch up their rifles, training them on the girl.

"What the hell's wrong with ye!?" the shorter of the two yelled "I've half a mind to just put a bullet in ye now and save myself the trouble thinkin' 'bout it!" he raged on

"Calm the hell down, will you tom?" the taller man spoke, lowering his rifle. "It's just a couple of kids. Hell, maybe they need help. You two alright?" he asked, turning his attention to look at us.

I was in a state of shock and confusion. I reasoned away their ignorance to the fact that this girl who couldn't possibly weigh more than a hundred pounds had just demolished their door in a single kick. I rationalized that they had likely not been paying attention well enough to see which of us had delivered the destructive kick. What I couldn't reason away however, was how the girl had manged to hide the gun in the split instant between kicking in the door and yanking me closer so the men could see me.

"Oh, no trouble" she said in a mockery of a sweet voice "Say... you wouldn't mind if my friend and I borrowed your cabin for the night, would you?"

"I don't see no reason why not." said tom.

Tom looked over to the other man who just returned his sentiment with a nod. The men slung their rifles over their shoulders and walked off into the woods without a single question or complaint. I was dumbfounded. Why the hell would the agree to give up the space they had been sleeping in just minutes ago to two random strangers who they had never met before in their life. Not to mention that we had just kicked in their door at what must have easily been three in the morning. The girl pulled me inside and threw me to the floor in the middle of the room, closing the door as best as she could and immediately pulling the gun back from her shorts and training the sights on me once more.

"How did you- why the hell did they just listen to you?" I asked, baffled

"Oh come the fuck on Steven, drop the act already, will you?" she said, sounding genuinely exasperated. "You know full well why they listened to me. Now stop playing coy and tell me where the fuck 203 is.

What the hell was she talking about? 203? Had she gone completely bat-shit insane? Maybe this was just some fucked up dream? That seemed the most likely explanation at this point. The girl kicking in the door I could maybe come to terms with, but having two grown up men just give up their beds in the middle of the night and just walk off into the woods with no civilization around for miles?

"Wipe the stupid look off your face and start TALKING" she emphasized her point with a vicious axe kick that impacted my shin.

There was a sickening crunch and I felt my leg give way underneath her foot. The agony was powerful and immediate. My vision blurred from the pain, but as I looked down to see my leg, I almost forfeited the contents of my stomach to the rough wooden floor of the cabin. The injury appeared like a kink in a hose, my leg flatter by several inches at the impact site.

"You have thirty seconds to start talking before I break the other one." she spat

She began to count backwards from thirty. I let out a pained whimper. What was I supposed to do? I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I was going to be tortured, probably to death for information that I didn't have the slightest clue about. Her countdown neared its end and I cringed.

"Gotta admit, you're pretty tough to not spill after the first one." she cooed.

She raised her leg with the grace of a ballerina, toes reaching over her head. With a rush of air and another sickening crack, her shoe impacted my other leg just several inches higher than the first. The result was much the same. The edges of my vision grew black for a few moments, and as my vision came back into focus, I threw my head sideways, unleashing a torrent of vomit onto the floor beside me.

"Please stop" I pleaded in tears "I- I don't know what you want from me."

The girl covered her face with her palm and sighed, clearly not accepting my answer. She began to slowly walk around to my other side, her steps slow and deliberate. The chilling fear I felt only worsened as she stepped to the side of my head I hadn't soiled.

"Playing dumb isn't going to save you, little Stevey" she cooed,

That terrifying grin split her face again as she looked down into my eyes. Once again, I noticed her teeth were tainted with streaks of red in a pattern that resembled shattered glass.

"I think we should move on to an arm next, what do you think?" she pondered

"P-Please, I have no idea what you want from me, I'll give you everything I own just please stop!" I bawled.

The expression on her face changed. The maniacal grin disappearing from her face to be replaced by the coldest fury I had ever borne witness to. She lifted her foot and placed it on the inside of my left elbow, applying light pressure.

"I really hate not getting my way" she hissed "But don't think for a second that your stupid attempting at playing protector for 203 is going to accomplish anything."

She began to apply pressure to my arm, just enough to cause a new rush of pain to flood my senses.

"I don't care how many sheep I have to slaughter, I'm going to hunt that bitch down and destroy her for what she did to me" she said a low, serious tone

"And that means either you start TALKING" she stressed her point by increasing the pressure to my arm.

"Or I string you up from a fucking TREE"

She finished her sentence by digging her foot in. A slow cracking gave way a sickening squelching crunch as my elbow broke into tiny fragments, the bone being forced through to the surface. Suddenly the girl lifted her foot and stomped down with considerable force. My vision went black for a moment. As it returned, my left arm felt ice cold. I looked down to see that she had managed to entirely sever all the bones and muscles in my arm, my forearm laying rotated 90 degrees from the rest of my arm. The only thing holding the two pieces together was a ghastly shredded expanse of skin that seemed too long and stretched thin across the gap.

"Last chance you fucking worm!" she practically screamed

'WHERE. THE. FUCK. IS. 2. 0. 3!" she barked out, emphasizing each syllable with an extra stomp to the bloody heap that no longer resembled an elbow.

I whimpered meekly. This is how I died. In some shack in the woods, crushed by some psychotic bitch who was ranting on and on about something I had no knowledge of. How long would it take for them to find me out here? Days? Months? Maybe the two men would come back and find my mangled form cold on the floor in just a few hours. I took a weak comfort in this idea. At least this way the police would be spared the search effort when I was eventually reported missing. As my senses faded, the last thing I heard was the sound of shattering glass, followed by a loud meaty thump.