The Mating Games

Chapter 35: Beginning of the end

I wish I could say this was the first time I had been kidnapped but it wasn't. It was beginning to feel like a regular occurrence, like I should be getting a stamp so my tenth visit was free. I could feel my head pounding like a jack hammer, no doubt the result of her right hook but I refused to let it distract me. The stakes were too high for this game, I wasn't willing to gamble the life of my child for something as little as a sore head, and sore arm, and sore... everything? This was a cat and mouse situation that I planned on winning. Now all I had to do was make a plan. Easy, right?

The imposter shoved me towards the dark forest, digging her hand into my lower back when I slowed. The knife she had used on my face was clutched firmly in her hand, digging gently into my rib cage so if I was to fight, it would be a quick death.

Blood was still dripping from my chin and clung to my damp neck like a humid day. The cut was deep enough to leave a scar but not so much that it was have left me unconscious; I guess that is one good thing about the imposter, she knew her way around a knife.

I scanned the night sky for any indication of where she was taking me, even the littlest hint of a direction but I was just as lost in the forest as the first time I had wandered in alone. My mother seemed to know where she was going at least, her steps were purposeful and demanding; like she had walked this route a million times.

Now that she had revealed herself as an imposter the façade she had built around my mother had slipped, I could see clearly the differences between them. My mother had a kind smile, the kind that reaches your eyes but the imposter didn't smile. She drew her lips in, sucking the flesh till the point of blood loss making her lips appear yellow in colour. She also held herself differently, like she had a stick shoved up her spine, making it long and rigid. There was no way in my right mind that this was the same woman I had grown up with, the same woman that had cradled me in her loving arms and rocked me when I cried. This woman was a shell, an empty husk of what a person was supposed to be. Sure, she acted human but it came across forced and robotic in motion; like someone's bad programming had her glitching all over the place.

We went deeper into the forest, so deep the moon couldn't even touch the ground; this was a place of misery and woe, where hopes went to die. I couldn't shake the sense of foreboding that settled into my chest; it was dark and heavy like a baby clinging to a mother's breast. Like my baby, still reliant on me to keep them safe and I sure was doing one hell of a job so far.

"Where are you taking me?" the imposter jab the knife a little deeper into my ribs and shoved me towards a large crowding of trees.

"Doesn't matter where, they'll never find you," she taunted back, making sure to quill any remaining hope from my body. We passed into the thick shroud of trees, bowing under the long arms that seemed to trap us in. My eyes searched the dark night, watching and waiting for the shadows that haunted my nightmares. I knew they wouldn't be far behind her, she never anywhere without them; like a strange kind of dog in a way. But I had never been as terrified of a dog like I was of the shadows; I had spent my whole life telling myself there is nothing to be scared of in the dark, just like there is no monster under the bed or bogeyman in the closet but I was wrong.

It had been some time since we had walked out of my house and into the forest but I could finally see the outline of a cabin in the distance. Unlike the last place I was taken, this cabin was small and hidden within the shelter of the mountain; built into the earth like a hunting perch but I could see a clear outline of a chimney. She ushered me into the cabin, only pausing briefly to light a small lantern by the front door and carry it over to a large wooden table.

I wanted to laugh at how obscure and olden this place felt with no lights or modern luxuries but the words died in my throat as a larger figure came out of the darkness.