I'm A Mess || l.c

21- Soon I'll Be Running Again

I didn't know whether to turn back and start running in the opposite direction or to keep running until I found an alley that the car couldn't get into. If I turned back, there was the possibility that one of them would be waiting for me outside their house, ready to take me back in and finish the job that they had intended to complete just a few minutes ago. But, if I continued running, there was always the possibility that whoever was in that car was carrying the gun anyway, and it would only be a matter of time before they rolled down the windows and shot me dead there and then. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the windows were being rolled down.

This was it. It was too late now.

"Lauren!" My heart skipped a beat as I heard my name being called out from the car. Except ... it wasn't one of their voices. I stopped running and turned to face the car.

"Brent?!"

I couldn't believe my eyes. This was the second time Brent had 'come to my rescue'. The first was when I walked out of the café in a mess after meeting up with Angela. How was he always there to save me at the right place, at the right time?

"I wasn't going to stop because I figured you were on a run, but then my stupid brain realised that no one goes for runs this late at night. And, that too, without shoes." I looked down and saw my bright pink socks staring back at me. Of course, I didn't have the time to put on shoes while running out of that 'hell house'.

I quickly walked over to the passenger side and got in.

"Take me to the police station." It was as if this was the awakening that I needed to get out of my head and face reality. "Now."

Brent looked at me with his eyebrows raised and a smile, as if I were making some sort of joke.

"Brent, please," I pleaded. "I don't have time to explain."

He started driving without saying another word, his smile diminished and a look of worry now plastered on his face. I didn't have my wallet, nor my phone. They were all left behind in my handbag in that 'hell house'. I internally cursed myself for not keeping my phone in my jeans pocket like I always did.

"It's going to take about ten minutes to get to the station. Do you want to, maybe, tell me what's going on?" Ten minutes. I needed much longer than ten minutes to explain the absolute torture that I had endured. The torture that I had thought only existed in thriller novels and movies. In fact, how was I going to explain all of this to the police? They would just laugh at me and send me to the mental asylum instead.

Where would I even begin?

"Ok, maybe not. You can trust me, though. You know that, right?"

"I know," I replied, "but I don't really want to talk about it right now."

"That's okay." He seemed to notice out of the corner of his eye that I had wiped away a tear that had fallen onto my face. "Hey, everything is going to be okay. Just hang in there, okay?"

"Okay." I absolutely hated it when people said that 'everything is going to be okay'. I understood that in these kinds of situations, it was difficult to think of something else to say that could be beneficial, but it certainly didn't feel as if everything was going to be okay in my case. How was I ever going to recover from this?

Would I ever recover from this?

*

After about 10 gruelling minutes of sitting in awkward silence, Brent parked the car, triggering me to immediately take off my seatbelt and hop out of the passenger seat. It was time to take the next big step.

"Are you ready to do this?" he asked.

I nodded in response while holding my breath and pressing my lips together. It had to be done, despite the fact that I was shaking and had no idea where to actually begin with my tragic horror story.

We walked together into the police station and my heart skipped a beat. How would the police believe me?

It was then that I realised I had no evidence.

I was royally screwed.