Chapter Thirty-Four
Emma couldn’t feel her skin. All she knew was that her lungs were burning, and her teeth were chattering. She didn’t know how much time had passed since she’d been taken but there was still some sun in the sky, albeit a streak of pink was starting to pierce through the clouds above. That meant it would be dark soon, and she would freeze to death if she was in the forest by nightfall. At least she had some sun now, warming up the snow. She was gracious for the lack of snow on parts of the ground beneath her feet. The extensive canopy of branches above her had captured a heavy portion of the snowfall, but fuck – it still hurt her soles.
She didn’t know how fast she was running, but she knew that she couldn’t stop. The moment she stopped; she knew it was over. She’d watched enough survival movies to know that hypothermia spread faster the slower your body moved. It seized any opportunity it had to lock your muscles in place and trick you into feeling that you weren’t in danger. The moment you stopped to rest, false confidence oozed through you and lulled you into moving slower, thinking slower, until you stopped thinking entirely.
She had zeroed in on the sound of the water. The Labrador Sea was a ferocious one, and the sound of the waves crashing against jutting rock reverberated through the forest loudly. Her breath came out in white puffs in front of her, each breath hurting her lungs and paining her chest. But she didn’t stop to see if Clayton was on her trail or if he had found her. She wasn’t stopping. That was the only thing she could think of right now.
Survival instinct reverberated through her body, buzzing off her skin and flooding her veins. She hadn’t fought this long to be capped off now.
The forest thickened as she waded deeper into it, twigs and branches cutting at her skin and tearing at the cape she had wrapped around her body. She was sure she was bleeding from her ankles and her feet too, but she couldn’t feel any of the pain right now. Ducking under a thick log that had fallen across another tree during the winter, she prayed that she was going in the right direction. She didn’t even want to entertain the thought that she was too far out to call for help once she found the water. The last thing she needed right now was to lose hope. Losing hope was worse than getting hypothermia. Once you lost hope, you had nothing.
It felt like she was running for forever, her body groaning with every step that she took. Her pants were beginning to turn into gasps, and her legs were having a harder time moving with every new step that she took.
It was only when the adrenaline was giving way to panic did she see a shade of blue through the branches of the trees ahead.
She never prayed anymore, but she felt herself uttering a thanks to God in that moment.
She broke out of the woods to a precipitous cliff, overlooking the sea. The roar of the Labrador ocean hit her at full force. With the trees no longer blocking the sound of the waves, the crashing water sounded painfully loud as she looked over the cliff to see dark, angry foam pulling at the rocks below. Wind whipped through her hair, slapping it against her face and her ears.
Emma looked around, ignoring the way her body seemed to lock in place with every new movement.
The lighthouse.
It was only a kilometre away, two at most.
She groaned as she pushed herself to keep moving forward, her ears beginning to scream with pain at the cold wind whipping itself around her. Making sure to stay by the edge of the cliff so she could see the water, she began to walk towards the lighthouse.
Everything was starting to hurt. And not just hurt, but kill. Her feet were screaming at her. Her legs were screaming at her. Her face was screaming at her. Every inch of her skin was in agony. She was experiencing Canadian terrain in full force. Dead of winter, in the middle of a snow storm, wearing nothing but a red cape around her shoulders that she’d picked up hastily on her run out of the house.
She tried not to think of it, and forced herself to think of anything but the situation she was in right now. Food. Music. The latest album that -
God, it was cold.
No. Think, think…
The wind interrupted her thoughts once again. She couldn’t even force herself to think of anything. Her mind kept going back to how cold it was. And how her bones even felt like they were hurting, and that the air was shredding her lungs apart from the inside out.
She felt herself start to cry, and she keeled over as a huge sob racketed through her body.
How had she let this happen? How was she going to get out of this!? How -.
She gasped as she heard movement in the woods and bit her lip to force herself into action again. Now crying as she waded through the knee-high snow, she let herself cry out with every step. If that was Clayton in there, she couldn’t let him catch up to her. She would not let him finish what he had in mind back in that dungeon-cabin of theirs. She refused to give up.
One foot after the other, she kept wading forward, one step after another step after another step after another.
It felt like someone had sliced her head with a knife when it happened. It happened so fast that her brain didn’t even register it at first. One moment had her eyes on the distant lighthouse, and the next, she felt herself hitting the snow hard.
Jackson pulled her up roughly by the arm, the shock of contact reverberating through her entire body. “You little cunt.”
This couldn’t be happening. She mustered all the energy she had in her lungs and let out a guttural groan to push her body forward to knee him in the stomach.
Except she was barely clothed; she was weak; and barely conscious, and he was fully clothed, and filled with anger. It was seeping out through his eyes. He caught her knee deftly with one hand and used the other hand to grab her hair, “I should have never left you alone with that incompetent shit.”
“Let go of me!”
“Shut the fuck up,” He pulled her forward by the hair, and she felt her knees give way under her. “You’re a fucking idiot for thinking you’d be able to run back into town. You don’t think I would’ve been able to follow your tracks?”
She groaned against the pain, tears glistening on her cheeks. “Let. Me. G-.”
He capped her in the mouth and shock pulsed through her mouth, and teeth. It was enough to make her go quiet, and Jackson took that as an opportunity to pull her back in the direction he’d come from.
She refused to give up. Pooling all and any remaining energy left, she twisted her head and bit into his hand.
He howled as her teeth sunk in, and she only stopped when she tasted blood on her tongue. Immediately letting go of her, Emma pushed against him again, and this time went for his knees.
Jackson toppled back and grabbed Emma on the way down. The fall barely dazed her. The moment her body hit the snow, she lashed out with her fists, punching whatever it came into contact with.
She heard a crack as she made direct contact with his nose, and she yelled out as she kept punching down. She knew she couldn’t outrun him, not in the state she was in with no shoes and no clothes and having had no food for twenty-four hours. She had to incapacitate him.
Jackson’s anger came back in full force. As if shocked by her strength, he was still for a minute. But that’s all it was, a brief pause. He pushed her off him completely and kneed her in the guts.
She wheezed in pain. Before she could take another breath, a pair of hands came from behind her and grabbed her by the arms.
Clayton.
“No,” she choked out, her breath coming out in jagged pants. “Please don’t do this, please.”
The waves were roaring beneath her, and the wind was howling through the trees. She cried out as Clayton tied her arms tightly behind her back and dragged her. She kicked in the snow, the white dust flying everywhere as she did everything she could to stop him from doing this. Flailing, kicking, yelling, she was delirious.
“Throw the bitch in the water,” Jackson wiped the blood gushing from his nose, pure hatred lining the wrinkles of his face, “they’ll never find her in the ocean. I’m done with her.”
“I’ll tell you where the will is,” she bluffed, the words chattering through her teeth. Pure fear was racing through her now, burdened by her will to survive. “I know where it is, I’ll -.”
Jackson punched her across the face. “Shut up. You’ve lost your chance. We don’t need the will if you’re no longer around. Did you forget that part?”
“Clayton,” she tried to crane her neck back up at him, “P-please don’t let him do this -.” She let out a guttural groan as Jackson kicked her in the stomach.
“That’s for making us run after you,” and with that, Jackson picked up her legs and she saw him nod to Clayton.
She started screaming then, as the two of them began to carry her to the edge of the cliff.
No, this couldn’t be how it ended. She was not going to get murdered.
Her body gave up before her will did. She felt her legs go limp in Jacksons arms, and her back slumped in Claytons.
All the fight had left her. Her body was holding up a white flag.
Ah fuck, she thought as the dark navy blue of the ocean beneath them began to peek out from under the cliff, of all the ways she thought she was going to go, this was not one of them.
It happened so fast; she barely had the time to think of any witty last words. One minute, she was being swung, and the next, she felt herself hit the water.
xx
She smelled brown sugar first.
That’s what she noticed right away.
Brown sugar, and warmth.
“Emma?”
Mmm. Brown sugar, warmth, and cotton. Freshly cleaned cotton sheets. One of her mother’s idiosyncrasies. She always made sure the blankets were in the wash at the end of every week, so it always felt like you were cocooned in fresh, loving warmth every time you jumped into bed. Safe and warm.
“Emma, get them while they’re hot.”
She opened her eyes, and saw the sun peeking in from the windows. Red curtains had been pulled back, letting the glow of the sunset spill into the house.
She’d been taking a nap.
Little feet poked out from the side of the bed and flopped onto the hardwood floor, as she realised what was in store. “Mama!”
She raced down the hallway, her hair in little braids down each side, her legs in banana-print pajamas. She reached the kitchen and there she was, her favorite person in the whole wide world.
And cookies.
She felt someone sweep her off her feet and she looked to her side to see her second favorite person in the whole wide world. “Daddy!”
“Who’s a sleepy little nutmeg?”
“You!” she giggled as he blew a kiss into her cheek and sat her on the chair. “Do I get cookies now?”
“Not until you eat dinner,” her mother replied as her dad bustled around the kitchen getting the plates and cutlery. “Your dad caught a fish while he was around the lighthouse today.”
“Ewwwwwwwwwww!”
“Emma,” both her parents said sternly but softly, laughing at her overdramatic reaction at the same time.
The two of them busied themselves in the kitchen for a while, and Emma happily watched on. Daddy was helping Mommy, and Mommy was helping Daddy, and she was going to eat cookies, and everything was perfect.
“Oh, before I forget,” her dad stopped what he was doing and then ran into the living room, “I want to try this out.”
“Honey, can’t it wait till later?”
“No, look. It’s a polaroid. We take a picture now, and it prints it out straight away. Samuel was selling it at the bar today,” he proudly presented a chunky rectangular object, and then motioned for her mother to come near him. “It’ll only take a second. I’ll face it towards us and it’ll print a picture of us three right away.”
Her mother sighed, “Ok, if you say so.”
“Emma, smile,” her father told her as the three of them gathered together. “Say cheesed on the count of three. One. Two. Three.”
“Cheese!”
The flash blinded all three of them. Emma giggled at the light, and the sound of her mother and father laughing.
And then everything went black.
A/N: I’m going to shamelessly promote my other two stories The Contract and Universe X. Pls do read them while you wait for the next chapter ^__^ teehee.