I miss you

The Pain of Payment

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Jac ran for her life until her lungs burned like a fire was raging within them. Her blonde hair stuck to the back of her neck, even at dusk in August the air was thick and heavy. As she stood, leaning over and panting, she glanced behind her to make sure Hanna and Audrey were still in tow. The large warehouse they had just narrowly escaped from loomed in the distance, casting a huge shadow over the late afternoon lit lawn.

Audrey’s electric pink weave was beginning to matte together in the heat, her short skirt riding up on her thin, pale thighs as she ran. Her multi- colored tank top layers were concealed by the large hoodie she wore. Placing her hands on her hips and breathing heavily, she glanced at her present company and couldn’t help but feel angry. If she had to fend for her life, couldn’t she at least be with people she cared about?

Hanna’s brunette hair and large brown, usually vacant eyes were now filled with terror as she too bent over to try and catch her breath. She didn’t care anymore about what she would step on and kicked off her flat flip flops, shoving them in the back of her dark denim jeans. Adjusting her tank top and light weight zip up, she looked to Jac.

“What the fuck is going on!?” Jac yelled staring at her enemy Audrey and her friend Hanna. Jac and Hanna hated Audrey, although they were all once friends, because Audrey was a known shit talker. She never stopped and lost and gained friends monthly because of it. Even through their hatred now, the girls were united in their plight for freedom.

“I have no idea,” Audrey relied, staring around her, only seeing the large, gray building surrounded by grassy, fenced off paddocks and peaceful looking woods off in the distance. The sun was low in the sky as she squinted at it, putting her hand up to sheild her eyes. If Audrey ever ate, she would be hungry right now, she assumed it was dinner time. As the girls stood panting, they looked at their surroundings.

“Whatever, we should keep going because when he finds us missing…well I don’t even want to know what would happen,” Hanna tossed out. Jac peered into the distance to see what looked like large, chain link dog kennel runs and she thought she saw people by them so she reached out for Hanna’s hand and they took off in a jog toward the area. Audrey glared at the back of their fried heads of hair before jogging after them, the heels of her shoes sinking slightly into the grass.

As Jac got closer, she began to see dozens of people. Families even, all stuck in these kennel runs. They all looked sad and pathetic, like they couldn’t believe this was their life. It reminded her so much of the videos you see of the starving people in third world countries…where were they anyway? As people looked up and began to notice the girls heading for them, they all began to whisper hurriedly, looking to each other before looking back at the girls.

Hanna couldn’t help but notice how hopeful these people looked suddenly, seeing them get closer. Suddenly an old woman creeped up at the three of them, reaching forward and touching their arms. Audrey felt chills run up her spine at seeing these people here, especially at being touched by them. The whole area smelled like shit and body odor, it was making her nauseous. The woman motioned for the girls to follow now. Jac turned to Hanna, and Hanna turned to look at Audrey. All three hearts began to beat uncontrollably. Was this woman going to take them back to that warehouse?

They followed passed a few kennels, every person inside them had their hands wrapped around the fencing and their eyes watched each girl closely. The woman stopped suddenly and motioned them inside the run, which was larger then any of the others. The run had little to nothing inside of it, beside what looked like home grown food from inside the paddocks and stacks upon stack of newspapers. The woman motioned for the girls to sit on the newspapers. As they did a teenage girl came up to them and smiled saying, “we going to help you,” in a thick accent. Jac smiled happily to Hanna and Audrey as they were handed a carrot each. Audrey looked at the food as if it was going to bite her or give her a fatal disease and Hanna stared at Jac with an incredulous look on her face watching Jac brake off a piece of the carrot and eat it.

“What?” she said shrugging in response to Hanna.

“You’re going to trust these people to give you food and help us? They obviously work for this insane man!” she said in a harsh whisper. Jac looked around at these poor people and couldn’t believe for a second that they were going to harm them. She continued to eat what she was given, looking around at all of the people, children to seniors, looking at them amazed. She couldn’t figure out what they were so in awe over when the old woman that led them here came back into the run, looking panicked and talking quickly in her native tongue to the younger woman who gave them food. She walked over the Audrey, Hanna and Jac and sighed. She began to slowly try to talk to them in English.

“They know you missing. Very angry. You must hide,” she said to them. Audrey looked around flustered. There was nothing in here to hide under or behind!

“What?!” she whispred loudly to Hanna. “Where the fuck are we supposed to hide?” But just as Audrey spoke a strange man grabbed her arm and drug her off, away from the other girls. The man took her away from the kennels to a chicken coupe near by and pointed her in. Audrey looked at the man wildly, he was crazy if he thought she was going in there! But he didn’t wait for her to think, he shoved her inside and closed the door, looking in the small window and moving his hand, indicating she should move where she couldn’t be seen. Audrey began to get severly freaked out. She hated Jac and Hanna these days with a large passion, but she didn’t want to be doing this alone. She didn’t want to die alone, either.

In the kennels, Jac and Hanna were begging the workers not to sererate them but they kept shaking their heads. They drug Hanna off to another kennel with even more newspaper. The old woman began moving all the news papers, un folding them before motioning for Jac to lie down on the dirt. She hesitated, not knowing what was lying in that dirt, but lied down anyway. She felt alarmed suddenly as the woman began tossing each unfolded newspaper over it until it felt like bricks were laying over he body. She could see very little through a small crack in the make shift hiding spot and now had no idea where Hanna or Audrey were.

Hanna had been moved to a kennel much farther away, but there was a small bench inside. They told her to lie down and pull her knees up. They then began to cover the bench and her in stacks and stacks of newspapers to hide her the best they could. She was incredulous as to why these strangers were helping them, but at the same time she couldn’t have been more grateful even thought she was worried about where Audrey had gone.

The whole area fell deadly silent as Jac and Hanna laid there, wondering how long they were going to have to stay totally still. Hanna couldn’t see anything, unlike Jac. She felt alarmed when hushed whispering began, she knew that voice. Why did she know that voice?

“Where are they?” the voice growled. Jac had to stifled a scream. It was him! He had found them, they were all going to die! The servant said nothing as the man got angry and she heard him hit the ground with a loud thud. Her heart began racing and her tongue felt completely numb in her mouth. She didn’t want to die, not like this. She saw him reach through the kennel’s fencing as he grabbed a sheet from the top of the pile she was lying under, to her it looked like an add for a supermarket, but she couldn’t tell.

As he looked at the paper, the foot steps moved farther away, so Jac and Hanna sighed in relief as quiet overtook the camp once more. They didn’t know how long they had been laying there before they heard a scream come from the distance.

“No! No! Please god! No! No! Let go of me! Why are you doing this?!” Audrey’s terrified sobs echoed across the grassy fields. Jac felt tears well up in her eyes. She felt ashamed that this was making her realize how important Audrey had been to her in the past, she just wanted to tell her now, now that it was too late. Audrey’s screams continued to dominate the night air which was getting colder by the second. Both Jac and Hanna were shivering in their light weight jackets, both crying because they were so helpless to go to the aide of someone they once knew well and loved. Audrey’s screams continued as they got farther and farther away before they all heard a loud bang and the screaming stopped.

He drug her over kicking and screaming by her pink hair toward the warehouse, making sure he pulled her out of sight before striking her across her face with the butt of his gun. Audrey shriked in pain as she felt a cut open in her lip and she tasted blood. She couldn’t speak anymore, she never thought she would die like this, she had always hoped for a rock ‘n’ roll ending. He tossed her up against the side of the grey warehouse wall and cocked his gun. Audrey fell where she was shot in the head, slumped over. Her skirt had risen up as she fell, her legs spread wide, her expression no longer fearful, but now completely blank.

He sighed as he called one of his servents over.

“Clean this up and get rid of her. Little bitch ruined all my fun,” he groaned as he stomped back over towards the kennels.

The teenage girl watched as her master was occupied with Audrey and motioned for the old woman to move Hanna as she bent down and quickly uncovered Jac.

“Run!” she said to her, “go to woods!” Jac nodded and looked as Hanna had already tore off toward the open field in hopes of being out of eye sight be the time he came back. Jac followed quickly behind her, kicking off her shoes and running faster than she ever had before in her life. She wanted to yell to Hanna to wait for her, but she thought better then to make a noise.

He came around the corner and squinted as he looked off in the distance. He wasn’t sure what was out there, but assumed it to be animals running of some kind and didn’t pay any attention to it. He walked back over to the kennels before noticing the piles of newspapers in the old woman and teenagers runs no longer in heaps but strewn out across their area. He began to shake from his fingers to his toes, his finger still clutching the trigger of his gun.

“YOU WERE ALL HIDING THEM!” he bellowed. All of his servent and their children cowered, huching over in total submission. He walked up to the teenager and hit her hard across her face with the back of his hand. “Was that them?! Running in the field?!” The girl cried as she nodded. She wanted someone to finally get out alive, she wanted it to be these girls, but she couldn’t lie to him. Killing to him was as easy as anything, and he enjoyed the sport.

“FUCKING CUNTS!” he yelled before standing and stalking off toward the fence around the field. “I’M COMING TO GET YOU LITTLE WHORES!” he screamed as loud as he could.

Jac’s muscle’s were burning acid as she and Hanna ran. They saw the woods inches in front of them and couldn’t wait to have somewhere to hide. They got underneath the trees when it became bitch black. They could hear the soft babbling of a small creek but didn’t estimate how rocky, or how deep it was when they ran, both of them stumbling into the water, cutting their feet on the rocks.

“Hannah! I can’t fucking breathe! He killed Audrey!” Hannah lay there beside Jac where she fell, tears still streaming wildly down her face.

“I know! I…I can’t believe this is even happening. My fucking foot is killing me, but we have to keep going. He’s still coming for us and I’m sure there are more people that are going to be looking for us!”

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