The Hunter and His Prey

Chapter 3: In the Home of Safety or Danger

If you read the original version of this story that I took down on 6-9-21, this is where you will begin to see many differences. Anyone who had read the previous version no spoilers please. Don't leak what you may know about the characters, so that new readers will still be surprised with the events as they unfold.

The same whistled tune from earlier this day roused me from my slumber, but the more I listened the more I realized there was the faintest difference between the tunes. Either way my heart ran rampant in my chest at the delicate sound of it, too delicate. Nothing that happened today was delicate. Today's trip had been diverted and became a feral, crude, an unspeakable horror that I was shocked I was still alive to remember.

The whistle I heard was faint, but close, making me think that whoever it was clearly was doing it subconsciously, not realizing that it would pry my eyes awake and set off alarm bells in my head to panic. Where the hell was I?

My eyes took in my surroundings as they opened. I was laying on a firm, slightly uncomfortable brown leather couch. In front of me sat a dark wooden coffee table. Three empty beer bottles sat off to the corner closest to me. The walls around me were devoid of artwork, the knotty wooden logs being the only artwork need in the cabin I was being held in. Why the hell am I here and not dead, was all I could think as I took in the room around me.

My ears continued to listen to the whistled tune that came from behind me, but almost as quickly as my ears perked to listen more closely to it, it stopped and I shut my eyes once more, hoping not to alert whoever it was that I was awake, but it was too late. Was it the same voice, I thought.

"I know you're awake," the deep male voice from earlier announced from behind me. The sound of ceramic dishes being set on a wooden counter followed. "You can stop pretending to be asleep."

There was no use in putting on an act, I sat up on the couch, a gray blanket sliding from my waist as I did.

His footsteps echoed on the floors behind me as he came around the back of the couch, setting yet another beer on table to collect with the others before sitting down himself in a matching brown leather chair adjacent to me.

I took a moment to assess the man that stood before me. Was he Jeremy's killer?  Would I be meeting the same fate as well? And where the hell was Heather? As afraid as I felt right now I needed to remain calm. I needed answers.

I took a moment to assess the man who stood in front of me. He took up the entire space of the large leather chair, making it look like it was meant for a doll rather than him. He had dark black hair that matched his stubbled face. He peered at me through narrowed long lashed dark blue eyes. The muscles of his arms rippled and tensed under the black v-neck shirt and dark blue jeans he wore, as he shifted in the seat, trying to seek comfort from it, before settling back and crossing his arms to stare at me.

"How's your head?  Your leg," he gruffly asks before taking a sip of the beer that was in his hand.

"Who are you?  Where am I? Where is Heather," I ask. My brain is fuzzy. I feel as if I had drifted off in the middle of a movie and woke up twenty minutes later without a clue as to the events that had led up to this moment.

I move to plant my feet firmly on the ground and a lightening bolt of pain shot up my leg as I did causing me to hiss in pain.

"Pretty sure it's fractured, maybe even broken," the man states with lack of emotion from my pain and takes another drink of his beer.  "I bandaged it best I could, you should keep pressure off it," he said a bit annoyed.

I heave my leg back onto the couch noticing the cut on the side of my jeans that reveals bandages and splints used to keep my leg in a fixed position. I don't fail to notice that my snow pants had been removed from my body and are no where in sight. I run my fingers across the fabric of the bandage and the splints, the slightest touch inflicting pain as I do. It pulses and radiates around me along with the throbbing sensation in my head. I reach up and feel a bandage there as well.