Her Safe Haven

Chapter 36 - Halcyon Days Were Over

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This arc is definitely not as exciting as the arc on Rohan's past. But I still won't keep you on a cliffhanger for too long: early update today because I have a deadline tomorrow! :D

Previously on Her Safe Haven: Winter bled after she found a cutter knife hidden in her sponge painting set. The next week she fainted after a possible attack in the changing room, and the week after that someone tried to attack her by throwing a plant pot onto her from the biology lab. Rose and Tria found Winter's The Merchant of Venice book ripped apart with a note threatening her to step down from the Student Council Election. Seth suspected that the one behind all these was Leah Stewart, then later realised that Leah had been framed by her best friend, Sasha Brown, who also liked Jonah. Just as Seth realised this, Winter went missing...

In all her life, Winter had never thought that she could be so stupid.

She knew it from the start — of course she had a feeling from the start that it was Sasha — with the hazy memory that her five-foot-nine* built was the only one similar enough to be her attacker in the changing room, or the fact that Winter could always somehow feel Sasha eyeing her at times that she had cheeky conversations with Jonah.

Perhaps it was because she didn't think much about it. She thought her head was trying to play a trick on her by mistaking a "fainting from exhaustion" into "being attacked by a baseball bat". She thought that perhaps it was just a coincidence that every time she looked at Sasha, the girl was also looking back at her. She underestimated the threat of all of the attacks on her, and thought that everything done to her so far was just a prank by some very bored student who thought they might be powerful enough in terms of family standings to go against a McHalen.

And now she was about to pay the price for her active ignorance. Not only did she just learn that she was not going to be in the student council this year, she thought that she might also not be alive anymore this year, considering her current situation.

"Keep still, girlie. You try to fight back, you're dead."

She saw the predatory grin on the man before her, and similar ones on the six others behind him as they tied her to a chair in the middle of what looked like an abandoned barn, and promptly had the urge to puke. Because her head was pounding with flashes from a distant past, and ironically screaming of how incredibly familiar all of these to that she had experienced before. Because Sasha had apparently hired these strange men to "keep her still and play with her" while she needed to do something else. And because in this kind of situation, Winter realised, her fate was no longer her own's but the universe's.

Ah, the universe.

No hate and all, but she had a feeling the universe never liked her from the start.

The tall bulky guy who seemed to be the leader of the group pulled open the tape on her mouth that was pasted there by one of his friends, and with his face in front of hers, cigarette breath assaulting her senses, he bared his teeth as he asked dully, "What will you do now, little girl? You refused to talk all the way here. Now perhaps you're ready to say something?"

'I'm mute, you dumb bastard,' Winter could only sigh in frustration at how when the universe already wanted her dead anyway, it could at least give her a last sort of miracle so she could speak her mind on what she thought about this arrogant pathetic excuse of a kidnapper in front of her — she meant, seriously? The guy was wearing bright red beach shirt and a pink bermuda yet calling dead threats on her, for goodness' sake. If she was to die, she would at least prefer to have some guy who actually looked like he might be a real terrorist to kill her and not someone who looked like he failed to cast for Baywatch.