0.1 | No Exit from Deception ✓

0.47 | I'm Coming Home . . . I'm Coming Home

The hints of Tasher Garfield being Tasher Garfield barely sneaked up from the start. She felt a slight shock when he revealed nothing but his true, inherited side. She used her elbows to push herself forward from the groups of tourists milling about at the entrance. Not an arguing point, some of them were trapped noting how the gates shone under the chandelier lights when opened by the guard to welcome the oncoming guests.

Suddenly when it was Tasher's turn, a horde of an ebullient yet clumsy family along with their friends and friends of friends clogged up the passage. He pressed his lips and groaned a moment later, "Please make way for me! It's an emergency!"

Ruby couldn't concentrate on whether to look back or look ahead to where her footsteps were falling. She wondered how much distance she would be able to cover up wearing a pair of flimsy slippers. And just then, she tripped at the snowbank and the strap of her slipper broke off.

"This can't be happening," she cried out, kicking the other slipper from her feet and abandoning her phone right there -- and sadly, the evidence with it.

The blood running in her feet froze and it became numb as she waded through the large piles of snow that permeated. It was a rare case for the place to refuge in such kind of heavy snowfall.

Her face felt very hot despite being in regular touch with the cold snow. As if, her auburn head was festooned with a tiara of white flakes, she didn't brush it off. "My phone. Fuck." She turned around and the impossible thought of finding her phone that had evidence about Mr. Garfield diverted her mind.

But the fear of saving her life propelled her to go farther and farther away from the hotel. It got quieter now. There was no possible existence of any human en route.

The harsh wind made it difficult for her eyes to stay open and mouth close.

Her heavy breathing slowed down as she saw a telephone booth at a two hundred meters distance. Stumbling and rising to her feet. She finally yanked her body against the door and accidentally opened it in one go.

Catching her breath and analyzing how the booth worked, she searched the pockets of the stolen coat and luckily found a penny. She inserted it with impotent rage and dialed Joseph's number.

"Joseph! Pick up your phone please!" she wailed into the receiver and her words toppled over her head in the confined space. She glided against the door and refused to believe if her legs had some impulse left to help her stand on her feet. "Joseph . . . please save me. You fucking promised me that you would always protect me! Please come and save me."

The white streetlight casting through the pane of the booth suddenly darkened. She saw a ghastly silhouette of someone appearing on the front side. He banged on the door and Ruby closed her ears, terrified. Her body thudded along.

The structure of the booth assured that if he continued doing it, the door will come in his hand in a second. And it did happen after some time.

Before Ruby could do anything, he cowered down and whispered, "I'm giving you a minute and thirty-one seconds. Run as fast as you can." Tasher's bad intentions weren't enough, he had to top it off with a kiss on her head. "And your time starts now."

Ruby coordinated his words to a coach's boosting speech and started running with a herculean effort. She dragged herself, and although her body was giving up to the cold acclimatization; she didn't falter.

Tasher had turned his back on her and removed his eyes from his smartwatch. He was under no pressure of finding her. Rather, he sang a song like a phenomenally stupid person while staring at the sky.

By some precious miracle, she spotted a pinprick of light behind the thick bushes, on the side, and switched her barefoot journey to a secret place. Surprisingly, it was a bus exchange bustling with an unexplainable number of passengers involved in an orgy of buying tickets and booking taxis.

She looked ahead at the buses standing in a row. The bus drivers seemed to have been in a profound conflict as the arrival of new buses jammed the road completely. Hullabaloo was at its peak.

Gosh, there are so many heads out here, she sniffed and saw a small orange-painted cubicle with a board saying 'for queries only' secluded from the main infrastructure. There was a long queue of miffed people, fagged out of standing there for hours at the window with their travel bags. She turned around to keep an eye out for Tasher for a few seconds and changed her plan instead. The second thought clicked in her head they would ask for money and other personal information which she didn't want to air out.

"Twenty-eight."

"Twenty-nine."

"And . . . Thirty one!"

He traced the direction of her footprints molds and pulled a distinctive smile. That smile detonated at times when his chances of winning were greater than the rational probability. "It's getting more interesting than a Tom and Jerry show."

A lady carrying a sleeping baby and a purple drum bag stepped down off the bus and cannoned against Ruby. Dissatisfaction plowed her brows as Ruby asked her, "Hey, does this bus go to Broadmoor?"

"I'm afraid I don't know much about the city?" she stated, not hesitating to check out Ruby's appearance again.

Ruby moaned in a throaty voice and secured a palm on her forehead.

The lady closely watched the worn-out girl and yelled to grab her attention, "Okay . . . it will drop you to Atlanta Matrix first and─"

"What about Burlington Tower?"

"Yeah . . . I guess that's the last stop."

Without sparing a word of thanks, Ruby climbed up on the gangway and found people sitting in a scattered manner. Thankfully, nobody looked at her as they pined away for habituated places. She sat in the middle; it was a window seat. Her wet hair framed her pale face, and her lips were chapped as she made no effort to look after herself.

Tasher regretted giving her time to escape after seeing what this place really looked like. "How will I find her now?" No amount of beautiful young girls revolving around him could make him bat his eyelashes. He was determined to find her and possibly teach her about the consequences of what happens when one didn't obey his rules.

He crept up on the same bus, amidst people flitting from back to front.

Her heart began to jounce as she saw Tasher. She turned her back slightly to show him that her coat had been stuck in the down-below space.

The golden-haired figure dressed in a high-neck black sweater and black pants treaded past her silently.

Amidst the whole unrest, a wrinkled face had been witnessing Ruby's anxiety from afar and quite some time.

She breathed out and sent a prayer heavenward. She merely would have opened her eyes when a black man told her, "Hello, young lady! I think you are sitting in my seat."

"Sorry." Ruby got up carefully. Her widened eyes took in her surrounding. He must have got down, she thought.

Just as she curled up in the last seat, sobbing her heart out like she just saved herself from the brink of death, the same wrinkled face stood rooted with a tumbler of warm water. "I'm leaving it here. Drink as much as you want to."

Ruby shed away her tears and bowed down, having no energy to even mumble a word of thanks.

The worried woman didn't get away from there and mumbled, "Wait. I'll get you my blanket."

Ruby felt a pain in the chest area and she grazed her fingers lightly onto the craggy marks. How would I explain this to you, Joseph? She thought.





Word count 1200

a/n; the moment has finally come. see you in the next chapter.

ps: I cried while writing this chapter. Hearts out for Ruby 💗

Anyways, I love this song...