The Desert Standoff

able to sell her, which means that whatever was going to happen to Natalie is now going to be so much worse. Her lips feel chapped and raw. She wants to cry, but she knows she can’t. She wants to kick him in the back of the head but doesn’t know how to manage it any more than she knows how to survive the car going off of the road. She’s not fastened down by anything. She also would have to dislodge the weight on top of her, and while Suzi is a small girl, she doesn’t feel as small as she should at this moment. She feels too heavy.
Like dead weight, the evil voice in Natalie’s head supplies. She instantly attempts to squash that voice down. She doesn’t want it to be right. Her mind can’t believe that it’s possible. It is Suzi’s birthday. They have so many plans that are unfinished. There is no way that her bright, shining, happy friend might possibly be dead right now. There is just no way that her best friend’s dead body is lying on top of her right now. Tears threaten her. The anguish in her throat is so heavy that it feels like it’s going to choke her. Natalie pokes and pinches at Suzi more and more with every passing second. What did he do to her? Hopefully, he just hit her really hard and it’s taking even longer for her to wake up than it normally does. Hopefully that’s all that this is. Natalie keeps telling herself that over and over again.
She will never make it out of this car alive if she succumbs to the grief running rampant through her body. If she was just destined to die, then she should have let her mom finish her off. Lord only knows how many things her mother has done to her over the years that should have ended in Natalie being dead. It’s a wonder she even survived infancy. Dad left when she was only four. The memories that she has of him are faint and probably only rosy colored for the fact that they might be the only “happy” memories that she’s ever had. She can’t even remember if they are things that actually happened or if she just made up the happy things with her dad in order to cope with the traumatic realities of her everyday life. Natalie wants to blame him for leaving. She wants to blame him for leaving her with her toxic mother. The twisted, abusive, crazy bitch. She should hate him for not taking her with him, for not loving her enough to rescue her or even attempt to come back for her. Mother certainly never spoke about him. She would just start screaming and holding her ears whenever he was mentioned. He could have thrown her off of a bridge when she was a child. That might have been a kinder thing to do than to subject her to all of the years with that horrible beast as her mother. He could have come back and had the state take her away, that would have been kinder.
Apparently it was all for nothing because now she’s on the fast track to be sold like cattle into a market where her fortune is to be raped to death by monsters wearing human faces. Something that she couldn’t have imagined in her worst nightmare. She doesn’t like being touched in the best possible circumstances, and she will be devastated if this happens. Perhaps she can simply ... stop breathing. She can’t allow this man to be the one to kill her.
Tears leak down the corners of her eyes despite the way that she is trying to keep them closed. He is going to hear her. He is going to notice the change in her breathing. She can’t get her hands free. She cannot get them out from under Suzi. She needs to wake up. Cold is settling in her limbs and they feel like iron.
Natalie attempts to open her eyes again, hoping to see a highway marker of some kind, of any kind that might help her see where it is that she has found herself. At least then, if she has some sort of bearings, maybe she can ... do something.
“I know you’re awake.” Dapper Man’s voice is like velvet as he addresses her. “Why do you keep pretending? You have to know that it isn’t going to make a difference in the end, Snow.”
Snow. That’s right. He’s going to sell her as some virgin prospect for a lot of money. The tears start anew.
“Just try to relax. I know it’s frightening now, but there is no way for you to get out of this. There is nothing you can do, and nobody is coming to save you. Soon I’ll give you a very happy concoction to make things sort of ... fade away for a while, that is if you continue to be a good girl, Snow. If you’re not, I will pull this car over right now and ravish you in a way that you will not enjoy, and no, not in the place you’re thinking either.”
She is going to puke. She’s going to vomit. She’s not going to be able to help it. Natalie’s torso retches and she empties up all of the liquor that she drank earlier this evening right into the floor of his car. Dapper Man doesn’t even seem fazed; he simply rolls down the top cracks of all of the windows just a fraction so that the smell will not contaminate the rest of his vehicle. If only she could turn herself into something small and float away. She used to imagine that she could turn herself into other creatures whenever Mother hit her. Whenever she chased her with a shoe around the house she would imagine herself turning into a bird and flying very far, far