Sand.

It was everywhere. On my hands, in my clothes, my hair and my eyes. I tried to rub it away, but the grains only further obfuscated my vision. Sand was my world. Crimson stained the particles on my shaking hands.

Blinking through tears, the midday sun was relentlessly hot. But a realization hit me with an icy cold rush. Goosebumps rose on my legs. I was unbound and free. Free. All discomfort from the tirade of relentless beatings I'd endured were washed away with the adrenaline. My heart leapt into my chest as I scrambled to my knees. Heart racing, my vision tunneled as I frantically tried to make a plan before logic left me all together. To one side: the water. To the other: the beach psycho's camp, the beatings. I could run down the beach though, but which direction? Did it matter?

I picked a direction, willing some of the excess adrenaline into the muscles of my legs. I headed towards the bastard sun, arm craned over my eyes, staggering as much as I was sprinting. My feet sunk into the thin sand, and I was overcome by the crawling sensation that it wasn't water lurking in the depths, but blood.

Don't think. Act, I commanded my emotions away. Far away to where they belong, the dark cave where they'd hit for hours, days, I didn't know. The passage of time had been blurred. Emotions had been a hindrance. I hid them the only place they would be safe from his fists. His knife. His eyes...

The screams...

No! Don't think! Act!

I picked up my knees, trudging in a nightmarish drawl. Tension in my lungs pushed fire to my throat, the beginnings of a panic attack. Stomaching the dread was getting harder and harder, as if my patience had been lost into the miasma of sand. Just as I'd thought I'd overcome my treacherous feelings, my foot contacted with something hard and I was sent toppling to the ground.

My bastard legs had betrayed me. My body was too bled out, too tired. It was making the choices, not me. This godforsaken paradise was to be my grave. I looked where I'd fallen to confirm my suspicion. ...And somehow, my suspicion laughed back. The corpse gaped at me, a cracked grin oozing pus in a distorted mockery of life.

A head. A human head covered in a bucket, which I'd knocked off when I'd fallen. The eyes were missing, gaping dried-out holes, and a beach crab crawled idly across the lacerated nose. I stared into the face of my death, the adrenaline of being free evaporating to icy resignation.

This wasn't freedom. It was the very opposite. I'd been tied up for days, I'd been starved, waterboarded, lashed, strapped to a wall, I'd been confined for so long I'd grown comfortable with it, I'd grown used to it! I had... expected it.

The same thing, over and over, expecting different results... His voice rang in my ears.

This was not freedom. This was the end of the line, the final chase, the hunt come to fruition. He'd let me go so I could see it for myself. The last pathetic breath of hope died in me, withering like a dried-out eyeball. I closed my eyes and heard footsteps behind me, the gentle crush of sand being pushed aside by bare feet.

Strong fingers gripped the back of my neck and I was yanked to my feet. His other hand wrapped around my face, squeezing my cheeks. Yanking my face close, I saw a smile grow on his chapped lips. I dared to gaze upon his soul. The eyes of a madman sparkled golden in the fading light of day.

You keep what you take, he'd said once. You take what you keep.

That was me. Kept.

Unlike the last time, I wasn't pulled towards the hut with a burlap sack over my eyes. I wasn't pistol-whipped and forced at gunpoint into hell.

I walked there surely, of my own volition.