The ground is coated with snow and there are several ice covered trees that wave wildly in the wind. They surround Sarah as she stalks the doe. Her bright blue eyes follow the deer's movement and her slim figure easily moves along the unfamiliar path. One more shot and the deer should be dead. Sarah swears under her breath when her black hair is whipped into her face. She grabs a rubber band off her wrist and pulls her medium length hair into a bun with her bangs hanging free. She follows the tracks in the snow with her rifle at the ready. She feels confident and capable. Her breathing is steady and her eyes are constantly scanning the woods in front of her.
Sarah's confidence dies down when she hears a ringing that seems fill the otherwise silent woods. It echoes off of the trees and she immediately recognizes it as that of a bullet being shot from a gun. Her eyes grow wide and she stops in her tracks. Her instant reaction is to run away. Other people meant trouble. It was a lesson she had learned time and again. Sarah swallows when she feels a sharp metal blade pressed up against her throat. Whimpers escape her chapped lips.
She closes her eyes. Memories of her father work their way up to the forefront of her mind. He had dominated her the same way this person was. She struggles against them. Whoever it was shoves the blade harder against her throat just like her father would have. She pulls against their thick forearm. It was definitely a man. The more she struggles the harder the blade is shoved into her skin. There's a thin stream of blood that trickles down Sarah's neck.
The man has a deep belly laugh. His hot breath hits the side of Sarah's face. She struggles to separate the present from the past, but her father's sneering face haunts her. She goes still just like she did when her father was this way. Maybe this man would do what he wanted and then let her go. She removes that thought from her head. That type of thinking meant she was giving up and there was no way in hell she was going to do what her old man wanted her to.
The world around Sarah seems to disappear. It's replaced with a dingy apartment and her father's underwear clad fat figure. He sips water from his canteen making Sarah lick her lips. It had been ages since she had, had real food let alone even a drop of water. Her tummy grumbles as her anorexia figure stands in the doorway.
Her father notices and gives her a sneer. "It isn't polite to stare." He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Hasn't that slut of a mother taught you shit?" He laughs, "Of course not she's too busy fucking anything that moves."
He pauses as he looks Sarah over, "How old are you? 13?"
Sarah's voice is soft and wary, "I'm 6 Daddy."
"Close enough," Sarah's father states.
Sarah tilts her head at him, "You're 7 years off."
Her father yells at her being set off for no apparent reason, "You fucking bastard of a child! How dare you talk back to me! Go to your room!"
Sarah looks at him shocked, "I wasn't…"
He gets up off of the sofa and makes his way across the room to Sarah. He raises his hand, but stops just inches from Sarah's face. She instinctively cowers away in fear. Then like a flash of lighting he punches Sarah in the stomach. "Get to your fucking room or I'll show you what pain really is!"
Sarah struggles to come back to the present but every time she does the images come back and effectively draw her in. While Sarah struggles internally her rifle is forcibly taken away by the man, her eyes dart back and forth seeing things that aren't there. Small cries escape her dry throat as images of her father's gleaming knife come to the forefront of her mind overriding all her senses. You'd think that after all these years she'd be able to overcome and move forward, but then people like the man behind her showed up and plunged her head first into the past. The man pats Sarah down and confiscates her hunting knife from where it's holstered to her jeans. He also takes away the ammo for her rifle. Sarah's eyes are glazed as she relives old, painful memories.
The man roughly shoves her forward, "We've got a long walk ahead of us. Get moving."
Sarah's still not all there. The man shoves her forward again. She comes back to her sense and goes to reach for her knife only to find it missing. She curses when she realizes what's happened. How was it, that even now her father had so much control over her? The man shoves her harder. Seeing no other way she complies. The cold winter air rushes by her flushed cheeks making her shiver. The man holds his knife pointed threateningly towards Sarah and every time she doesn't move as fast as he would like the blade pushes deeper into her sensitive back. Sarah and the man make it about half a mile before they encounter another man.
"Jerry," the man holding Sarah at knife point greets the other man.
The man being greeted wipes his bloody hands off in the snow. His hair is dark brown and has ice crystals in it. Sarah watches as he gets up and reveals the deer she had been tracking earlier. The man steps towards Sarah making her take a step back. She feels a jab when the knife pushes into her spine. Sarah feels trapped when the brown haired man only leaves two feet between them. He strokes her face and Sarah clenches her jaw.
"Aren't you a beauty?" The man says it like she's an animal and not a fellow human. He looks up towards the other man, "Where'd you find her?"
"About a half mile back. I think she might have been tracking that deer there." The first man explains.
"Is this true darling?" the brown haired man asks.
Sarah stares at him defiantly. "No I wasn't. You can have her and if that's all I'll be on my way." Sarah goes to move away only to have the knife shoved even further into back.
"That won't be necessary." The man smiles menacingly down at her.
Sarah's voice is broken and soft like a child's, "Whatever you're going to do… just make it quick."
"Who said we were going to do anything?" the man asks innocently.
"If you're not going to rape me, kill me, or torture me then why won't you let me the fuck go?!" Sarah exclaims exasperated.
"Wow those are some pretty grim choices. Don't you think?" the man cocks an eyebrow at her.
Sarah stares at the man questioningly, "Then what do you want?"
"To take you back to our camp, we have food, supplies, women and children," the man answers.
Sarah fights against the man only to have a gun shoved in her face by the brown haired man. Her eyes grow wide as she cries out, "I don't want to go. Let me go!"
The man smiles sweetly at her, "I'm afraid you have no choice."
Sarah stops struggling those were the same words her father used before h-before he raped her. If she struggled she always came out with worse wounds than if she just gave in to his wishes. Sarah gets sucked back into the past. As always her father's sneering face takes center stage as he does some undesirable act to either her, her siblings, or her mother. The man says something to her she doesn't hear.
"Are you stupid or something? I said to get your ass moving," the man shouts.
Sarah looks up. She notices the brown haired man holding the small deer on his shoulders. The doe's guts are spilled across the snowy ground mixing crimson with the bright white. She takes a step forward as the first man leads her by knife point through the usually calming woods. Why was it that situations like this always found her?
Hours go by and it seems like they're going nowhere. They just pass tree after snow covered tree. Then Sarah sees it. At first it's just a building but as they move closer to it she realizes it's a prison. It's fully equipped with watch towers and armed sentries. Sarah gulps. Any plan she had of escaping in the middle of the night has just been eliminated. The man ushers her closer to the chain-link surrounding the prison. The gate swings inwards and just as soon as they get inside a woman puts a lock back on it.
Sarah is forced to stand in front of another gate and wait for it to open. It creaks as it swings inwards. Sarah continues forward feeling hopeless. The further in Sarah got escape seemed more and more improbable. Maybe her father was right and she deserved this in some messed up way. She clenches her jaw. That wasn't possible she had done nothing that made her deserving of this. Images of those she'd killed pass through her mind disagreeing with her. Sarah hadn't meant to kill some of them. It had just… happened. Once her father's sneering face came into her mind it made impossible for her think properly. She either fought in a blind rage or remained motionless.
Sarah's brought back to the present when snow falls on her already freezing face. She makes her way across the prison yard. Before too long she reaches a door that opens immediately. How many people were there in this gloomy place? Sarah walks in. She glances around her. There was nothing but cells and more cells. The man with the knife shoves it into her back.
"Keep moving." He demands.
Sarah obeys and makes her way through the cell block into a hallway and then into another cell block. There's a stark difference between the cell block she had been in before and the one she was in now. For one thing the other cell block had been completely barren but the one she was in now had lifeless corpses hanging from the ceiling. The corpses were a mixture of deer, moose, and human carcasses. The one thing they all had in common was the large meat hooks forced through their meaty torsos. Small puddles of dried blood had long ago formed on the ground below them.
Sarah's forced forward. She can feel prying eyes on her as she is lead to a cell and past the dead bodies. She feels numb and isn't quite there. She never really was these days. Her father had, had a much more lasting effect on her then she would have liked to admit. When the present comes into focus the cell door is being shut in her face. She was done with what little bit of reality she managed to focus on. She was ready to bite the dust and meet her end. Maybe these people would be merciful and make her demise as quick and painless as possible. Sarah laughs weakly. It wasn't likely. These people probably had more twisted plans for her. She glances up at the gruesome hanging bodies. Was that the fate that awaited her?