So this story isn't mine and neither are the characters! This amazing story belongs to Becca Fiztpatrick (Author of the Hush, Hush Saga) and these wonderful characters belong to the great Stephanie Meyer. This story may not be mine, but I would still like reviews telling me that you like it and want me to keep writing. I want three reviews before I write the next chapter, please and thank you
Hope you like it
April
The rusted Chevy pickup truck clanked to a stop, and when Alice Cullen's head thumped the passenger seat window, it jolted her awake.
She managed a few groggy blinks. Her head felt strewn with broken memories, shattered fragments that, if she could just piece them together, would form something whole. A window back to earlier in the night. Right now, the window lay in pieces inside her throbbing head.
She remembered the cacophony of country music, raucous laughter, and NBA highlights on the overhead TVs. Dim lighting, shelves displaying dozen of glass bottle glowing green, amber, and black.
Black.
She'd asked for a drink from that bottle, because it made her dizzy in a good way. A steady hand had poured the liquor into her glass a moment before she'd thrown it back.
"Another one," she'd rasped, plonking the empty glass down on the bar.
She's remembered swaying on the cowboy's hip, slow dancing. She stole his cowboy hat; it looked better on her. A black Stetson to match her itsy-bitsy black dress, her black drink, and her foul black mood—which mercifully, was hard to hang on to in a tacky dive like this, a rare gem of a bar in the noses-up, la-di-da world of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she was vacationing with her family. She'd sneaked out and her parents would never find her here. The thought was a bright light on the horizon. Soon she's be so tipsy, she wouldn't remember what they looked like. Already their judgmental frowns streaked in her memory, like wet pain running down a canvas.
Paint. Color. Art. She'd tried to escape there, to a world of splattered jeans and stained fingers and soul enlightenment, but they had yanked her back, shut her down. They didn't want a free spirited artist in their family. They wanted a daughter with a diploma from Stanford.
If they would just love her. Then she wouldn't wear tight, cheap dresses that infuriated her mother or throw her passion into causes that offended her father's egoism and stiff, aristocratic morals.
She almost wished her mother was here to see her dancing, see her slinking down the cowboys leg. Grinding hip-to-hip. Murmuring the wickedest things she could think of in to his ear. They only paused dancing when he went to the bar to get her a fresh drink. She could have sworn it tasted different from the others. Or maybe she was so drunk, she imagined the bitter taste.
He asked if she wanted to go somewhere private. Alice only debated a moment. If her mother would disapprove then the answer was obvious.
The Chevy's passenger door opened and Alice's vision stopped seesawing long enough to focus on the cowboy. For the first time, she noticed a distinct crook in the bridge of his nose, probably a trophy from a bar fight. Knowing he had a hot temper should have made her want him more, but oddly, she found herself wishing she could find a man who exercised restraint instead of reverting to childish out bursts. It was the sort of civilized thing her mother would say. Inwardly lashing herself, Alice blamed her irritatingly sensible attitude on tiredness. She needed sleep. Stat.
The cowboy lifted the Stetson off of her head and returned it to his own crop of shaggy blond hair.
"Finders keepers" she wanted to protest, but she couldn't get her mouth around the words.
He lifted her off the seat and balanced her over his shoulder. The back of her dress was riding up, but she couldn't seem to command her hands to tug it down. Her head felt as heavy and fragile as one of her mother's crystal vases. Bewilderingly, the very moment after she thought that, her head miraculously lightened and seemed to float away from her body. She couldn't remember how she'd gotten here. Had they driven in the truck?
Alice stared down at the heels of the cowboy's boots tracking through muddy snow. Her body bounced with every step, and it was making her stomach swim. Bitterly cold air, mixed with the sharp smell of pine trees, burned the inside of her nose. A porch swing creaked on its chain and wind chimes made soft, tinkling music in the darkness. The sound made her sigh. It made her shudder.
Alice heard the cowboy unlock a door. She tried to pry her eyelids open long enough to get a dim sense of her surroundings. She would have to call her brother in the morning and ask him to come get her. Assuming she could give him directions, she thought ironically. Her brother would drive her back to the lodge, scolding her for being careless and self-destructive, but he'd come. He always did.
The cowboy set her on her feet, grasping her shoulders to balance her. Alice glanced sluggishly around. A cabin. He'd brought her into a log cabin. The den they stood in had rustic pine furniture, the kind that looked tacky everywhere but in a cabin. An open door on the far side of the den led to a small storage room with plastic shelving along the walls. The storage room was empty, except for a perplexing pole that ran from the floor to the ceiling, and a camera on a tripod was positioned to face the pole.
Even through her haze, fear gripped Alice in a vise. She had to get out of here. Something bad was going to happen.
But her feet wouldn't move.
The cowboy back her against the pole. The moment he let go, Alice sagged to the floor. Her stilettos twisted off as her ankles slid out from under her. She was too drunk to scramble back to her feet. Her mind whirled, and she blinked frantically, trying to find the door leading out of the storage room. The more she tried to concentrate, the faster the room spun. Her stomach heaved and she lurched sideways to keep the mess off of her clothes.
"You left this at the bar," the cowboy said, dropping her cardinals hat on her head. The hat had been a gift from her brother after she had been accepted to Stanford a few weeks ago. The gift had arrived suspiciously soon after she'd announced she was going to Stanford—or any college. Her dad had turned so red, so stopped of breath, she was positive steam would blow from his ears like a cartoon caricature.
The cowboy lifted the gold chain hanging around her neck clear of her head, his rough knuckles scraping her cheek.
"Valuable?" he asked her, examining the heart-shaped locket closely.
"Mine," she said, suddenly very defensive. He could take back his smelly Stetson, but the locket belonged to her. Her parents had given it to her the night of her first ballet recital, twelve years ago. It was the first and only time they had approved of anything she's initiated. It was the one reminder she had that deep down, they must love her. Outside of her ballet, her childhood had been governed, pushed, and molded by their vision.
Two years ago, at sixteen her own vision had raged to life. Art, theatre, indie bands, edgy, unscripted modern dance, rallied with political activist and intellectuals (not dropouts!) who'd left college to pre pursue alternative education, and a boyfriend with a brilliant tortured mind who smoked weed and scribbled poetry on church walls, park benches, and her own hungry soul.
Her parents had made the distaste for her new lifestyle clear. They responded with curfews and rules, tightened their walls of confinement, and squeezed life's breath from her. Defiance was the only way she knew to fight back. She'd wept behind closed doors when she quit ballet, but she had to hurt them back. They didn't get to pick and choose pieces of her love. Either she was theirs unconditionally, or they had lost her completely. That was her deal. At eighteen, her resolve was steel-like.
"Mine" she repeated. It took all her concentration to push the word out. She had to get her locket back, and she had to get out of here. She knew it. But a strange sensation had stolen her body, it was as if she were watching things happen with feeling emotion.
The cowboys hung her locket on the doorknob. His hands free, he loped scratchy rope around her wrists. Alice winced when he jerked on the knot. He couldn't do this to her, she thought detached. She'd agreed to come with him, but she hadn't agreed to do this.
"Let—me go," she slurred, a sloppy, unconvincing demand that made her cheeks burn with humiliation. She loved language, each word tucked inside her mouth, beautiful and bright, carefully chosen, empowering: she wanted to pull those words from her pocket now, but when she reached deep, she found snipped tread, a hole. The words had tumbled from her muddled head.
She threw her shoulders forward uselessly. He'd tied her to the pole. How would she get her locket back? The thought of losing it made panic scratch inside her chest. If only her brother had returned her call. She'd left a message about going drinking tonight, as a test. She tested him constantly—almost every weekend—but this was the first time he had ignored her call. She'd wanted to know that he cared enough about her to stop her from doing something stupid.
Had he finally given up on her?
The cowboy was leaving. At the door he tipped the black Stetson up, his blue eyes smug and greedy. Alice realized the enormity of her mistake. He didn't even like her. Would he blackmail her with compromising photos? Was that the reason for the camera? He must know her parents would pay the price for them.
"I've got a surprise waiting for you in the toolshed around back," he drawled, "don't go anywhere, you hear?"
Her breath came fast and erratically. She wanted to tell him what she thought of his surprise. But her eyelids drooped lower, and each time, it took longer to snap them open. She started crying.
She'd been drunk before, but never like this. He'd given her a drug. He must have slipped it in her drink. It was making her exhausted and leaden. She sawed the rope against the pole. Or tried to. Her whole body felt heavy with sleep. She had to fight it. Something terrible was going to happen when he came back. She had to talk him out of it.
Sooner than expected, his form darkened the door way. The lights in the den backlit him, casting a shadow twice his height across the storage room floor. He was no longer wearing the Stetson, and he seemed larger than she remembered, but that wasn't what Alice focused on. Her eyes went to his hands. He yanked a second rope, checking that it would hold.
He walked toward her and, with shaking hands hit the rope around her neck. He was behind her, using the rope to pull her neck back against the pole. Lights ruptured behind her eyes. He was tugging too hard. She knew instinctively that he was nervous and excited. She could feel it in the eager tremble of his body. She heard the choppy panting of his breath, growing more charged, but not from exertion. From adrenaline. It made her stomach roll with terror. He was enjoying this. A foreign gurgling noise filled her ears, and she realized with horror that it was her voice. The sound seemed to startle him—he swore and tugged harder.
She screamed, over and over inside herself. She screamed while the pressure built, sweeping her toward the edge of death.
He didn't want photographs. He wanted to kill her.
She would not let this place be her last memory. Closing her eyes, she went away, into the darkness.
Leave reviews and tell me whether to keep going or not!
Question of the chapter:
Do you play any sports? If so, what do you play?
Answer of the chapter:
Yes, I play volleyball and I swim for a team in the summer.