Straw Man by Patrick Logan

Author:Patrick Logan [Logan, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pathological Ink
Published: 2021-05-10T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 43

Hanna groaned and opened her eyes.

Or, at least, that was what she tried to do. Only one obeyed, however, as the other appeared glued shut. She reached up and gently probed the area.

Her fingers came back sticky with blood.

Where am I?

Hanna wiped enough blood away until she was able to open her eye. But even with both open now, and apparently functioning well, she still had no idea where she was. The only thing that was clear was that Hanna was in a dark room that smelled of fresh dirt. A single bulb dangled from what appeared to be worn wooden joists above her head, but the light it produced was a pale yellow that barely reached her.

“Hello?” she croaked.

Hanna wished she’d kept her mouth shut. It felt as if someone had put her head in a vice and was trying to shorten the distance between her ears.

Talking seemed to speed up this process.

With a moan, Hanna stood, only to bump the top of her head against something that forced her back down again.

“W-what?”

Hanna reached up and pressed her hands against what felt like a wire fence of some sort. Panic set in and this rush of adrenaline somehow triggered her memory.

Everything about the alley, the John, and Robin came roaring back.

“Help,” she cried. “Heeeeeeelp me!”

The cage that surrounded her appeared to be made up of sections of chain link fence. She wrapped her fingers between the sections in front of her face and pulled. It held fast.

No longer concerned about her headache, Hanna cleared her throat and then shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Help! Help me!” Tears streamed down her face, mixing with the blood around her eye. “Heeeeeelp!”

“Save your breath.”

Hanna jumped back and pressed her lower half into the metal cage, moving as far away from the voice as possible.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

“It’s me.” The voice was raw and hoarse, but recognizable.

“Robin? Robin, wha-what happened? Where are we?”

She wiped pink tears from her face and focused. There was another cage beside hers, separated by a gap of two or three feet. Inside, Robin sat cross-legged, her hands on her milky thighs, her head hung low.

She was completely nude.

This wasn’t the confident girl that Hanna had met, plastic gun or not. She’d been reduced to a terrified fifteen-year-old. It dawned on Hanna that she was also naked, and while this came as a surprise—mostly that she hadn’t noticed earlier—it wasn’t as big a deal as it might have been a few days ago.

What could this John do to her that Brett hadn’t already?

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” Robin said softly, not even looking up from her lap.

“I was in the alley and then… did he take us somewhere?”

“I don’t know, Hanna.”

“We have to get out of here,” Hanna said, her desperation mounting. She grabbed the wire cage and rattled it again. The metal flexed and bowed between her fingers but gave no indication that it would break. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know, Hanna. I don’t know what happened.

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