The cave.
How did she ever come to this?
With her cracked knuckles, she massaged her torn ankle that chaffed under the metal restraint. The cuff was attached to a chain that ran across the floor and was anchored to the stone wall. Her shoulders were sore from pulling against it. Pulling, pulling, until exhaustion fell upon her. Her spirits dashed, then revived, and she would pull again. The chain held fast. She pulled some more.
She rubbed her hands together, doing her best to exorcise the stiffness in her fingers. Focusing her mind on the slender digits. Forgetting her surroundings by the momentary sensation of kneading muscle.
Molly looked at her hand, her right one, the hand that she had dug into the side of her kidnapper’s neck and clawed for vengeance. The nails were broken and the cuticles were stained with remnants of her own blood. Underneath, the raw abrasions glowed pink, bare tissue left on the links of the chain.
She thought she was tougher, smarter. She thought she was invincible when she set off from home, leaving behind her the dull surroundings and princess bed, the boring life of suburbia. She thought she knew the world. She thought she owned it.
But now she sat in darkness, staring at her flaking flesh as it slowly fell from her hands. Hands that were softer than she ever admitted they were. Molly brought them to her face and cried. She cried not so much in fear of her situation, of the unknown future dreamt in the mind of her captor. She cried as she mourned the death of who she thought she was. The street-smart, thick-skinned renegade.
She had fought in the truck, she told herself. Fought hard. The man seemed generally surprised when she drove her fingers at his throat. He had nearly lost control of the truck, swaying between lanes into oncoming traffic. Sending exhaust into a sea of gawkers on the strip. But he had recovered quickly and punched her across the head. She had never been hit before, and the shock of the pain made her lose her grip. He then grabbed her by the back of the neck and shoved her face into the dashboard. That was all she remembered, waking up alone in the cave chained to the wall.
Molly thought about that moment. She isolated it in her mind. The moment her fingers grabbed on to his neck and clenched. His look of shock. The feeling of control over an uncontrollable situation. It had been brief, a split second, but it gave her strength.
She came out of her recollection and centered herself.
Wincing as her tender hands gripped the chain again . . . she began to pull.