Safer in the Dark

''The following is based on true events that occured in the wilderness of southwestern Ohio in 1979. '''Warning: Does contain graphic stuff and allusions to mindless sexual activities, but bare with me, this is the only time I have ever or ever will include these disturbing things in a story. It is, of course, a pasta, so rate fairly. I know the risks in including such subject matter but I'm willing to face them in order to tell a story.'

Thomas had been drinking again. For Elise Sadler, the woman in his possession, this was worse than death. She had to endure physical and sexual assault from this bastard for over a year now, ever since she went missing from that spring break camping trip. Now, she hated herself intensely. Why? Between the periods of hellish abuse, she was both relieved for her survival, but on the other hand she felt somewhat exposed and vulnerable without being in close contact with her tormentor. She wanted to die so, so badly. At this moment, the worst torture Thomas could ever inflict open her now was letting her live.



Thomas entered the usually locked room with a bottle of Smirnoff vodka in his hand and a record reading 'My Sharona - The Knack' in the other, with assorted bottles of beer and wine and champagne lying around this small, secluded cabin. After taking a swig of his drink he set the record down on the record player and adjusted the needle. (Press play on the video now and read while you listen)

The music started playing and Thomas made a ditch effort to sing along to the song as Elise glanced over to the window, which had boarded up from the outside. There was no way she could get past Thomas; of course, it had been an entire year and people obviously weren't looking for her anymore. She didn't belong at home; she was dead to her family and friends. She feared, privately, that she only belonged here in this hellhole with this ass-beating Satanic shit-kicker who kept her here as his own little Barbie doll.

'Muh-muh-muh-my Sharona....' Thomas said between gulps of the burning beverage. He had a diluted palate from years of drinking and smoking, which meant he could drink piss and mistake it for lemonade; it also meant that whenever he violated her with his mouth he wouldn't taste anything. He didn't smoke that much anymore, because he now had semi-crippling lung cancer and only lit an occasional Marlboro to put out with Elise's arm. It would be something of a running joke, although Elise thought it far from funny.

Elise tried to gather herself, to stand up, but her legs were somewhat wobbly from weeks of being sprawled on the floor, hopeless and looking for an end. She managed to muster enough strength from deep inside her to assume something of a crude, panicked Roman chair position on the wall.

When Thomas saw what she was doing, he instantly became livid and furious, as her futile attempts to stand on her own had somehow interrupted Thomas's sing-along time. He slammed the bottle down on the table next to the record player and shoved Elise to the floor, her landing on the creaky wooden floorboards with a loud THUD please him. In order to hammer the nail in a little deeper, he kicked her in the stomach, causing her to choke back on her foul-tasting vomit. Her eyes watered, mostly because of the throbbing pain in her abdomen.

"Stay on the fucking ground, you fucking bitch!!!" Thomas yelled ferociously, as if trying to be heard over the exclamations of 'My Sharona!' coming from the record. Elise, despite the pain, tried to crawl to the corner of the room to try to put space between them. That only made Thomas angrier, and, in an alcohol-fueled rage, lunged for her and grabbed her leg.

Elise squealed dimly as Thomas put a large, almost buffoonish hand around her neck. Despite having breathing problems and having a trash bin full of bloody tissue caused by his lung cancer, Thomas was still 250 pounds of muscle and athletism. You could call him a sadomasochistic mountain man if you want to, notwithstanding, as Ohio is relatively flat.

With his sweaty finger curled around her Adam's apple, Thomas began the reoccuring routine of unzipping his fly. The sound of the zipper caused Elise to gather that she was about to be raped, before she asked the first question in days. Thomas caught up some blood from his lungs in his mouth, and spat it in Elise's face.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I ha - Wait, did I fucking tell you that you could fucking speak?!?" With this, Thomas slammed Elise's head against the wall in retaliation, causing her to bleed near her hairline. Thomas might've been any wrestler's worst enemy, but he wasn't that bright; he was like that dim-witted, sluggish gimp you see in independent snuff films. On that note, 'fucking' was Thomas's favorite word because it was also his favorite activity. There were many other words that could described what he liked doing, but Thomas didn't know them. Why? Because he was fucking stupid, to put in a brusque manner.

As Thomas was ready cut in for the kill with the item he used for fucking, and as blood and tears rolled down Elise's face as she braced for it, the front door to the cabin inexplicably swung open loudly and abruptly.

Thomas turned before grabbing Elise's hair and yanking her to the ground. "Stay the fuck here."

Elise was panting heavily as Thomas quickly did up his pants and ran a hand through his hair as he walked towards the front door.

"Hey!! Who the fuck's th-AAAAAAAAAAAA...."

Thomas's verbal confrontation was silenced by a cacophonic scream, followed by a deafening snapping sound and what sounded like the guttural soundtrack to a strangulation. Elise crept slowly to the door, which was open and caked with patches of spattered blood. She peered into the woods and saw Thomas's corpsed, squeezed dry of bodily fluids like lean meat dehydrated into beef jerky, being hauled away by a shadowy figure by what seemed to be black ropes.

Elise then began the process of thought. That figure, whoever or whatever it was, has saved her life almost certainly. Then again, the man might return to the cabin and kill her the same way, so she should leave. Then again, the man was out in the woods and could possibly find her. Of course, whoever that figure was, realistically, couldn't have been as bad as Thomas. She thought again; she had been missing for a year, and they had probably forgotten about her, mourning her as a memory lost to the wastebasket of existence.

Elise made a decision, what she experienced in there couldn't be worse than what waited for her in the dark. She was dead back home; suffice, she really had nothing to lose. She roughly knew which direction to go, but wasn't sure what would be at the end of the trail.

Thus, Elise Sadler bravely embarked into the night, her footsteps framing the symphony of the dark woods. As the cabin and 'My Sharona' disappeared from her attention, she knew that their were only two outcomes to her journey.

Life and death.

Written by IdealisticPrawn.