Page 9 of Escape

I whipped around, searching blindly in the dark for anyone who was real flesh and bone. The lights slowly returned, illuminating the run-down gym full of paper people and cheap decorations. There was no real human in sight. I checked the corners, finding a single camera settled just above the basketball hoops. They were watching me.

“What is this?” I yelled in the lens’s direction. “What do you want? If this is some kind of game, it isn’t funny.”

“Exactly, smart girl,” the voice praised. The nickname sent an unsettling chill up my spine, alerting my brain to something that it couldn’t quite grab onto. “A game. Do you have what it takes to win?”

Chapter 7

Kel

She was trying to sound vicious, but the little crack in Jasmine’s voice sent shudders all over my body. Sweat broke out from under the mask covering the top half of my face as I zoomed in on her quivering lips. Her big, doe eyes darting around the room. The perfect, soft curves of her body poking and jutting out from her mid-thigh-length dress.

I rubbed the heel of my palm into my aching clit over my jeans, my eyes rolling back into my skull as I imagined it was her perfectly plump ass grinding against me. Everything about her made me feel like a fucking caged animal, thrashing against the bars to break out. I couldn’t wait to have her in my arms again. To finally claim her as mine for the world to see.

I almost wanted to say fuck it and slash her fuckass husband’s throat myself and take her right there on the gym floor, but I needed to do this right. I was there to provide Jasmine with options. A chance. The opportunity to take her life back. She had to choose her own path. Hopefully, this time, she’d choose the path that stayed true to herself. The path that ended with us.

“Please,” she whimpered, fueling my sick need to please her. “Just let me go.”

I sat back, pressing harder against my needy cunt as I looked into her pretty, brown eyes from behind the screen. Everything in me was begging me to listen. The woman who controlled my heart and soul asked something of me. I wanted nothing more than to obey and fulfill her every wish. I needed to fulfill her every wish.

She had tied a string to my soul and around her perfect fingers. When she pulled, I followed with no resistance. She could drag me through the mud on a fucking leash and I’d still praise her.

The throbbing between my legs pounded harder at the thought. I shook my head to momentarily dislodge the urge and pull my hand from between my thighs. Now was not the time to lose focus and let my inner submissive take over. It was time to play our game. It was time to get my girl back.

Chapter 8

Jasmine

“I’m sorry, Jasmine.” The smooth voice was laced with something pulsing and urgent. “But only you can do that.”

The lump in my throat grew. I swallowed frantically, trying to ease the feeling of my airway closing.

Clutching my chest with a whimper, I couldn’t help but hate myself for ignoring all the red flags the second I got here. I hadn’t seen a single soul and still, I went inside. The building itself should’ve alerted me. Now that I really looked around, past the decor and paper bodies, I was almost certain the school had long been abandoned.

The ominous voice’s words played in my head again: only you can do that. Did that mean there was a chance?

“How?” I managed to choke out as I stared in the direction of the camera.

“Escape, of course.”

Behind me, the door I leaned on jolted, the force vibrating my chest. I snatched my body away, looking to the door and back to the camera again. I waited for further instructions, but there was no sound other than the pounding in my ears.

I backed away further, not sure if I was expected to go out or if someone was going to come in. The thought of the psycho coming in and trapping me lit a fire under my ass and I turned to bolt to the other exits.

As I turned, I slammed into a group of the cardboard cutouts and toppled to the floor on top of them. My blood ran cold as I looked at the picture pasted to the body.

It was Jared’s senior portrait with its eyes crossed out with harsh, black X’s. It made no sense. Jared didn’t even go to Maple Meadow. I’d assumed, based on my maiden name written on the invitation, that whoever set this reunion up didn’t know I was married. Apparently, I was wrong. They knew him and evidently…they didn’t care for him.

I shuddered at the thought of me and this weirdo having something in common.

I pushed to my feet again, popping up in front of another cutout that stopped me in my tracks. Ariana’s crossed-out eyes stared back at me. I shifted through my whole high school experience, letting it flash through my mind. Had we bullied someone? Who would hate Ariana and Jared enough to cross their eyes out…or me enough to trap me here?

Trapped. That’s right. I was fucking trapped.

I sprang back into my sprint, carefully dodging the paper people on my way to every exit I could find. Every handle I tugged on resisted. At the last one, I pulled back and slammed the bottom of my heel into the metal door. Pain radiated up my calves and through my hips. I sank to the floor, tears burning my eyes as my frustration boiled over.

I’d always told myself if I ever were in a situation like this, whether it was being kidnapped or stuck in a zombie apocalypse, that I’d just take myself out. I knew I wouldn’t be strong or smart enough to survive, so it would be best to end the suffering before it started. My life sucked anyway, it’s not like I would be missing much.

“The only way out is through,” the voice over the intercom was smooth again. If I wasn’t trapped in my abandoned high school at this person’s mercy, the words might have comforted me. Either way, I guess they were right.