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It had been half an hour since she saw a car drive by, and she was beginning to worry she wasn’t going to see another one for the rest of the evening.
Ocean was walking alongside the highway with her thumb cocked out by her side in the traditional manner of hitchhikers. Not that it mattered much; not a single car or truck had even so much as slowed down once they saw her, but instead just kept on driving, even sometimes speeding up just to get distance between them faster, as though she were invisible. She had even gotten desperate enough to step slightly into the road and block a Jeep, but they swerved out of the way with a screech of the horn just before she could get shredded to bits by the bulky tires of the thing.
Ocean wasn’t one for driving—there were too many things that could go wrong, too many fatalities that happened because of vehicle accidents—but she had actually gone on one to try and clear her head from all the stress clouding her mind. And, of course, something had to go wrong. She should have expected as much.
On the way back home, the car started to make horrible noises. It ended up sputtering to a halt on the side of the road and, when it didn’t start up again, she realized she was stranded in the middle of nowhere in a dark forested area of Saskatchewan with no cell reception, thanks to her need to drive as far away from Uranium City as possible. So much for escaping stress and blowing off steam. The only thing she was getting from this was time alone, but when she was alone at night, so out in the open, well…it wasn’t very pleasant to say the least.
The downpour of freezing rain didn’t help too much, either.
As angry as she was that nobody was stopping for her, she couldn’t really blame them. Everyone learned that picking up strangers on the road was how you got murdered. They would slit your throat, steal your car, and leave you dead in a ditch somewhere. Honestly, Ocean probably wouldn’t stop for herself, either. She might be a teenage girl, but it was still probably pretty sketchy, especially out in the woods.
God, why did it have to be the woods? Why not the desert? Or a field? Just anything but the cold, dark forest at a quarter till midnight.
It was so dark. No white glow from the moon or stars leaked down over the road thanks to the thick blanket of rain clouds closed over the sky. It was like the gloomy mist shrouding the area was absorbing and blocking out any of the light that might have bled through the storm, leaving the forest nearly pitch black.
It was that exact reason that Ocean didn’t like the forest. Never had.
Well—
It wasn’t that she didn’t like the forest, it was that she didn’t like the forest at night. The backwoods of Saskatechwan were a bit sinister to say the least. Blankets of dead leaves dressed the back roads and abandoned hiking paths and forest floors in robes of yellow and brown. When the sun went down, and the darkness settled in with its murk oozing through the trees, you never really knew what could be lurking out there just beyond any remaining light.
Call her crazy, but Ocean always believed that old forests like these had a certain personality to them, a certain vibe, if you will. Plenty of people went missing in the woods, and a dozen more show up dead.
Personally, though, she didn’t like the word “missing.” There was a sense of passivity to it, like it was nobody’s fault. If you asked her, in this day and age, you didn’t go missing unless somebody wanted you to.
She walked in silence, soaking in the eerie atmosphere floating around her and trying to keep her nerves calm. The gnarled branches of the forest trees seemed to be reaching longingly for her as she passed by, so desperate for good company. Ocean seemed to realize this after a moment and shrank away from the tree line, sidling slightly to the left and continuing closer to the edge of the road, though it might have been for a different reason.
She hadn’t really picked it up until that moment, but she was starting to feel like she was being watched. She found herself looking around frantically every few minutes, checking her perimeter and then over her shoulder when she swore she heard footsteps crunching in the fallen autumn leaves behind her. Every time she did, however, whatever noises she was hearing, whether they were real or just her imagination, always stopped. She would stop, too, waiting and listening, then continue on her way.
On the second time she paused, she caught a glimpse of a deer in the distance on the slope of a road. It turned to face her, its eyes like spotlights in the night, then scuttled off quickly, and she went on her own way.
The third time she paused, she picked up on something else.
The silence.
Aside from her footsteps and the pattering of rain against asphalt, there was no other noise. No rustling of pine needles, no distant calls of birds, no persistent harmony of crickets or deep warbles of toads. Not even the hoofsteps of deer, but there were footsteps somewhere. Ocean knew it wasn’t a deer, so she didn’t go looking for it.
Her shoes were ruined, scuffed, and covered in mud and dirt from walking through the slush that had been created along the ground from the rain. If she had known she would be forced to walk all the way back to Uranium City, she wouldn’t have worn Crocs. But she did, and they were completely soaked through, setting her toes into little icy pools, while also rubbing the skin off of her heels. The cold was biting her to the bone, bypassing her jacket completely, although it was already pretty thin to begin with. Her already impossibly low morale was about to hit rock bottom.
Then, salvation.
Light was bleeding down the street from the distance, arcing over a hill that Ocean had just crested. Her heart leapt in her chest when she saw the blinding white glow of someone’s high beams, even when it stabbed painfully into her eyes when she spun around to watch the bulky truck slowly peek the incline and grind to a halt on the road right beside her.
It was an old grey thing with mud-slicked paint, a plastic-covered trunk (most likely to protect it from the rain), and tailpipes so grey and dirty they bordered on black. The engine purred like a hungry tiger.
It was a bit intimidating, to say the least, but Ocean knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, so she straightened herself up and stepped over to the vehicle as someone rolled down the window from within.
“You hitchin’?” asked the patchy face that leaned its head towards the window, causing Ocean to fight back a wince. The driver certainly wasn’t a looker- a gnarled, middle-aged man who looked to be pushing forty, with a scruffy chin, yellowed teeth, and a bald head.
“Yes, sir, I am,” Ocean answered back with a thin smile after a moment’s hesitation, kicking herself for even considering passing up this opportunity. The man might have been old and rough around the edges, but he was mobile, and that was what she needed. “You’re the first person kind enough to stop and ask.”
“Can’t much say I blame anyone else,” the driver said, looking up and down the road before settling his eyes back on Ocean. “Mighty suspicious if you ask me. What’s a pretty young thing like you doing out here in the middle of nowhere at this hour, anyhow?”
Ocean’s gut twisted at the words ‘pretty young thing’ but tried to blow it off. She didn’t want to be in the forest any longer than she had to, especially with the rain picking up, so she would just ignore the alarm bells slowly going off in her head.
“I’m just trying to get home,” Ocean admitted, raising her voice a little over the truck’s gentle rumbling. “My car broke down, and there’s no cell service all the way out here. You think you can help me out?”
The driver seemed to actually give it some thought, despite pulling over, before ultimately giving in after scanning her over and considering her to be harmless enough (she really hoped it wasn’t because of her height…or hair. just because she was a ginger, didn’t mean she was helpless!).
“Ah, hell, why not? I would feel awful if something got you out here. Come on in.”
“Thank you!” Ocean said in relief. She climbed up onto the truck and took hold of the now-unlocked passenger door. Doing her best to keep her footing despite the rumbling of the truck’s engine and the slickness of the metal, she swung herself up and into the cab. She noticed the side of the door had some wrappers in it, along with a keychain and an aluminum bottle of bug spray. At least she wasn’t the only one who thought that little compartment was for rubbish.
Now that she was actually inside the cab, Ocean could get a better look at the driver, not that it did much to change her initial opinion of the man.
In addition to his gnarled, aged looks and bald head, he was wearing a plaid red shirt that tried but failed to hide his modest gut. His pants were faded denim, and his tennis shoes were covered in dirt and dust, the same as her shoes. He was, in almost every way, exactly what Ocean expected from someone driving and owning a truck like the one she now sat in.
“You got a name, kid?” the driver asked as he shifted gears and began pumping the acceleration to get his big rig moving again. There was some grinding and a guttural rumble from the engine, but then they were once again on the road.
“Ocean,” Ocean said, reaching out for a handshake. It seemed like the polite thing to do, despite the man clearly trying to drive.
“Ocean?” echoed the man, accepting her tiny pale hand in his hairy, tan one and shaking it firmly. It was clear he had done this before. “Your folks a fan of the beach?”
“You could say that,” Ocean said.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Ocean,” the man said. “I’m Sam.”
Ocean nodded. “Nice to meet you, too.”
“Where are you headed, exactly?” Sam asked, glancing at her for a moment before returning his eyes to the dark road ahead.
“Uranium City,” Ocean answered. “You can just drop me off at a tow shop once we’re there so I can get someone to pick up my car. Well, my parents’ car.”
Sam gave a nod. “Lucky for you I needed to pass through there. I travel a lot around the country for my work.”
“I can’t imagine moving around so much,” Ocean said, trying to make small talk. “Not being able to stay in one place and settle down, I mean.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Sam hummed. “But you get to see the sights.”
“That’s true,” Ocean agreed. “What do you do, exactly?”
“Delivery driver for businesses,” Sam said. “I just dropped my latest shipment and got a smaller one in the trunk.” He glanced at his passenger again. “And what about you?”
“Me? Oh, I don’t have a job,” Ocean said. “I’m still a student.”
“Ah,” Sam said. “Why were you out here in the first place? Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I do, but I just needed to clear my head,” Ocean said. “My relaxing drive ended up doing the exact opposite of what it was supposed to, though.”
Sam laughed; it was a deep, grating sound.
A sound rattled just behind Ocean suddenly, from the trunk. Sam grimaced.
“Damn thing better not break back there,” he said. “They told me it was fragile. My boss is gonna be pissed if I show up with it broken.”
Ocean wasn’t quite sure how to respond, so she just laughed lightly and nodded. Rain started to fall harder, tapping loudly against the windshield before scattering off into the wind thanks to the flick of the wipers.
“Do you have any idea what happened to your car back there?” Sam asked.
She looked at him. “No, not really,” she answered honestly. “I barely use it, and it’s a pretty old car, so it could have been anything. I don’t think it was an empty tank, though. That I do know.”
Sam nodded. “I see.”
Five minutes. She looked at the digital clock glowing on the radio panel and noticed that it’d only been five minutes since she entered the car.
Rain filmed and cleared with each swipe of the wiper blades, just barely exposing the dark road speeding ahead of the truck. The headlights clipped the dense trees around the car, painting the road reflectors yellow.
She focused on the smell of rain and the musk of gasoline and something tangy. With closed eyes, she listened to the sounds of the storm beating the windshield and the rattle from the heater. The taste in her mouth was stale but barely a flavor at all. She opened her eyes again and noticed that Sam was now looking at her.
Ocean actually flinched a little, jumping slightly out of her seat. Sam laughed lightly and apologized, then focused back on the road.
“So…do you have a boyfriend?”
The question took Ocean by surprise. She looked at Sam, blinking slightly, then said, “Excuse me?”
“I asked if you had a boyfriend,” Sam repeated, and she hadn’t heard him wrong. Why would this old guy be asking her something like that?
Well, she had an assumption, but she didn’t want to think about something like that.
“Umm…” Ocean shifted. “No.”
“What a shame,” Sam said, shaking his head. “A pretty girl like you deserves a man.”
“Uhh— yeah.”
Ocean shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She hunched her shoulders around her neck and looked out the window. When she looked back, Sam was staring at her again.
There was another bang from the trunk, then a new noise- a muffled whine that no sentient object could make.
Now she knew what Sam was delivering.
“Listen, Ocean,” Sam said over the sobbing moans coming from the trunk, not even phased by them. Uranium City was coming up in the distance. “I wanna do this out of the goodness of my heart, I really do, but I gotta ask for something in return. If you catch my drift, that is.”
Ocean caught his drift, alright, though she sorely wished she hadn’t. Still, she decided to try and play dumb. Maybe he would think she was too useless to do anything to.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,” she said.
“I need something from you, Ocean,” Sam stated outright.
“I— I don’t have any money on me. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I don’t want any money. You know what I want. Stop acting all innocent.”
Ocean’s heart rate spiked in an instant, pounding so hard it rattled her entire rib cage. She started shaking, too, beginning to teeter on the edge of a full blown panic attack.
“R-right here?” she stammered. She glanced out the window. The streets of Uranium City were flying by; Sam was not slowing down. “Right now?”
“Don’t worry about the road, darling,” Sam reassured her. “I’ve been doing this a long time. You just let me worry about the driving.”
Ocean swallowed thickly. Her stomach cramped with fear, and numbness spread through her as her hyperventilation system kicked in.
Why was it only now that she noticed the handgun sticking out of the side of the console and the stained knife beneath his leg?
“Y-you can just let me out wherever,” she said instead of answering Sam’s request.
“Come on, baby,” Sam cooed. He pet Ocean’s quivering shoulder in a manner too friendly and too weird to be anything but ominous. Those wide, frenzied eyes beat down on Ocean. He licked his lips and narrowed his gaze over her quaking form, smirking one-sided. “It’ll be so nice…”
“I can’t breathe,” Ocean choked out, feeling so close to passing out that she reached her hand out to hold against the dash and brace herself on the solid surface, whimpering as her heart hit hyperdrive.
Sam stared at her hunched, gasping form then began to speed up, sending Ocean into a hazy state of disbelief. It felt like a very vivid nightmare, but it was real. He was real, and she was real, and the crying person stuffed into the trunk was very, very real.
In an act of desperation, Ocean tried to turn around for the door handle and attempt to flee, but she was shoved into the door, and something cold and hard pressed her skull to the window. Her shoulders rattled, elbows banged, and, beneath her sternum, it felt like her heart was falling apart from how fast it was beating when she realized she had a gun to her head.
“Bad girl,” Sam said lowly. “Now, listen to me closely, Ocean. Are you listening?”
He dug the barrel of his gun into Ocean’s temple, and she nodded feebly.
“You’re going to sit still like a good little bitch and let me have my fun, and maybe, just maybe, I won’t blow your fucking brains out. Do you understand me?”
Another nod, this time with a whimper. Tears were now rolling down Ocean’s cheeks.
“Good girl,” Sam crooned. With one last jab to her head, he pulled the gun back and began whatever he considered ‘fun.’
Ocean kept her eyes squeezed shut the entire time, crying softly. She didn’t want to see what he was doing to her. Seeing it made it real, even if she could feel all of it.
“God, you’re pretty,” Sam was saying. “How has a man not marked you as his own yet?”
Ocean sobbed softly, shutting her eyes tighter. Her hand, her left to be specific, was dangling limply in the crevice between the seat and door, while the other clawed at the cushion beneath her. She felt something cold and hard brush against her fingertips, and black ice shot through her veins.
“Well, I’ll have to claim you, then,” Sam said. “I’ll make you all mine…” He laughed darkly. “When we get home, I’ll make sure to pamper you, my little kitten.”
Ocean didn’t want to go home. Not with him.
And she definitely didn’t want to be his “little kitten.”
Jerking her arm up, Ocean raised the can of bug repellent and sprayed it directly into Sam’s eyes.
The man began to scream. His hands went to his face, clawing at his watering, foaming eyes, and the truck began to swerve wildly on the road.
Ocean didn’t stay in there any longer. She flicked the child lock on the console, threw open the door, and jumped out of the speeding truck.
There were steps to exiting a moving vehicle to sustain as little damage as possible. You were supposed to look for a soft place to land, presumably when the speed was lessened a little, then propel yourself at an angle out of the car to avoid getting run over, and tuck and roll, aiming to land on your back because then the weight would be distributed and make injuries less severe.
Actually putting that into motion, however, was a lot harder than she had been expecting.
If she had to make a guess, she probably looked like a wannabe superhero jumping off of a building, only to realize that they really couldn’t fly and were now falling to their death. She went out the door face first, and probably would have shattered her skull against the asphalt if she hadn’t twisted around to land on her side.
That did little to help.
She could feel the asphalt creeping in like fangs made of stone, tearing away at the skin beneath her clothing. She skidded painfully against the blacktop, which was gonna need to be renamed to “redtop” if she was bleeding as much as she thought she was.
Like most things in her miserable life, inertia proved to be a cruel mistress, and Ocean continued to catapult forward thanks to the force behind her fall, sending her sprawling across the street and into the wet grass bordering the side of this particular stretch of road. The tumble was punctuated by heavy cracks and thuds, and she could hear something go snap! in her chest and pop! in her left shoulder, and she decided that she really didn’t like the taste of dirt because she was pretty sure there was enough in her mouth to make a small garden.
When the world finally stopped flipping over on itself, black against green against brown, Ocean laid there like fresh roadkill beneath the cold, teeming rain, struggling to breathe for several long moments, thoroughly winded from the fall. Pain pulsed in every inch of her body, but mainly in her rib cage and left side. She could taste blood in her mouth…and dirt still. Lots and lots of dirt.
Well. At least she kinda rolled. She just had to work on the tuck part.
She stayed still for a few seconds, half-expecting her skeleton to turn into dust when she moved, but then she pushed herself up slowly.
That then led her to getting a sweet, wet kiss from the earth because her arms buckled instantly when she tried, and she realized it was because of an unbearable, burning pain in her side. She couldn’t help but let out a choked cry that was half mixed with a sob as she rolled over onto her stomach, which then made her yowl for a second time because the skin along her midsection felt like it had been shucked off with an apple peeler. She settled for laying on her back, and it wasn’t any less excruciating, but at least she could breathe while in that position.
Shakily, she lifted the left side of her shirt up. It was too dark to see the full extent of the damage, but she was able to make out grueling splotches across the skin. The pain was unbearable, too, and the blood was lava hot.
This wasn’t good.
After hyping herself up, she was able to wobble her way onto her knees and, god fucking damnit, were her knees messed up, too?!
One cursory glance down at her legs gave her her answer.
Yes. Absolutely.
She swayed in place for another long moment, just waiting for everything to stop spinning. Her head was pounding. She could barely see straight. She lifted a hand to try and provide grounding to her heavy skull and was met with a distinct wetness.
Rain. It was just rain.
She was fine.
She looked around dizzily. Sam’s truck wasn’t even in sight anymore. It seemed like he hadn’t stopped when she jumped out.
The rain began to fall harder. Thunder rumbled deeply. Breathing hurt so bad. She wanted to lay down in the dirt and never wake back up.
She could still feel his hands all over her body.
A whimper bubbled up into a sob, and then Ocean was openly weeping. She slumped over again, curled up in the mud, and cried. Cried in disgust, in fear, in pain. Cried because this was the worst possible fucking thing that could happen, and cried because she hated herself for having to go on that stupid fucking drive, and cried because she just felt so helpless.
Finally, after maybe ten minutes of just crying there in the ditch, Ocean pushed herself up again. She couldn’t stay out here any longer. She needed to go.
She went to call 911, only to find her phone in pieces. She could feel some of the shards of glass and chunks of metal and bits of electrical chips digging in through the fabric of her pant pockets and embedding themselves into the soft flesh of her thigh.
Of course. Just her luck.
She could try to flag down another car, surely someone would stop for her when she was in such a state of physical ruin, but she didn’t trust any other stranger for the night. She just had to get to familiar people.
That meant she had only one choice.
Having to go to someone else’s house and ask for help was less than desirable, but she didn’t have a choice. All she needed to do was get there and…well, she hadn’t gotten that far yet. She just needed to focus on getting there.
Ocean’s muscles groaned as she slowly rose up to her feet. An intense wave of pain nearly sent her right back to the mud, but she managed to stay upright with willpower alone.
After getting her bearings and locating where exactly she was (the outskirts of Uranium City), she began her slow and painful trek to salvation.
Mr. Blackwood was a sight for sore eyes, to say the least.
Ocean’s journey from the ditch on the side of the road to Constance’s house in the middle of Uranium City took almost an hour, punctuated by waves upon waves of agony, uncomfortable grinding of bones in several different areas, concerned and shocked glances of the few people on the street at that hour (she turned all their nervous requests for help down, not wanting to trust them, despite all of them looking normal because he had, too), and her own whimpers and cries when she moved too fast or stepped with just a little too much force. But, eventually, she made it to the Blackwood residence and began pounding on the front door, not caring about if woke the neighbors or scared anyone because, damnit, she was scared, too! In fact, she was even more scared because she was the one who was almost kidnapped, raped, and probably murdered or used in some sex trafficking ordeal!
Mr. Blackwood was the one to answer her nonstop knocking, and she would have barked at the man to let her inside if she had the voice or energy to do so. The man grabbed her by the forearm to support her and helped her inside, but she cried out in pain, so he switched to wrapping an arm around her waist and getting her in like that.
When he pulled back, his hand came back red.
By then, everyone was awake and making a huge scene out of the situation. They crowded around Ocean, who was sitting on the couch and couldn’t care about how dirty it was getting. Constance and Mrs. Blackwood were sitting right next to her, easing her through a panic attack that she didn’t even realize she was having, and Mr. Blackwood was on the phone with 911. She didn’t know where Constance’s baby brother, Ezekiel, was.
“Breathe, sweetheart,” Mrs. Blackwood was murmuring. She had always been more of a mother to Ocean than her actual one. “Breathe— Ocean, breathe. You gotta breathe, baby girl. I need you to breathe.”
Shock was wearing off, or maybe it was just setting in, Ocean didn’t know, but she was on high alert, and her brain was in hyperdrive. Her trembling was starting to get worse. She focused more on her own terror than the pain infecting every inch of her body. In fact, it was actually starting to numb itself, and the intense anxiety took over in its absence.
“H-he t-tried to—” Ocean coughed and then whined sharply at the way her ribs ached. They grated painfully in her chest. “H-he tried— Mrs. Blackwood— I—”
She made a horrible noise that was a cross between a gasp and a wheeze and slumped in Mrs. Blackwood’s arms. She now laid in Mrs. Blackwood lap, staring through a blizzard of black spots at the ceiling with Constance’s hand resting on her clammy forehead, stroking back her wet hair in an attempt to soothe her. It helped somewhat.
“You’re going to be okay, Ocean,” Constance said, and god, Ocean wanted to believe her. She wanted to believe her so bad.
“An ambulance is on its way,” Mr. Blackwood said loudly. “Should I call Margaret and Reginald?”
“You know they won’t answer,” Constance said bitterly, a flash of anger tainting her voice.
Nobody argued with her on that.
Consciousness was slipping further and further away from Ocean’s fingers. She tried to hang on, but there was no use.
The last thing she heard before everything went blank was the sound of sirens.
Three broken ribs. Two fractured ribs. A sprained wrist. A cracked collarbone. A dislocated shoulder. A gash in her hip. A minor concussion. Road rash on her side and knees.
The doctors were shocked to hear that she was even able to make it to the Blackwood’s house with so many injuries and, honestly, she was, too. She hadn’t even realized her hip was torn open from the fall or that her shoulder was dislocated. She assumed it was thanks to the numbing adrenaline rush.
Ocean was out for a long time, wavering in the lines between reality and unconsciousness, but when she gathered herself up enough, she had to give a police report to the cops about all that had happened. The Blackwoods—along with the rest of the choir, who were all told about her trip to the hospital almost immediately—were horrified and disgusted to hear about what happened. Mischa got so enraged he had to leave the room. Constance burst into tears. Noel started crying (but, to his credit, was very subtle about it).
Ocean was in the hospital for awhile, and even when she got to leave, she was bedridden and wouldn’t be able to attend school for quite some time.
The nightmares started quickly. Even still, she considered herself very lucky. She rather be alive and having nightmares than dead after torture or chained up in some remote location as some psychopath’s sex pet.
And, speaking of: Sam, if that even was his real name, was eventually located a week later and arrested. However, the person that was stuffed in his trunk that night, whoever they might have been, was never found.