Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Its blinding rays snap my last nerve so perversely, before I know what I plan to do when I reach it, I sprint through the dense woodlands separating us like my feet aren’t cut up and bleeding from the mad dash I did to escape the officers chasing me when I leaped out the window of Jae’s hospital room and ran like my feet weren’t taking me straight back to the bane of my existence.
Hopeton is my hometown, but it is far from home to me. It is where my mother was killed, my father rules, and where I learned more than my sister had gained her angel wings.
By the time I reached Hopeton, Jae’s death was circulated on every news channel in the country. The journalists stated the talented up-and-coming doctor died a hero, but that she didn’t make it out of the marshland breathing. They completely overlooked the fact that I tried to save her after she had done the same for me.
My brutal speed through the dense tree-studded landscape slows when I reach an opening in the forest-like setting. A log cabin sits in the far-right corner of the cleared land. It appears abandoned, but I still stammer out a greeting while hesitantly pacing toward it. “H-Hello? Is a-anyone here?”
The eerie creak of the front door peeling open doesn’t register with my damaged ears, but the girlie squeal that rips from my throat when I walk through a spider web years in the making is so loud, they register it twice.
Spiders give me the fucking creeps, and I’m man enough to admit that.
My curiosity piques when I spot a large bundle of rope in a room I assume will become a bathroom since it’s half plumbed.
Perhaps that’s why this cabin beckoned me?
Rope would have to be far more durable than a length of vine.
Confident that will be the case, I snap out of my trance-like state before entering the room the size of most people’s walk-in closets to gather up the rope.
Partway across the warped floorboards, my trespass of private property is busted. “That bundle of rope couldn’t hang a deer, so if you want it for what I think you do, you’re wasting your time.” A man I’d guess to be mid-seventies hobbles into a cabin that’s seen better days. When he stabs out the cigarette dangling out of his mouth into an empty ashtray, I slant my head to ensure I can’t miss what he says next. “The vine got ya, didn’t it? It’s finicky shit that’s as useless as tits on a bull.”
He doesn’t wait for me to answer him. The red marks on my neck tell him everything he needs to know, not to mention the bobbing of my Adam’s apple about how frank he is when discussing a taboo topic such as suicide.
After blowing out a large plume of smoke he held in for longer than necessary, the damage to his lungs not a concern for a man his age, he yanks up the sleeves of his dirty flannel shirt, exposing deep slash marks grooved into his wrist.
“You might have better luck than me, but since you’d need a sharp knife that digs real deep, and I need every one I have for the deer, I’m not going to give you one.” He nudges his head to the woodlands surrounding his rundown property. “So off you go. If I find you during one of my hunts, I’ll be sure to return you to the earth from where you came or whatever the fuck they say these days.”
“Y-You live out here?” I should be denying his claims I’m trying to kill myself, not feeding my curiosity as to why someone would want to live such a bleak, dismal existence.
He coughs through the smoke still escaping his frail lungs while replying, “You’re in my home, aren’t ya? Trampled all over with your muddy feet.”
“This is a-a shanty. I-If that.”
I curse my inability not to think before speaking before attempting an apology.
Not a syllable fires from my mouth before the stranger reminds me I’m no better than him. “Says the boy attempting to end his life in the middle of nowhere without a suicide note in sight.” After dragging his eyes down my body, he returns them to my face. “You didn’t arrive here alone, so why are you trying to leave that way?”
“N-no one wants me,” I reply before I can stop myself. “I’m n-no g-good to anyone.”
I glance up from my feet when he grunts out, “You’ve got a lot to learn if you think that rope can hold your weight, but there’s always a way if you’re willing to adapt. I could certainly put you to work if you were interested.”
“W-What?” I stammer out, certain I heard him wrong.
He couldn’t possibly be offering me a job, right?