Supernova Souls - Ryan Upchurch

-28-

Fear.

Fear was all she felt coursing through her veins and her body. She felt like a deer in headlights in the middle of a nighttime road, fixing to meet her demise by a shitty ass Ford F-150.

All she could hear was the blood rushing in her ears and memories of people screaming and yelling inside her head that she now couldn't escape from. Desperately, she screamed furiously back at the voices in her head to shut the fuck up, but they didn't listen. The voices didn't let up.

She was frozen, tongue couldn't speak as her brain flashed old memories-the good and the bad-, her mind drawing her attention away from the situation at hand and back to things that happened when she was barely sixteen.

(Flashback)

"Delilah!" Colton yelled as he chased after her in the darkness of the Tennessee night. She had hoped the cover of the fog and the lack of moonlight would help her get away from him but it, as usual, didn't go as planned. "Delilah!" He raised his voice, his venomous southern twang becoming more potent with the raising of his raspy voice. "Get back here, you dumb bitch!"

She desperately tried to calm her heavy breathing and racing heart as she slipped between two tall brick buildings, running through the slick alleyway. Litter was scattered across the cracking concrete beneath the worn down bottoms of her second hand sneakers and the trash almost made her slip, but she kept on.

Up ahead, it was a dead end. Just a brick wall with spray paint scattered on it and a smell that reeked of shit and cigarette smoke. She knew Colton was near, but she still wasn't gonna turn around to check and see if he was still following her.

She had faith, so she kept running as fast as her feet would carry her. When she reached that brick wall she thought everything was over. She was almost certain that was how she'd die.

Alas, fate had other plans for her.

Right next to the wall was an even narrower pathway that led to patchy grass and a little pond with slivers of moonlight reflecting off the dark waters that were God knows how deep.

She didn't have time to weigh the pros and cons of that pond, she just ran through the narrow pathway between the buildings and headed straight for the pond that got bigger the closer she got.

Footsteps sounded against the concrete behind her right as her faded shoes hit the grass.

"Take one more step, whore. I'll fucking kill you if you do!"

Frozen in horror, she stopped dead in her tracks with both feet barely on a patch of dead, yellow grass that was cut short. The blades crumpled with a satisfying crunch beneath her shoes.

This is it. She thought with a huff of breath. This is how I fucking die. I should've listened-I shouldn't have ran. I knew it wouldn't work.

She felt him grab a fistful of her long hair and step closer and put one hand on her hip. "You know better than to run from me, sweetheart." She shivered at his last word. She hated that nickname. Every time she heard it, it made her want to do one of two things. 1, kick him in the balls and then punch him in the throat and scream in his face, and 2, shrink into herself and die. Both sounded enticing right now, honestly.

He gathered all her hair up into a loose ponytail and dragged her back through the alleyway by her long brown waves. She begged and pleaded for him to let go of her, but he never let up.

Her legs trembled beneath her weight as she fought to walk behind him, tears welling up in her eyes from his painful grip on her hair. When she got a little too far behind him, he yanked hard on her hair and pulled her forwards. That continued until the two reached his shitty little apartment on the outskirts of Nashville.