Pacifier

🌹Della🌼

Sam was speeding but the drive still dragged.

I wanted to ask where we were going but he shook his head almost disbelieving.

"I already told you lass, Newcastle... We're gan Shields," he said, "view it as a seaside getaway," he joked and though his eyes were bright and he was smiling something about that line sounded sinister to me. Something about him joking, lighthearted as you like, having just stolen me from my home in the middle of the night, was sinister to me.

I crossed my arms, leant my head against the window and glared out at the world.

It felt like we'd been in the car forever and it felt like the journey was never going to end.

My teeth tasted acidic and my throat was sore, and all I really wanted to do was cry again. But i knew I couldn't do that. I knew that from now on I had to behave like any other bottleman I knew. Fearless and gritty.

No more red rimmed eyes, no more shivering, no more scaring myself into sickness.

Mt shoulders were sharp and cold turned on Sam and though he tried once more to start a conversation or put me at ease I remained staunch and silent and suspicious.
So we carried on in a thick and stuffy silence only broken by bad drivers and Sams roadrage which shivered me when he wasn't looking.

When we finally pulled up it was outside what looked like the most normal house in the world. I chewed my cheek, eyes fixed dead ahead, trying to decide what to do when he opened the door.

I could bolt, I could run but where would I go? Id never been to Newcastle before and I definitely wasn't sure enough of myself to navigate myself to safety in the early hours of the morning.
Still, that didn't stop me trying.

I sat still, dead in my seat until he was forced to open my door, tell me to get out. To hurry up because it was cold.
He was unsuspecting, still trying to ease my troubled eyes. That was his mistake. A mistake he wouldn't make again.

With the car door open and between the two of us, just in the way enough to stall him, I scrambled.

Out the car, down the drive, into the dark street, scrambling away from him, lungs burning with the freezing north east wind ripping through them.

I heard him shout after me, heard his footsteps hammering against the pavement behind me, the evenings rainwater splashing up our jeans as we pelted it down the street.

I didnt know where I was going but I followed the streetlights, my feet slipping, shoes soaking up the puddles as the wind blew in my face and my hair tangled and blocked my vision.

"Ella!" Sam shouted after me. He was taller than me, his steps longer, his legs moving much quicker than mine and I knew there was no way I could run for much longer without him catching up to me. I feared the thought of what he might do when he did.

And he would. I wasn't naive enough to kid myself any more.

I didn't have a chance to stop and look around, I didnt have a chance to contemplate my hiding place. All I could do was duck at the nearest opportunity, hit the floor and scramble into the shrubbery which fenced off someones front lawn.

"Ella darlin, come on quit hidin aye, am tired a wanna go bed..."

I watched Sam slow, watched him realise that I'd stopped running. Perhaps I'd been lucky, perhaps in the darkness he hadn't seen where exactly I'd slipped away to.

It was cold, the bush I was hiding in was damp, it smelt damp, the twigs and leaves were sharper than they had looked when they were rainwet and shimmering under the streetlights.
Now they scratched and nipped at me, caught in my hair whenever I so much as breathed, but that was good really. I needed the reminder to stay still. Perfectly still. So still that only the breeze could ripple, so still that even when it did and the leaves rustled, Sam would shrug it off as nothing. Nothing but the wind.