The Hurt In The Hope: The Knife (Short Story - Part One)

She could still feel the knife. Tracing thin red seams along her body. Running down her leg from her hip to her ankle. Rising up, outlining her waist. Edging her body in red ribbon. The fine silver lines were all that remained. A testament to everything she had endured. The delicate design laced across her back, swirling and twisting in phantom filigree. The faint scars were almost iridescent in the pale moonlight. She lay on the embracing dirt. The soft, black grains embedding in her skin. The gentle night breeze whispering through the downy hairs of her bare form. Gazing straight ahead at the shifting dark grasses below the trees, she couldn't move. She lay completely paralysed in the undergrowth as the translucent clouds flitted through the ghostly moonlight.

She knew she couldn't have made it far. They had been late with her last dose, the effects had worn off, only to kick in again now, leaving her sprawled on the ground. She hadn't made it far enough. She could hear the distant bark of dogs growing closer already. She couldn't turn her head to see the lights bobbing through the trees, but the dogs had her scent. It was only a matter of time before callous hands bound her and dragged her out of the undergrowth. Dragged her back there.

His voice curdled in her blood, she was cold, but a chill blossomed inside of her at the sound of it,

“The dogs have got her,” a man called out through the darkness.

Unable to look, she could feel the hot, damp breath of the hounds skimming her skin with a foul, warm haze. Flecks of slobber, a fine spray of spittle and drool pelted across her bare body as the dogs erupted in frantic, crazed barking. Pushing their cold, wet noses through the leaves, their lips curled back, nipping her gooseflesh with needle teeth, bathing her in their putrid snarling breath.

“So, she likes to run does she?” the voice, closer now.

A cold laugh rang through the trees, before rough hands reached into the brush. Wrenching her out over the tangle of thorns and branches. She lolled, like a rag doll with loose joints, as he swung her over a shoulder. The jolting march back to the house seemed to take forever, bumping over his bony shoulder with each bustling step. The dogs jumping up and snapped inches away from her face. Near rabid with the excitement of tracking her. Her attempts to escape had only made her more fun to play with. They had enjoyed torturing her, they had served her up on the dinner table, naked, paralysed, and completely conscious. They had decorated her with the knife, licked her bare flesh, prodded and squeezed her. All she could do was lie there, unable to even look away. She had, in her attempts to escape, only added to their game.

The next day, her body covered in fine grazes, vast bruises blooming across her pale skin. Flowering in shades of black and purple, bubbling up to spread out under the surface of raised red welts. They came out to her cage after sunrise, unlocked the gate, and prodded her with a small, red tipped soldering iron. The pain was so hot and bright, it burnt so deep, it almost felt like a hot numb ice. The sedatives were wearing off again, and they weren’t injecting her with more this time. They must have something else in mind. A hand reached into her cage, grabbing her by her light brown hair, yanking her out of the small square prison. She staggered, attempting to stand in front of him, as he ripped her hair upwards, forcing them face to face.

“You wanted to run...” he said, jabbing her again with the heated metal rod, searing her flesh, sending curls of sizzling fat twisting into the air. He grabbed her across her cheeks with his grubby bulging hand and pulled her face close to his, forcing her to feel every hot word on her face,

“...Fucking run” with that, he flung her to the ground, laughing as she scrambled to get back up.

She hadn’t been able to process what was going on. She had run, half stumbling, blindly into the forest. She had no way of knowing if this was the way she had gone last night. It had looked so different in the dark, but the bush was thick here, undisturbed. She wouldn’t be hard to track, she knew there was no way to hide from the dogs, her only hope was to out run them. To out run their guns, to out run their dogs. It was the middle of nowhere. There was nowhere she could run to. Her only hope… she almost knew she was fooling herself. Part of her realized, they didn’t believe she could get away.

---

Within an hour they were dragging her back. She hadn't even made it as far as the night before.

“Next time, you better run like you mean it" they warned her.

Her feet were in ribbons, her muscles torn and throbbing, her hands still bound with chafing rope. She had been running all night, she had only got a few hours sleep. She wasn't in any state to run for miles. She had been staggering and stumbling blindly through the heavy bush, leaving a trail a child could have tracked. This was a new game, and the odds were much better than being a table decoration. She could learn. She passed out not long after they threw her back in the cage, she needed sleep.

As she came to, her mind began to turn. She couldn't outrun them, not with the dogs, but she could outwit them. Not yet, but she could get better at this. She knew nothing about hunting, or tracking, but she could clearly see the paths she had left. The grass was flattened, branches broken, she had blundered frantically. She had charged blindly, no thought for direction or destination. She didn't know where she was being held. They had taken her from a nightclub endless days ago. The last thing she remembered before waking up in a cage was getting a beer. She had come to in the light of day, to find dirt and bars beneath her. Still dazed she had nearly knocked herself out trying to stand up.

The cage was outside, but partly sheltered by the overhang from an outbuilding. The ramshackled house was hard to distinguish from the derelict farm buildings at first. The roof was patched together with plywood, broken windows sealed with tape, musty netting that soften the evening light from inside. It ran into a longer stone building at an angle, edging the farmyard.

She could be hours from the nearest town. She hadn't heard a distant engine that didn’t come trundling up the drive. The dirt track traced a path through the thick trees, disappearing off down a bend. She had no way of knowing how it twisted and slinked, and if she stuck to it, they could chase her with quad bikes. She needed the dense cover of the forest.

She strained to look around from her cramped cage. With the overhang, she had no way to see behind her, yet the lay of the land suggested the beginnings of a slope. Uphill would be hard, but if she could see something, anything, a way out...

Part Two - The Hurt In The Hope: The Hunt - will be out later in the week

This is a short horror I have been working since @dirge 's horror contest, I wrote a couple of horror stories for it, and this is one I didn't have any where near finished in time. I have decided to release this one in parts, so I still have no idea what will happen at the end. I have been polishing part one for so long now, I can't tell if I am actually making it better or worse. Part two is written and ready to go (so far, my favorite part) and I am working on part three, which will hopefully wrap the story up, but we will have to wait and see what happens!

Hope you enjoyed a little bit of human horror, I feel like this may end up as a tale of endurance as opposed to one of sudden twists and turns, but come along with me and find out where my mind takes us <3

You are wonderful and amazing and I appreciate you all so much, I never would have made it this far with out you

Love and Sparkle - Calluna

Photo Credit by Pixabay user Engin_Akyurt who had so many photos to chose from, including full sets of varying photos of the same subject, which is just ideal for a story in a few parts!