Left for Dead: A gripping psychological thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

awake again, it’s dark. I’ve slept for the entire day. He tries to give me a polystyrene cup of instant noodles but I push them away.
    “Come on, now, Amelia.”
    “I don’t want any,” I say.
    He pauses and puts the noodles on the ground. I feel him come close and I flinch because it makes me think of yesterday when he touched me and I’m not sure I can survive a second time. His forearms brush against my ears and I brace myself and wonder if he’s about to push my head down into his lap. I think to myself that I’m going to bite that sorry thing off but he unties the knot of the mask instead, releasing the cloth from my face, taking great care to arrange the hair around my shoulders.
    It’s a shock to see him, unfiltered and larger than life, so close, looking at me with his caper green eyes, jaw rotating while his molars crush what’s left of his food. All I can think of is Kevin Costner in his older years. A man’s man. A broad-shouldered man’s man in a tavern with a misted mug of beer in his big fist, shooting the breeze with the burnished-skinned old-timers, recounting a day of felling trees or hunting or building a barn from scratch. A man’s man who, for some reason, wanted me or someone like me—a proxy for a mother or sister or aunt he blamed for some deep-seated wrong done.
    Slowly, he strokes his chin as he studies me. Then, quite suddenly, he says—
    “You have pretty earlobes, Amelia Kellaway. Very pretty earlobes. I like the fact they’re not pierced.”
    He picks up the noodles and holds them out. “I know things must be strange for you and what-not, but it’s important you eat, Amelia. Just a few forkfuls, would you do that for me?”
    I hear his words but I’m still in shock that he’s removed the mask.
    “Amelia?”
    I nod my head.
    A smile breaks out on his lips. “That’s the spirit.”
    He reaches around and runs a strand of my hair through his forefinger and thumb. I wonder if he has a “type” and whether I fit it. I wonder if any woman in her late twenties around five-seven with medium length-brown hair is enough to turn his head and cause him to strap his leg into the moonboot and pull the flat tire routine. I wonder if I am simply one of a number, and if I am, what happened to the others.
    He moves to the other side of the fire and lounges against a tree trunk, one shoulder against it, watching me. I pick up the noodles and bring the tiny plastic fork to my lips. I attempt to still my shaking hand and wonder whether this is the moment I should beg for my life.
    “I need the bathroom,” I say.
    He looks at me and pauses. “You bet.”
    He removes the ankle ties and pulls me to my feet and walks me to the edge of the campsite and points to the hole in the ground he dug earlier.
    I’m free and this is my big chance to run but I just stand there.
    “Go on,” he says.
    I squat over the makeshift latrine, balancing my right foot on one side, my left on the other, and deliver the whole shebang. It all comes out, everything, and I’m mortified by the noise and the smell. I glance up and he’s turned his face away, averting his eyes. I need to wipe myself and he gives me a roll of toilet paper then turns his back again.
    “It won’t always be like this,” he says.
    *
    He has a large bag of Honeycrisp apples. He has already eaten two and is on to his third. He offered me one, but I told him my stomach hurt, and after the latrine, he doesn’t push the issue.
    “You don’t say much, do you?” he says, chomping.
    He’s emanating a syrupy aroma and I know I will never be able to eat my mom’s apple pie again.
    He pulls my backpack toward him, opens it, and begins rifling through. I feel instantly violated with him going through my things like that, pulling out my tees and sweats and underpants and sports bras. He finds my copy of Anna Karenina , the one that I thought would double as entertainment and a bug killer.
    “Tolstoy,” he says, spitting out a black pip.