Béla Book 3: Wrinkles in Time

She's running through the woods, falling forward in her terrified flight as she stumbles on a tree root. Catching herself with her hands, she pushes herself back up and continues her mad flight, almost falling again as her foot slides on the snow-covered ice. She sobs with each ragged breath she takes, her lungs and throat burning from exertion and the freezing cold.

The girl was pretty once, with long, blonde hair and nice clothes. Now there is a knife wound on her face, one of several cuts she received only moments earlier. Her hair is dirty and unkempt from her month-long captivity and the snow and mud she flees through in her mad flight to freedom. What clothing she has on is torn, dirty, wet and cold; not suited to winter weather in upper New York or to the treatment it receives as she flees, terrified and desperate, through the dark, silent woods.

She staggers across a clearing, her feet crunching down through the snow and turns around, exhausted, desperately fearing that her pursuer is right behind her. Not seeing anyone, she stands unsteadily for a moment, hands on knees, breathing raggedly and trying to catch her breath. Her blouse is torn and bloody where she was stabbed when she surprised her kidnapper and finally overpowered him by knocking him in the head with a piece of wood. Once she worked her ropes loose, she had fearfully waited until the second man had gone hunting to improve her odds of escape, hoping and praying that no one would check her bindings before then.

Getting her second wind, she turns to continue her flight and runs right into her second kidnapper!

She screams!

She tears herself out of his grip and races, topless now, back out into the clearing, leaving him holding her empty, shredded blouse in his huge, ham-fisted hands.

Snarling, he throws the useless garment aside and raises his arm over his head Carefully aiming his axe at her fleeing, naked back, he throws, grunting with the effort. The axe spins through the air with a whooshing sound and buries itself in the blonde girl's back. The girl pitches forward and hits the ground hard, face first.

Amazingly, she's still alive. She lies on the ground, twitching, still trying to run, still trying to breathe while her lungs fill with blood. Her eyes are wide open in pain and terror. After a few seconds, she realizes she's lying on the ground and tries to crawl away.

She can hear his boots in the snow coming closer! He's coming for her! He's going to kill her!

The desperate young girl gasps in agony as the huge man wedges the axe up and out of her back. She somehow manages to turn herself over to face her tormentor. She's coughing up blood, now, and she knows she's going to die. She tries to scream as the axe descends, chopping deep into her torso. It chops down two more times, splashing blood and gore all over her face and breasts. Then she is still, her face forever contorted into a mask of terror.

The blood splashed onto her unmoving face by the axe slowly travels down her cheeks and the sides of her face, almost like red tears shed in her despair.

It starts to snow; large flakes falling onto her butchered, naked body, sticking to her unmoving eyelashes and falling unnoticed into her open mouth.

In the middle of the snowy clearing, her pale corpse lies in a pool of her own blood that stains the snow. There is no wind and the snow dampens all sound.

As her bloody corpse is gradually covered with snow, everything is silent and peaceful once again.