CHAPTER ONE: the shams escape

HOPE'S POV

I didn't know when I became nocturnal but I could swear by anything that I was seeing through the night clearly. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush that was giving me  supervision as I ran through the forest.

  Tud! tud! tud!... I kept hearing the sound of my bare feet as they jammed on the ground heavily and the scrunching sounds of dry leaves as I dashed in between trees in search of an exit.

I couldn't remember the direction of the gate but I couldn't care less about that. I managed to sneak out of the huge room I was locked in and that was all that mattered. Direction wasn’t much of a concern to me as long as I didn’t run back  in circles to my starting point.

  I pray he doesn't find me, I whispered to myself without slowing my speed. This was my third attempt to escape and I was hoping to be successful. I never asked for any of these. Things I never wished for threatened to steal my breath and suffocate me while all the stuff I wished for eluded me.

What do you normally do when the opposite of what you asked for kept coming to you? Well, the solution could be to pray for what you don’t want and let the opposite happen.

I pray his men found me. They should catch me and take me back to the forsaken haunted mansion. They should catch me… I kept repeating in my head like a mantra while wishing for the opposite at the back of my mind.

“Take the right, you…go in the other direction..” I heard someone giving instructions to the other people from a far distance. “Make sure you find her quickly, I’m sure she’s still somewhere in this place,”

I stopped running and started looking frantically for a place to hide. Running wasn’t an option any longer because even if I still had the strength to continue, the scrunching noise of dried leaves would give away my location.

As I continued looking around, I spotted a huge tree trunk that was half fallen. It was big enough to conceal my small frail body while I waited for them to pass.

I quickly made my way to the tree and laid on the ground with my eyes closed and my arms wrapped around my chest. That was it, whether I managed to run away or not depended on the tree.

What was that sound? I quickly turned towards the direction of the sound from but before I could discern whether it was an animal or not, something heavy landed on my head. The only thing I saw were stars exploding before my mind went blank. And there, my third escape became a total sham instead of a charm.

It was his entire fault though, that short chubby old hag and that illegal auction. I wanted to be out, yes. But was I hoping to be locked in a room with cockroaches and spiders? definitely not!