HOWL

Stockholm syndrome is a very weird thing indeed.
You know it’s wrong, you just can’t help yourself.
Even more so if you suddenly find yourself buck naked in the middle of a forest while Mister Way continues to dig a hole shaped like a coffin to bury all of your possessions.
In go my white shoes,
my silk stockings,
my lacy underwear,
my golden ring,
my white veil,
My stained wedding dress.

I just stare, completely frozen. I’m too shell shocked to ask anything or do something else.
Mister Way is bent over, whispering to the site where he just buried all of my things and making strange markings with his fingers.
Everything is just too strange to be real.

And then quite suddenly and without warning Mister Way warps me in his trench coat and drags me toward him.
From up close he looks exhausted.
This is not the man who just shot Elliot.
He can’t be.
He just observes me from head to toe.
Not like a pervert but like a doctor, as if it’s routine.
He really can’t be.
But maybe it’s the Stockholm syndrome talking.
“Is that your blood?”
That’s the second thing he’s said to me besides telling me
to call him Mister Way.
I should kick him in the balls and run.
But instead I just shrug.
The rubs his thumb against my shoulder, removing dry blood flakes.
“I though you were hit…”
I nod silently. I thought so too,
the piercing pain was the only thing that convinced me this wasn’t a dream.
But it had stopped long ago.
I am completely numb to everything now.
“Walk then…”
He prods me forwards.
“Where are we going?”, the words escape my mouth as if someone else had said them.
He sighs exhausted.
“To clean you up before you see her or the hunter finds you .” he says gently.