For You I'd Tear Out My Own Heart

After about fifteen minutes of non-stop driving and running away from shooting men, we were safe. But, we had enough pure fear in our bodies to share with a country. I sure as hell knew James was crazy, but this bad? Never.

“Okay, Zoe,” Kara’s spoke, her eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. “I think Nina and I deserve an explanation.”

“Agreed,” Nina shook her head quickly, her eyes just as wide.

I sighed, “Where do you want me start?”

“I don’t know, the beginning would be nice!” Kara replied sarcastically.

I sighed, “Okay, I’ll start with the break up. When I was about ten years old, all my parents did was fight with each other. Zack had to constantly be in my room because I could barely sleep at night with the fighting. So, one day we both came home from school, and dad was gone. We went into their room, to find that most of his clothes and shoes were gone. We asked our mom, and she said that daddy took a break from her, but that he would like to see us still.”

“You’re parents split up at one time?” Kara interrupted.

“Yeah, only that one time though,” I answered her question, then continued. “So, after a few days, we noticed that we had a lot of babysitters at night for mom to go out. One night we decided to investigate, and we realized that she was seeing a man. When we confronted her about it, she simply said he was an old friend from high school, and that nothing was happening between them. We obviously believed her. Once my parents got back together once again, he kept coming over in the middle of the night. She would talk to him for a minute, but then ask him to leave. This was a reoccurrence, and finally dad told him to get lost basically.”

“That guy sounds weird,” Nina stated.

“Yeah, and it get’s weirder,” I scrunched my face up, then went on. “After that, he only got more infatuated with my mother, I’d classify it as obsessed. She got bouquets of flowers from him with freakishly long poems he had written for her. She got about three letters under the front door from him every day too. He also attempted to pick Zack and I up from school one day. But we knew better then to go with him, thankfully. After a while of this, he actually broke into our house while we were all out except for my mom.”

“Do I want to hear the rest? This guy seems like a fucking creeper,” Kara made a disgusted face.

“It is pretty bad, but I think you should know the danger of this guy,” I replied. “Anyway, when we came back we saw my mother getting beaten by James. Apparently she asked him to leave on occasion, so he decided to beat her because he didn’t like it. Zack immediately called the police as my dad pried James off of her. It was a sight I honesty will never forget, but I wish I could. The police came, and he was taken to prison in Maryland, it was supposedly for us to be securely away from him. He was supposed to be in for ten years, but he got out three years early. I don’t know how he has escaped, but he’s now out. And that’s why my mother is gone, and why those guys were shooting at us. He will do anything to tear apart his family and keep her for himself. Right now, he has my mother in his possession, he planned it perfectly. He knew that my dad would be gone on the trip, and that Zack would too. He knows that I am extremely not brave, and he’s taking advantage of that. We have to find her and get her back home. Then, we call the police.”

“Are you kidding me Zoe? Why don’t we call the police now!” Nina suggested.

“That won’t work,” I admitted. “James has already planned for that no doubt. I don’t know how, but he is extremely smart, no matter how cruel he is. Our only option is to try and find her.”

“What is our plan Zoe? Did you see all of those people shooting at us? We are a couple of teenage girls, we’ve never done anything harder than the mile run in gym class. How are we going to do this?” Kara asked.

“I’m not sure yet Kara, I honestly am not sure. All I know is that we have to find him and my mom,” I said.

Nina scoffed, “Are you kidding me? Do you want to die”

“Think about it,” I paused. “James is never going to expect us to go and look for him purposely. He’s going to think we’re going to call the police, that’s exactly what he’s prepared for. Face it, I am a weak teenage girl who is afraid of most horror movies, much less something like this. Even if he knew about you two helping, he still wouldn’t be worried. We are nothing to him, so we have to do a surprise attack, something he won’t expect. The only way to get that through, is to find him, he will lead us to my mom. While we are doing that, we think of a plan. We follow him everywhere he goes, we can never lose him when we find him.”

“What if we can’t find him?” Kara’s sad face shone through.

“We will find him you guys. We’re going to do this,” I said with encouragement I honestly couldn’t even give myself.

“Can we eat though first?” Nina asked out of the blue.

“Are you kidding me?” I yelled. “My mother is imprisoned by the very man who beat her not that long ago. We can’t eat!”

Kara took my arms, “Try to calm down Zoe. We understand what is going on, but we are not going to be able to think clearly without food. We should go somewhere to eat, think about where we should search, then we’ll get going.”

“Okay,” I huffed. Deep down I did know she was right. The more I rushed, the worse it would be, we needed to take a breather, then we could go. Though it was probably not the smartest idea to eat somewhere, we did it anyway, because I wanted real food, not stupid non-cooked items from my pantry. Who knows the next time I’ll have a meal like that?

We parked in front of a small diner we happened to pass by, and took a breather in the car for a minute. In a matter of an hour, so many things have happened.

As we got out of the car, I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight I saw. There he was- James Williamson. He was in fact in that diner. Kara and Nina were almost in the door, when I snatched them back to my place immediately, and ducked down.

“What was that for?” Nina shouted.

I shushed her, “Please, don’t talk. James is in there.”

“Are you shitting me?” Kara whisper-yelled.

“No, I’m not. Hurry, we need to get in the car, eat, and hide. As soon as he gets out of there, we have to get on his tail. We have to skip a good dinner tonight,” I rushed them along. Now that they understood the urgency of the situation, they hurried into their spots in the car, where we quickly ate our food.

After about thirty minutes of waiting, his figure came out. His hair was still cropped short and jet black. Even if it was a mile long and blonde, I would recognize that man anywhere. He got into his black van, and the engine roared, which was our cue to turn on the car.

“You guys ready?” I asked nervously.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Nina gulped.

“Same,” Kara agreed with her.

As the black van started to drive, I spoke again, “Alright then, let’s move.”