Nevermore BookStore Chapter 2

The chapter is about a man named Fox who is trapped and struggling against his restraints. He hears a mysterious sound and a voice taunts him. He manages to free himself and realizes he was having a nightmare. He encounters a doe and her fawn, and decides not to harm them. Fox contemplates his situation and the changing weather. He collects his belongings and prepares for a day of survival tasks. He longs to hear from Cadence Bloomquist but restrains himself from calling her. Fox takes a cold shower and begins his daily routine. You'll have to forgive me ever so slightly this morning, I have a bit of a mourning voice, but I think for this chapter it will be a welcome inclusion, including the coffee I have as well. Nevermore Bookstore, Chapter 2 Hermit. Noun. A person who is withdrawn to a solitary place. Trapped. No hostage. Fox-heavy arms strained against the bonds cutting into his skin with such animalistic frenzy that his veins bulged as large as ropes. The only part of him left unrestrained is rage. A bell jangled in the distance, doing the same to his nerves. A phone? His heart threw against the cage in a direction of the sound she'd never called him before. The bells again. Not a phone. What the motherfuck was that sound? Santa? They call you Fox, but you are not so hard to hunt. A smooth, accented voice slid into his ears like a venomous serpent, slithering down his spine until his veins turned into writhing foreign invaders. It was all he could do not to peel off his own flesh. The frenzy became something else, something even darker, driven by the presence of a sensation so foreign and yet so recently familiar. All he knew was that he needed to escape it, his senses sharpening, and yet he could see and hear nothing but the sound of his struggles echoing off the walls. Walls too close, too low, pressing down, down, and on all sides, trapping his arms, squeezing the air from his lungs, stealing the space from his ribs needing to expand, kicking his heart and sweat glands into overdrive. The sensation had a name. Terror. An odd hiss struck his sensitive ears as he peeled his eyes open, only to be assaulted with a blinding white light. Struggles turned into flails of his body, loosening enough for him to bend his elbows, then his wrists, kick out with his legs. The hiss grew louder, more insistent, rhythmic even, as he fought his way out of the clinging substance shaped like a coffin. Forcing blinks into the light, he leapt to his feet and gyrated like his sister Rochester, and that time that he'd tossed a jumping spider in her hair. He ripped off the shirt that sweat had molded to his skin, kicking heavy bindings away from his legs. The sole of his foot landed on something burning hot, and he leapt in the opposite direction, careening into a gritty wall and slipping on something saltine. Catching himself on one knee, he exploded forward like a sprinter, escaping the wall's fucking figures. A disassociated auditory snarl from his own voice echoed in a confronting, half-conscious shit-soup between his ears. I knew I was heading toward the light sooner rather than later. A brutal chill ripped him like a blade, cutting through his marrow. This time the cold burned his bare feet. Stumbling, he scrambled to regain balance, calming enough of his wits to sink into a fighting stance and identify the direction of the adversary. One of them was about to die. The air turned to ice crystals in his lungs as brilliant sunlight reflected off of it, the first late autumn snow, and punched from above, and the reflection below his stubborn pupils refusing to contract. He stood in front of the only shape that wasn't either a tree, stone, and bared his teeth. Let's do this, motherfucker. It wouldn't be the first barehanded kill, but it would be the first with his dick swinging in the breeze. Unrelenting, gentle doe eyes displayed their vestiges in his reoccurring nightmares. Unutteringly gentle doe brown eyes displayed the vestiges of his reoccurring nightmares, yanking him from the gnarled, clawing fingers of sleep and back into full consciousness. Literal deer eyes. Fox and the doe stood like that for a moment as sweat froze to his exposed flesh. They stared at each other as their hasty, heaving breaths made matching clouds of crisp morning air. She was a young adult, less than a handful of years. On the same side, like they were in the Washington State Olympic range, easy for navigating the dense forests and uneven terrain, the bell sounded again, this time from behind him. The creature alarm. Whirling, he caught the sight of a teenage fawn as it frolicked toward one of his bells hanging from a rope he'd surrounded his den with. Completely unbothered by the six-foot-three nude man separating him from his mother, she booped the bell with her nose and jumped twisted away with playful excitement at the sound. A breath he hadn't known he was holding exploded from his aching chest. The dream wasn't real. He wasn't there. He was here. Here, the Pacific Northwest, lovingly referred to as PNW, the other side of the country from where he had been born, high in the Olympic mountains above where most women his age once been children who believed sparkly vampires and indigenous werewolves resided nearby. Better them than the monsters living in his nightmares. They were real. They did unspeakable things. An entirely different noise cuffed from behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder to see the mother pawing at the ground, looking from him to her offspring with naked fear. Only when he unclenched his teeth to speak did he realize that he had been grinding his molars to dust. Don't worry, Mama. His unused voice, sounding like sandstones and razor blades, turning back toward the den, he cleared his throat. I didn't know it was you. They'd crossed paths before. He recognized the white blaze underneath her throat. Early spring, her fawn had been the height of a golden retriever and just as bouncy. Probably the first birth of this young doe. Even if he took out his bow later, he'd starve before bothering these two. He didn't kill children or their mothers. His difficult swallow landed in an abysmal void in his chest as he strode back towards the coal bed of a late night's fire. He stepped on one of the stones he'd laid out of the fire just beyond the ingress of a smooth rock. He slept here when the weather turned, though he preferred to stare up at the moon. This was the next best thing, however. He could at least see the sky, the dense woods, and was still protected by some. Sorry, I'm getting tongue-tied here. He slept here when the weather turned, though he preferred to stare up at the moon. This was the next best thing, however. He could at least see the sky, the dense woods, and was still protected by some. Mostly. So long as the wind didn't shift a very specific way, he identified his camo winter sleeping bag as he perceived as a perceived captor. The fabric, the source of the strange hiss he perceived in his subconsciousness. Fuck. What if he was getting worse? If the sleeping bag became more confining, if the nightmares drove him out of it? Then what? Though Fox had selected the PNW for the fact that it was 45 to 85 degrees, basically always, and a changing climate was beginning to cause the summers to kiss 100, on the other side of that, winter would bring significant exposure hazards. He'd been able to survive thus far, but if it got much colder, he would have to get shelter or die. At this point, Fox wasn't certain he'd bother with shelter. If he wandered east toward Seattle, he'd be in fire-season country until he cleared the Rocky Mountains. Same if he went south, with the added complication of higher population densities and less hunting in fresh water. All the way down to Mexico. Fox followed the limp path of clothes he'd torn off his body, snatching them up along the way. The nightmare lingered in him, too, smelling of dank, damp stone and stale fear. His skin reeked of it, his body thumbering with it. Digging his palms into his eyes, he dragged his hands down his face in a beard that Thor would be proud of. He was almost warm and dry, with tremors set in, almost ready for a late breakfast when the nausea and vertigo nearly drove him to his knees. His bones were held together with crepe paper and glass, rather than the connective tissue and hard-earned muscle. He needed to run. He needed to hunt and climb and push until he'd exhausted the adrenaline coursing through him. Or, his eyes swung to his satellite phone, his one link to the world. Programmed with the one number he ever called. The voice he wanted to hear from the one person he could fucking stand. No, no. Things had become much worse than that. He longed for the sweet husk of her animated voice so much so that he denied himself all contact except for Thursday's. Thursday's belonged to Cadence Bloomquist. Katie? He didn't realize that he'd said the name out loud until it landed south of his belly button, and he had to turn away from the fire to avoid a wiener roast. Checking for tick marks on a stone wall, he cursed and stomped about the den like a bear awoke early from hibernation as he gathered his gear. Fucking Monday. Three more nights of this, he reminded himself. Three nights before I can sleep with her voice caressing my dreams. He often didn't have nightmares on Thursdays, which was why he shouldn't call her more often. Attachments were dangerous. Furthermore, no one should be burdened by his specific flavor of fuckery. Heaving a breath, Fox braced for the cold day's work ahead. The routine never altered. He'd check his traps and treat and stone the food and pelts. He'd track three small herds of deer in the area and pick an old-timer to sacrifice to his winter stores of jerky. He'd do target practice. He'd do pull-ups by the oak on the lake. He'd exhaust himself so that his body forced him back to sleep, and he wouldn't call Cadence Bloomquist for three more nights. Until then, he looked out toward the lake, dusted with a skim of frost. It was time to take God's own cold shower.