Alexandra Burt - The Good Daughter - A gripping, suspenseful, page-turning thriller

The woods suddenly seemed dark and musky, the canopy of live oaks shielding the sun from reaching the forest floor, merely lifeless sticks emerging from the ground. Quinn stood motionless. The man held up the empty beer bottle, inspected it, and then tossed it into the woods. The amber glass landed gently on a bed of pine needles and moss, hardly making a sound. Without a word, he unzipped his pants and released a powerful stream of urine merely inches from her feet. Quinn felt a warm droplet touch her left foot when he fanned the stream left to right.

As her fingers clawed themselves into the blanket, she thought of something to say. “What are you all up to?” She hated that her voice shook. She watched him unshoulder his shotgun and gently lower it to the ground. Quinn managed to get the words out with a smile but then realized the man hadn’t zipped up his pants.

“Huntin’ season,” he said.

“What are you hunting this time of year?” Quinn asked, no longer able to force even a hint of a smile on her face. She was shaking. Her brain was only able to gather one characteristic per man; Beard, Bony Fingers, Pony Tail, and Pimples. Beard was staring at her when she faintly became aware of his hand moving rhythmically by his unzipped pants. She scanned Bony Fingers, Pony Tail, and Pimple’s eyes. Not one of them was going to stop Beard. There was no way they were going to stop, period. Not a single one of them.

Run.

Like a rabbit, Quinn turned on her heels and bolted down the path. She barely got ten feet away, didn’t even have time to break into an all-out sprint, when she stumbled over roots and skeletal branches strewn about like bones. Her legs had springs and she recovered quickly. As if her mind had no mercy, everything was magnified, her surroundings in the light of day seemed like an alien landscape and the man pursuing her was a giant—but then her brain flooded and nothing mattered but the path in front of her.

Quinn quickened her pace but each of his steps was worth two of hers and just as she recognized the clearing to her right—beyond it the road, not too far—his hands grabbed her. One snatched her neck to the side, the other clamped tight around her right upper arm. Quinn felt panic rise up in her throat as the scent of beer and something foul like deer urine consumed the air around her. She yanked and wouldn’t have minded if her arm had dislodged just so she could get away, but his hand didn’t budge and so she went for him with her free arm, her nails searching for his face. His skin was slippery with sweat and she couldn’t get a hold of him.

“Hey,” he screamed, slapping her hand away, “stop that.”

He crossed her arms in front of her and held her by her wrists, one of his hands big enough to latch on to both of hers, and with the other he slapped her, twice, left, right, then his fist, three, maybe four times. Quinn tasted blood, metallic, she could smell it even through his stink of animal and liquor and filth. She dropped to the ground but he pulled her back up, pushed her against a tree, the bark hard against her back.

Please, she wanted to say, please let me go. Don’t hurt me. Don’t do this. Please. Please. Please. Please please please please please please please please please please please. She searched his eyes, hoping for a hint of mercy, but they were amber like the eyes of a wolf. The only sound was the man’s breathing and then he looked at her, his lips curled backward, exposing yellow-stained teeth.

The woods went quiet. Even the birds chirping their morning’s sweet cantata became silent. And he waited for the others to catch up.

Later, by the time Quinn reached home, the wind had dried her hair and her dress was merely damp where it hugged her body. She entered through the back door, into the kitchen, where the aroma of bacon and syrup hung heavy in the air. Her mouth felt swollen and dry and she doubted she’d ever be able to eat another morsel of food. She showered, changed, and went to bed, where she remained for three days. Sigrid never so much as checked on her; she barely looked at her as they passed each other in the hallway on the way to the bathroom.

“What’s going on?” Sigrid asked on the fourth day, after dinner, during which Quinn merely rearranged her peas and flattened her mashed potatoes on top of a pork cutlet.

Quinn felt hot one moment, cold the next, her cheeks flushed and her skin clammy. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Sigrid took one look at her plate. “Are you going to eat that?”

“I’m not hungry,” Quinn said and took a sip of water, hoping it would cool her swollen tongue. Her throat barely allowed the water to pass. She pushed the plate toward the center of the table.

“Your father didn’t leave me a rich woman and wasting food is not something I condone.”

“I understand.” Quinn bit her lip. “Maybe I have the flu or something.”

“In July?”

“It feels like the flu. I don’t know.”

“Eat.”

“I can’t. I don’t—”

“Eat.” This time sharper.

Quinn remained silent.

“Eat, child.” Sigrid’s voice was steady and low but carried the fury of a tornado.

“I can’t eat. I feel sick.”

Quinn didn’t even recognize her own voice. She pulled the plate closer, picked up the fork and began eating. Her stomach lurched and gurgled, but she finished her plate. Later, after she threw up, she sank back into bed. When Sigrid came to check on her hours later, she was delirious and hallucinating. Strawberry fields, you said, Sigrid later told her. I need to get to the strawberry fields .

When Quinn awoke, she wouldn’t have known where she was if it hadn’t been for the constant stream of nurses and doctors. The diagnosis remained elusive to Quinn. Pelvic infection, the doctor said, hydrosalpinx, he told her. The infection caused your fallopian tubes to be blocked and filled with fluid.

Benito , Quinn thought. I wonder if Benito knows what happened. What they did to me.

“How long have I been here?” Quinn asked when her thoughts became clearer.

“Two days. You are on heavy antibiotics. We have to wait for the infection to completely clear up. You are young and healthy, but …” The doctor paused and lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry to tell you that your fertility will be affected.”

Affected. Quinn wasn’t sure what that meant, had never thought about anything remotely related to fertility, was detached from the whole diagnosis. Nevertheless she tried to make sense of it all, but not for one second did she consider telling the doctor what had happened.

After her fever ceased and the pain was dull and manageable, she tried to erase it all from her mind. She imagined that a fine paring knife cut out the part of her brain that held the memory of it, but regardless of how hard she tried, the images didn’t disappear, and instead she felt a longing for the woods, the pure creek and its cold water running over her. She longed to immerse herself in it, even wondered how far down the bottom was.

After the doctor left the room, absolute clarity was bestowed upon her. She wondered if it was possible to live life as a ghost. She could not live one more second in this body as the person she used to be, and that’s what she felt like anyway, a mere ghost of the girl Quinn. It was that or nothing at all.

Dahlia

When this latest episode is over, I’m famished. I pop a TV dinner in the microwave. I’ve been living off microwaved and prepackaged food all my life. I haven’t developed an aversion to it—its American ingenuity comforts me: the divided trays, the thin plastic covering, and the eventual sliding of the empty tray into the box. Even now I stick with the foods I ate in my childhood: meat loaf and mashed potatoes, chicken-fried steak and corn.