I reacted instinctively, a feral movement born of years spent dodging his blows, a dance with death I’d perfected.
But Mandy... Mandy was trapped in the headlights of his fury.
Her scream wasn’t just a sound; it was a physical assault, a jagged blade slicing through the silence of the mountain night. The high, thin shriek tore at my eardrums, a keening wail that clawed at my soul. The air itself vibrated with its agony. The scent of pine and damp earth was suddenly overpowered by the metallic tang of fear, a coppery taste blooming on my tongue. Even the mountain seemed to recoil. Birds erupted from the gnarled pines in a frantic, feathered blizzard. Below, in the shadowed depths of the valley, unseen animals scattered, their panicked bellows echoing Mandy’s terror. The very floor beneath my feet seemed to tremble under the weight of his cruelty.
I watched in horror as Uncle Vernon threw Mandy across the room. Her body crumbled to the dirty floor as if she were nothing but a discarded dishrag before he turned to me.
“You’re mine, you little bastard,” Uncle Vernon said, his mouth frothing at the edges like a rabid dog that needed to be put down.
The mountain, my once-trusted ally, now felt like a hostile witness to my shame. I wanted to scream, to unleash myown primal cry into the void, but my voice failed me. I was mute, frozen in place as Uncle Vernon advanced, his naked body gleaming with a sickly sheen in the moonlight that spilled through the broken window.
Mandy... I had to get to her. She lay crumpled and broken, her blanket a pitiful shield against the darkness that had consumed us. I forced my leaden legs to move, stepping over the shattered remains of the door. My eyes locked with Uncle Vernon’s, and in that moment, I saw nothing human. He was a beast, a force of nature in its purest, most violent form. I felt the mountain’s silent judgment, its ancient, unyielding gaze bearing witness to our struggle.
With a roar, Uncle Vernon lunged, his hands reaching for me like claws. I dodged, feeling the rush of air as his grasp missed me by mere inches. My heart hammered in my chest; each beat a desperate plea for survival. I had to get us out; had to find a way to break free from this nightmare. Mandy moaned, a soft, pitiful sound, and I knew we didn’t have much time.
Uncle Vernon’s face contorted in a mask of rage as he took another step toward me, his hand reaching out like a claw. I felt the weight of his desire, a tangible force that sought to crush me. But in that moment, something within me shifted when my eyes landed on the metal object Mandy slid toward me.
In that instant, the fear that had shackled me for so long transformed into a burning rage.
I was no longer a victim; I was a force of nature, a tempest about to be unleashed. With a roar that rivaled the mountain itself, I surged forward, my fingers desperate as I reached for the object, gripping the hilt tightly in my hands. Spinning around, I watched as Uncle Vernon stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes glued to the object I held out in front of me.
“Boy, am I gonna have fun breaking you in,” Uncle Vernon sneered as he quickly took a step forward, then reached out andbackhanded me across the face, causing me to drop the only thing that could save me.
Falling to my knees, I scrambled across the floor, trying to grab the object as Evan walked into the room and grabbed me, holding me in a crushing grip. Uncle Vernon, now stroking his dick, walked over to Mandy and yanked her up by her hair. Her screams were deafening as she fought unsuccessfully to break free. Uncle Vernon slapped her hard across her little face before throwing her on her small bed and spreading her little legs.
“Little bitch will learn her place after I’m done with her,” he sneered as he kneeled before her unconscious body.
The knife.
It lay on the floor, shimmering in the moonlight like a beacon of hope. Evan’s grip on me tightened, his fingers digging into my flesh as if he knew my intention. I struggled, twisting and turning, but his hold was like iron. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Uncle Vernon lean over Mandy, his hands grasping, his mouth salivating.
The mountain seemed to hold its breath, the silence a cruel mockery of my helplessness.
A guttural scream, a beast unleashed, ripped from my throat as I fought Evan’s grip. The air tasted metallic, a premonition of the carnage to come. My fingers, slick with sweat and a burgeoning madness, clamped around the knife’s worn bone handle—a familiar comfort in this blood-soaked abyss. Spinning, I became a whirlwind of fury, the moonlight glinting off the blade like a predator’s eye. Their eyes—those vacant, depraved orbs—widened, reflecting a terror so profound it almost quenched the inferno raging within me. This wasn’t just a weapon; it was an extension of my soul’s blackest rage.
The rage, a volcanic eruption from the deepest pit of my being, consumed me. It wasn’t a choice, not anymore; it was a wildfire consuming all reason. Each swing of the knife wasa searing punctuation mark, the sickening thud of the blade meeting flesh echoing in the claustrophobic room. My own feral growls swallowed Uncle Vernon’s screams, a symphony of agony, as the knife sliced through him with the ease of a scythe through wheat, painting Mandy’s walls a grotesque crimson tapestry. His lifeblood blossomed, a perverse flower of retribution staining the room, a testament to his monstrous acts. He collapsed, a broken husk, his eyes mirroring the vacant stare of his equally despicable wife downstairs, the finality of death settling like a shroud.
The coppery tang of his blood coated my tongue, a perverse reward. Evan, a twisted reflection of the horror he’d inflicted, stood frozen, his eyes wide saucers of paralyzing fear. He didn’t deserve the mercy of a swift death; he deserved the slow, agonizing understanding of the pain he’d inflicted. Before the flicker of a choked gasp could escape his lips, I moved, a phantom of vengeance. The final blow was swift, brutal, a testament to the torment I’d endured. His life ended as abruptly as the nightmare began, the silence heavy with the weight of justice served brutally, fiercely, and completely. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the ragged rasp of my own breath and the drumming of my heart, a savage rhythm echoing the monstrous act I had just committed.
Silence clawed in the aftermath. It wasn’t just quiet; it was a suffocating, oppressive blanket woven from the absence of sound. Usually, the mountains whispered secrets—the rasp of wind through pines, a distant owl’s mournful cry, the scrabble of unseen things in the undergrowth—yet tonight there was nothing. Not the symphony of the wild, the soundtrack of my childhood in the unforgiving beauty of East Tennessee, singing its lullaby.
Tonight, the mountain held its breath.
Tonight, the mountain was dead silent.
A warning.
A raw, visceral dread coiled in my gut, colder than the mountain spring I’d drunk from not even last week. The air itself felt thick, heavy, and tasted of burned rubber and something else... something acrid, like the tang of blood on the winter’s wind.
My skin prickled, not with the usual mountain chill, but with a primal fear that sank its teeth into my very bones. This wasn’t the silence of nature; this was the silence of someone watching, someone waiting. My hand instinctively went to the worn, familiar grip of my machete at my hip. My heart hammered in my ears, a stark contrast to the oppressive hush that surrounded me.
I knew this landscape like the back of my hand—every trail and hollow, every rocky crag and whispering brook. But in this eerie stillness, it felt like a stranger, a hostile force.
I took a cautious step forward, my boots as silent as the night on the dry pine needles that carpeted the forest floor. I froze, half-expecting some unseen creature to pounce from the darkness, but nothing stirred.
With a steady hand, I drew my machete from its sheath, its familiar weight bringing a measure of comfort as I scanned the shadows, searching for any sign of movement, any glint of eyes watching from the darkness. A faint rustling sound to my left snapped me back to the present. My muscles tensed, and I spun toward the noise, my machete at the ready. But there was nothing there, just the gentle sway of a branch in the breeze, as the mountain exhaled in relief.
“Jackson, I’m cold,” Mandy sputtered as she wrapped her arms around her legs, her body shivering due to the chill on the mountain.
