A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

me like a wall. It comes barreling into me and I freeze ’cause I ain’t
ever felt it in all these years that I’ve been here. Fresh air.
The outside world immobilizes me at first. But then I get ahold of
myself ’cause if I don’t I’m easy prey. ’Cause when the front door
opened, an alarm on the house started screaming. If the man and
the lady had any question about Gus and my whereabouts before,
they know now.
The lady hollers that we’re getting away.
I force myself outside. I start running. I’ve still got Gus’s hand in
mine and I pull on it, dragging him with me. There’s fear in being
outside as much as there is in staying inside. I haven’t been outside
in a long time. I nearly forgot all about outside.
The heat and the darkness swallow me whole and I run faster than
I ever have in my life. I drop Gus’s hand by accident, but I pray that
he can keep up. Gus hasn’t been doing his calisthenics like me, so
there’s no telling what kind of a runner he is. But sometimes being
scared makes you do things you didn’t know you could do.
My bare feet run across pebbles first and then the grass. The
pebbles cut into my feet, hurting, making them bleed, though I’m not
paying any attention to things like that. The grass, when I get to it, is
soft and wet, tickling my feet. But I can’t feel that, either, not really,
’cause I’m just running.
I see something shining in the sky. The moon. Stars. I forgot all
about the moon and stars. I hear the buzz of nighttime bugs around
me. I want to stop and stare and listen, but I can’t. Not yet. Not right
now.
“Stay with me, Gus,” I scream back over my shoulder, knowing
we’ve got to get far, far away from this place before we stop to look
back. For all I know that man and that lady are just twenty paces
behind and they’ll catch us if we stop for a breath. I ask Gus if he’s
coming, if he’s okay. I tell him to stay with me. To not slow down one
bit. “We’re almost there, Gus,” I say. “We’re almost free.”
For a while I hear that man and that lady calling after us. They’re
quiet mostly because they don’t want to cause a commotion. They
got flashlights with them, though, ’cause I see the glow of those
flashlights moving through the trees. Every so often the light falls on
Gus and me and I duck away from it, veer off in some different