She did not brandish anything. I knew her cronies were here and I began to feel the net lift slightly, the branch moan. A white and gray beast approached and stood on hind legs scratching my back as I moved from her. This time I felt it. Despite all my layers, I felt her claws dig slightly as the net raised. It was five thirty, snowing lightly, black as hell and I was hanging from a tree. Cackling. Her friends laughed somewhere I couldn’t see; not hidden, but obscured from me.
“You remember?”
I was eight feet in the air moving to nine feet. Not out of reach but higher, and needed to get to the top of the tree. Even still, I was freezing. This is usual.
“Yes.”
Compliant, obedient, supplicant, I understood stockholm syndrome now. Become the sycophant, the nodding doll, dance for your mistress now.
“It will go faster if you just say my name.”
And the one thing I didn’t know was her name.