Free White Heat by Serge de Moliere

CHAPTER ONE
     
     
    The wind wailed like a demon releasing centuries of hatred in its dying breath.
    Carol was half buried in the melt; strands of her strawberry blonde hair were now frosted white with icicles. Her weight had been too much for the glacial mush, and her body had slid in and lodged tightly in the freezing wetness. Now she was trapped.
    She knew he was tracking her, as if her scent was an irritant that inflamed his senses; he would not let her escape him. She imagined his nostrils flaring wide, the black hairs sticking out of his nose like tiny spikes as he fumed and clenched his large fists. As he had emphasized many times, he “loved her” and their marriage was for “life.” If she ever let her dislike for his brutal treatment slip out, the cruel beatings he delivered taught her to pretend otherwise. After the final, horrible beating, when he fell sound asleep after ramming her painfully several times, she had slipped out of the cabin as quietly as she could.
    It had been nerve-wracking as she quietly gathered the few essential items, one eye alertly on his prone body, fearful he might awaken at any moment. Grabbing his cell phone had been a last minute impulse. It was on the small night table right next to the bed where he lay, and she had been terrified when he snorted in his sleep and turned over. But, at last, she was out the door and stumbling in the snow, heedless of the weather and the gathering storm.
    The marriage had been a mistake. She should have known, but he was so good looking, with that chiseled chest and chocolate brown eyes; and so chivalrous…at first. She ignored that small voice warning her about his temper, his suspiciousness, and his fascination with her tits and ass that bordered on obsession. He persuaded her to move to northern Canada with him, out to the middle of nowhere where he and she could be together alone, away from what he referred to bitterly as her “frickin’ family.” He wanted them to live out in the wild where he could be a real man, foraging for his woman as his ancestors had. Like a lovesick fool, she had agreed.
    Shortly after they arrived, looking around at the snow-blown landscape, feeling that freezing cold that crept in under the door and then under her covers as cold and viciously as a rapist, she realized the trap she was in. But it was already too late.
    He kept the keys to the only car—an old sedan with a stick shift that she didn’t even know how to drive—locked up in a steel safe, along with her driver’s license, birth certificate, jewelry, and her smartphone. He was not about to risk losing her.
    “You’re mine,” he said somberly, as he snapped the safe shut and kissed her roughly on the lips.
    Later, he fried a slab of fatty pork for dinner, even lit two cinnamon-scented candles colored like pale ivory that he knew she would like. He placed these in two long-stemmed glass candleholders he had filched from her parents. Putting these on the table next to a small, plastic vase filled with artificial roses was his idea of a romantic evening. Despite the haplessness of his effort, he still might have won her over by his well-meaning intention.
    However, it had become clear to her—in a way that it had not been before—that she was hostage to his sordid sexual urges and to his temper. His uncontrollable rages could surge up out of a serene moment, just like a tsunami rose up without warning from the rolling waves of a calm, tranquil sea.
    The worn canvas backpack containing a cellophane bag of stale trail mix, a tepid bottle of water, a flashlight, a change of underwear, gray wool socks, a small pocketknife, a heavy cardigan, and his smartphone were all she had grabbed in her haste to get out. The phone was safely encased in a waterproof plastic bag. Carol had not wanted to take any chances on it getting sodden and damaged in the storm. Now there was no way she could reach it.
    Her blouse and sweater were soaked, and she could feel her