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The world comes to a halt, her hot breath is caught midair and her eyes focus on a particular branch. Its veins are a solid brown, accented by the pure white snow. Her face is flushed, due to the lack of proper clothing. Stoic blue eyes take in her shivering frame. Pale brown fingers clutch at the cardigan with all the strength she has. He stares, watching her body shivering in the snow.  She sees his lips form a thin smile, and then she begins to try and move. Her limbs are in searing pain. Biting her lip, a bit of blood is drawn as she struggles to regain strength.

He dragged her into the woods.

Whether or not he planned to kill her, she didn't know. He's still staring at her, and the branch is still the same. The flakes seem to be caught mid-air, she can't make much out of the flurry of blankness. She watches as he lets out a powerful sigh, rosy cheeks making a distinct highlight against his pale face. It's still beautiful, it's terrifying how beautiful he still is. She'll never tell him that she thinks the world of him. Or she at least did a while ago.

But now, she's puzzled. He's caught her at an impasse, and she's not sure where to go. What to do, whether or not to beg for her life. The atmosphere is unreadable, anyone who saw them right then and there would say that he probably had a body bag in the trunk of his car. Waiting for use.

He's still beautiful. Even at the very moment. His strong build and ruffled blonde hairs only make her center feel warm and sticky with want. Want that. She knew he would never want to satisfy. He is disgusted by the way she looks, he calls her not by her name, but by many other names. She's not comfortable with many of those names.

He's still standing, keeping his eyes on her battered frame. He dares her to stand. Gwen feels herself losing her mind. He breathes again. She blinks. He stares.

"Get up bitch."

Gwen shakes her head, scared. Her eyes are screwed shut and her lips are frosted over. She's too cold to make words with her scratchy throat.

His eyes watch her as shes hunched over, trying to regain some type of energy. It won't be enough to overpower him, but maybe enough to make it to the main road. She remembers where they are. Wild brown eyes open, and glare at him. He gives a silent laugh at her sudden second wind. She's sure that her blood is disgustingly oozing all over the pure snow. Tainting the spot.

She's struggling to plant her feet in the snow, resting against the old bark of an oak tree, clutching onto it for dear life. Gritting her teeth, she glares at him with a frown. He never appreciated her undying love for him. She loved him when everyone else gave up on him. She cringed, recalling as she remembered when she admitted her feelings to him, only to be ignored.

Her pants are the only noise in the area, leaving him to simply stare and watch her struggle. But she assumed it was only therapeutic for him.

"Stupid little bitch, always making things harder than they need to be. Always trying so hard." He takes a few steps towards her, watching her shiver. Unable to move in time, he clutches a handful of her hair. She hisses in pain at the sheer strength of his hold.

"Always trying to satisfy her master." he croons.

Aaron makes a slight smile, as he helps her up. Gwen thrashes, trying to get loose from his grip. She hears him growl under his breath, as he tightens his grip in her wild mane. Her hair was flat ironed but after the event of getting shoved into the backseat of his car and being forced to follow him out there in the freezing cold, it turned into an unruly mess. She throws her closed fist at him in the attempt of socking him in the face. He easily dodges it. Aaron throws one final cold glare before dropping her back on the cold ground.

"If you find your way back, do yourself a favor and stay out of mine," he growls.

She struggles to keep her eyes open as he walks away, his boots crunching into the snow. Her mouth opens, and the hot air leaves. She says nothing. No tears fall, it's just darkness.

BRRRRRRINGGGG!

The shrill scream of her alarm clock wakes her. She rustles the papers on her desk as she lifts her head. Brown eyes trace over the cracking eggshell wallpaper, tired. The pieces of paper scattered on the table are intangible, the words look like scribbles. She looks at them, muttering under her breath, but her vision focuses and she finds herself reading absolute bullshit. Letter after letter from home. People mailing to her about her success, about being one of the only females to ever actually go to college in their deadbeat little town.

Gwen had no intention of returning home.

Home? Her home was Georgia, in a backward town called Roanoke. It was a failed town with land on the outskirts of civilization. Her family had lived there for generations, among confederates and the Klan. They've been through movements, war, and whatnot. Living in Roanoke wasn't exactly high living either.

The reception was poor, the neighborhoods were large and the community was very close-knit. The town hall was the grand center of the town. The worst building she had ever seen since her arrival in Chicago.  The ladies back home were never the type to leave, but when Gwen was young, that was all she would ever ask from God.

Their home wasn't a place that was welcoming exciting or even hospitable. It was eerie. She talked to her mom about leaving town a lot. Going to Atlanta, leaving the ruins that were Roanoke. Her mom never really wanted to move and would tell her that so much of their history was right there in Roanoke.

In the empty broken tar of their roads, her mom drove around proudly. She said there was nowhere on earth better than Roanoke. Her father didn't like Roanoke, but he tolerated it. Her mom met a black Californian man when she went there for college. She fell pregnant with her, and never completed college. She often wondered why they didn't stay in California instead of coming back to shady ol' Roanoke. But with her Grandmother's reaction to her going to college, she thinks she understood why her mom couldn't exactly leave. Her father often talked of divorcing her mother just to leave the town, but she knew he loved her too much to try that.

"Make sure to come back soon, pumpkin. Or, they'll have to come and get you."

When asking her grandmother who they were, she got no response. Just a chaste tight-lipped smile and an eerie side-hug. When asking her mother what she meant by that, she was told to not worry, and that Grandma was probably just not taking her medication. But she knew better, there was something to Roanoke that just didn't seem right. People who were born there were destined to die there. Families could trace every last bit heritage. When her mother returned to Roanoke with a black man, she was given lots of judgment and was exempted from voting for a good ten years. Racially mixing was strictly looked down upon as a sin in Roanoke.

Her school days as a child were lonely. She sat alone, in the lunchroom, classroom, and at recess. Not that she wanted to exactly join the other kids.  They were a very odd group, selecting friends by wealth, looks, and even making a point to ostracize those who didn't exactly look like their ideal perfect kid.

They often referred to her as the 'negro' or the 'black one'. Although she wasn't exactly fair skinned, she was far off from being as dark as her father. Inheriting her mother's hazel eyes and her curly black hair, her cinnamon colored flesh from her father. She was of a slightly over average build for a woman in Roanoke, standing at 5'8.

The people in Roanoke didn't talk the English that she saw on the television. Their dialect was riddled with, 'wasn'ts', 'ain'ts', and broken English. Reading Huckleberry Finn, she noticed that their normal tongue was just a long gone dialect used by illiterate southerners from around 200 years ago. She supposed that it was just a cultural spin on prose, but when it was taught in school, she had no idea what to think.

She didn't speak like them, she didn't look like them, she didn't dress like them either. Her father bought her normal pants and t-shirts, in contrast to many of the long skirt wearing girls. Her normal quiet personality was all but inviting.

Gwen sighed, staring at the wall clock. It was 3 in the morning and frowned. She could have sworn it was around 10, making her late to go to work. Graduating from school around five months ago, her mother tried to convince her to go back 'home'. Her father urged her to pursue her masters and even offered to pay her tuition in full. She declined, knowing he would be dipping into his retirement fund and she couldn't rest easy knowing that. 

Her aunt, Auntie Em, was really persistent about her settling down with some asshole out of their small town.  Auntie Em was the picture perfect woman, her three perfect blond kids, her burly husband -- Uncle Domonic, who she was sure had hated her--, and their no less than a perfect mansion in the higher reaches of Roanoke. Her husband was some sort of official, and he earned enough money for them to live among elites. 

Often, Auntie Em invited her to play with her daughter Mikayla, the prettiest girl in town. Mikayla was outwardly eccentric; her electric blue eyes equally inviting as they were frightening. Her straightened blond hairs were always well combed and her thin lips looked perfect.

Gwen hated the way she could never look like Mikayla. Mikayla would wear the prettiest dresses. The prettiest sun hat, the best shoes. She was jealous of the rich girl.

She was jealous of the many rich kids in Roanoke. They didn't have to deal with many of the problems that she had to. They didn't have to work in the fields with the other kids on weekends, they didn't have to cut firewood every single winter, and they definitely weren't forced to drop school in some rare cases.

She remembered when someone in the seventh grade dropped out, saying it was too hard. Tom Abernulle. He was a well-known farmhand and was actually richer than her. With her dentist father and her accountant mother, not many in Roanoke cared for health or finance. People mostly lived off the land and bartered.

She remembered his gap between his two crooked teeth and the way he used to smile at Mikayla every day. He would wear his worn jeans over a bomber jacket and a tee shirt, then he would style his hair back with gel and have a loose toothpick between the gap aforementioned. She often thought he would dress like some kind of city slicker in order to be different and catch girls attention.

Gwen fondly smiled, remembering her childhood. There were more downs than ups, but living in Roanoke had been an experience. Most children in the states enjoyed the luxuries of modern life. It saddened her that Roanoke would probably never see that come to fruition.

Gwen stood up from the desk and walked to the bathroom. She couldn't afford to dilly dally, there was much to do at work.