Comfort Food by Kitty Thomas

and we were standing outside. The sun was starting to peek through the clouds.
    I shouldn’t have been shocked by what I saw. I’d seen something similar staring out the window of my room, but I just hadn’t thought it would be like this on all sides. He linked his fingers through mine and led me around the house, as if we were lovers or friends, his grip never tightening or becoming threatening.
    I could break the hold at any time and run, but to where? From the outside I could see my assumptions of his wealth weren’t idle. He had money, possibly never-ending pots of it. The house wasn’t a house, it was a fortress, a mansion. In another time, with slightly different architecture, it would have been a castle.
    There were trees in the front yard and then what felt like a vast nothingness that stretched as far as my eyes could see. There were woods in the distance, but it was so far off I thought it might be a mirage. His house was situated on what felt like a grass-covered desert that seemed to roll on forever in all directions.
    We could be literally anywhere. The driveway went on for what appeared to be several miles. And what then? He led me over to the large garage that housed his cars, plural. No surprise that there was a combination keypad over the door.
    He released my hand and sat on the grass, staring up at me, that look of mild amusement on his face, as if to say: what now? What now was right. I spun slowly in circles trying to grasp how far out we were, the vast nothing.
    If there had been lots of trees I could have believed we were close to a main road somewhere and I just had to find it, but we weren’t. I wanted to run. I should have, but I couldn’t help but believe running would make my punishment worse.
    There was nowhere for me to hide, and without a car, nowhere for me to go. He wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to release me. I fought with myself over what I should do. I’d been so ready to kill him and now, faced with such a long trek to even a deserted road, I was giving up?
    I found myself walking down the driveway, toward the vast nothing that I hoped eventually would turn into something. I felt his cold eyes on me, sending a chill over my skin. I knew he was toying with me, and I was buying into it, but I couldn’t just stand there or go back to my cell.
    He was there, ready at every turn. He’d known I would try to kill him, and he’d been prepared. He knew I would do what I was doing now, and he was mocking me. But to react any other way would have been unnatural for me. It would be to give in. He won either way. It was a game stacked against me on all sides.
    I walked until I was a good bit away from the house, if one could call something that imposing a house. I didn’t look back. I was afraid to see him following behind me at some kind of perceived safe distance. Eventually I did turn back because I couldn’t stand the way my stomach clenched at the idea that he was close behind me, playing with me and waiting to pounce.
    He was still sitting there, casually in the grass. I was too far away now to see his face, but I could make out his shape. And then he stood. My heart dropped into my stomach. I imagined he was smiling, a hunter intent on outrunning his prey, though I was too far away to see his mouth to find the truth of this theory. He started to move toward me.
    I turned and ran. I’d always been in great physical condition, but I couldn’t run for distance worth shit. I just never built up that kind of endurance. It didn’t take long before I was winded, and he was close enough for me to hear him running up behind me.
    I couldn’t outrun him; I knew it. I’d known it from the beginning, but if I didn’t make at least the token effort I’d be beating myself up over it for as long as he let me live. If there had been trees, I could have zigzagged between them and hidden. It was just too open here.
    His feet pounded closer and closer to me against the ground, dry and