The silence between  us had started becoming uncomfortable.  We’d spent almost a full week together.  Two days back in my hometown of Paris, Kentucky.  Three more driving to Dallas, Texas.  Another day for the train into Arizona.  And now, almost a full day on this second train destined for “I don’t know where.”

Lizzy, my diminutive companion, had remained as friendly and enthusiastic as the day she showed up on my front porch.  She was barely five feet tall, but her figure was chiseled.  She wore her bleach blonde hair in a flawless pixie cut.  Not a hair ever out of place.  Her blue piercing eyes sparkled.  The obviously tailored pants suit removed any and all doubt that she was a local.  Lol.

But more striking than her appearance was her personality.  She was simultaneously bubbly and also subdued.  Her wit was obvious.  She spoke knowledgably about seemingly every subject.  I find few people intimidating in conversation, and I wouldn’t say that Lizzy intimidates, but she as me on guard, at a minimum.  Somehow, every conversation evolved into a quiz, and Lizzy was administering it.  And if you gave an incorrect response, she’d smile graciously while pointing it out and embarrassing you but made you feel like she’d done you a favor.  Lizzy reminded me of my ex-husband in that regard.  The bitter narcissist was all kinds of terrible, but to his credit, he was the smartest person I’d ever met.  That was, until I met Lizzy.

“Kind of crazy how we’re the only passengers up here in first, isn’t it Lizzy?”  As far as I could tell, Lizzy and I had all four train cars comprising the first-class section to ourselves.

 “I don’t know if that’s right Tina.” Lizzy maintained that smile and her intense eye contact with me.  Her hands always stayed up on the table.  “I saw a couple back in the lounge a few minutes ago.  I’m sure I did.”

I took a sip of my water and slid my chair back from the table just an inch or two.  “Maybe you’re right.”  Lizzy didn’t seem to notice my adjustment.  “Hey, tell me again, would you Lizzy?  How did you find out where I lived?”  If Lizzy inhaled before speaking, I didn’t notice it.

She began to tell me the same account as when we first met.  Lizzy had already told me about her fetishes and that she discovered my stories on DeviantArt.  She told me how connected she felt to me from reading my tales of my own development as a submissive and my explorations of bondage in the Tina’s Journey series I’d published.

Now, even though I strived to be open in sharing every detail about my real-life activities, I had also striven never to reveal any details that could positively lead someone back to my real life.  I’d always change a name or withhold a detail.  Maybe even tweak something in some minor way.  I mostly just stayed vague about specific places, times and people.  But Lizzy had managed to pull tidbits out from the 50 or so chapters that I’d penned that led her to me.  No one single item was overly revealing.  But she’d managed to pull enough together, scattered across every chapter, any aligned them into an order that using context and research and just a touch of good luck, it was plausible that she found my farm.

She recited her detective work just exactly the way she did each time I’d asked her to do so.  Each detail in perfectly logical order.  But I knew she was lying.  Which meant that she was also lying to get me on this empty train heading into the middle of the desert, too.

We both made our moves simultaneously.  I stood and slide stepped back to the right, by gun side, in one smooth and practiced motion.  “Stay back!  Stay Back!” started from my mouth as my strong hand made a clean grip on the holt of my holsters Glock.  The weapon glided almost frictionlessly up as I drew my elbow up along my ribs.  I was about to rotate the muzzle forward and locate Lizzy in the front sites of the gun.  But she was too fast.

Lizzy was a blur.  I must have telegraphed my intentions somehow.  She read it like a championship Hold’em player.  With her hands still planted on the table, she bounded up in the air, clearing the table with her hips.  Her left foot crashed into my right hand, just as my muzzle cleared the holster.  I winced and buckled as she drove my hand into the soft tissue of my waist just below the ribs.  Fuck!  I dropped the gun.  Fortunately, I was alert enough to keep my eyes on Lizzy’s right foot, which was following the left one only higher, aiming for my temple.  I ducked and spun, stepping back and to my left, away from where my gun landed but toward the door out of the dining car.  Lizzy’s foot whizzed just over my head.

Jesus, I’d never seen anyone move that fast or with that much power.  Lizzy landed one foot at a time on my side of the table.  “You’re just a bit faster than I thought you were, Tina.”  That smile was looking less friendly every moment.

“Fuck you.”  Still backing away, I pull the five-inch bowie knife from its scabbard on the support side (non-gun side) of my belt.  I transition it from my left to my right hand, keeping my left-hand check high so it’s ready to defend or to strike if an opening presents itself.

“That’s cute honey.  But totally the wrong move.  I could have put you to sleep easy.  Now I’ll do it hard.”

I tried to back up but now Lizzy is rushing.  I try to use her speed against her and reverse my direction stepping into her and thrust the knife toward her shoulder.  My thrust was on target only Lizzy dodged before I could adjust, and I missed everything.  She was now inside my guard and I knew I was about to take a hit.

My teeth clang together, and I am seeing stars.  I never saw her palm heel uppercut, but she connected squarely on my jaw.  It could have been a knockout blow, but she pulled it.  True to her word, she is going to make it hurt.  I stagger but recover my footing.  But at the same time, Lizzy grabs my right wrist and thumb and wrenches it clockwise, twisting my forearm against the direction a forearm is supposed to twist.  I feel tendons strain but not pop and my knife sails across the room.  I hear it clattering around just as Lizzy lands a knee strike on my inner thigh, dropping me into a genuflect position.

“Stay in the fight Tina,” I shout inside my head.  I throw a completely wild round house with my left arm.  There’s almost no power behind it.  I hear Lizzy chuckle.  She wrenches my right arm up and behind my back painfully.

“Nap time Honey.”  There’s a sudden rustling sound and then heat as Lizzy yanks a plastic bag over my head.  The bag expands and contracts around my face with my now panicked breathing.  The bag was staged with a zip tie at its base.  Lizzy pulls it tightly, cutting off the tiny bit of air that was entering.  I struggle but from my knees and already stunned, Lizzy has the leverage and every other advantage.  Instinctively, I claw uselessly at the bag with my free left hand.  Lizzy still has my right arm in an arm bar.  She wraps her left arm around my forehead, and she leans back, putting me in a painful arch.  I’m seeing stars and running out of air.  My lungs are screaming.

“Yeeoooohhhh!!!” Lizzy shrieks in shock and then rage from the hot pain of my two-inch folding knife slashing the fleshy part of her forearm.  She jumps backwards and grabs her wound, releasing her hold on me.  I fall forward and roll under the table.  As carefully and quickly as I can, I pinch the bag, pull it away from my cheek, and cut a long slit across it with the razor-sharp blade.  I inhale deeply.  I steady myself with the table and stand up on my shaky legs.  I’m on the wrong side of the table from my gun.  I’m obviously outmatched by Lizzy in terms of skill and athleticism.  My only play is to retreat.  No time for back out tactically, I turn and break for the rear door.  But Lizzy is on me again before I make it four strides.

“I spent way too much on that jacket, Tina.  You really messed up.”  Lizzy sprung onto my back.  She clung to me like a backpack.  Lizzy slipped one arm under my chin.  I tried to bury my chin in her elbow to prevent her from cinching the choke hold, but she pulled my head back, like she did before.  Lizzy started baring down, applying pressure to my carotid artery, cutting off blood to my head.  I reach back to try to grab her hair and at least yank a handful out before she puts me under.  Lizzy has other plans.  She was expecting that.

Instead of grabbing her pixie hard, Lizzy lets my hand slip through a loop tied in a cord.  She pulls it tightly and somehow, slides up my body so she is sitting on my shoulders.  Lizzy leads the free end of the cord up over a pipe in the doorway between the cars and then falls back down, holding the cord, stretching my arm up as high as it can reach.  Lizzy’s moves are almost inhumanly quick.  Before I can react, she tied off the cord, trapping my hand high above me.

All of the air explodes from my lungs.  Lizzy just struck my diaphragm with a straight kick.  I think she used full force on that one.  If not for my arm being tied above me, I’d have crumpled.  Completely out of it now, I barely noticed as she tied my other hand to the same bar above my head.  I gasped for air but couldn’t catch my breath, and I slouched, my bound wrists now supporting my full weight.  Lizzy quickly tied my ankles together with another length of cord.

I am generally considered a total badass.  But I’ve just been beaten and tied up with minimal effort by a girl four inches shorter and several pounds lighter than me.  Lizzy was approaching me with another zip tie reinforced plastic bag.

“Aren’t you going to beat me up anymore, Lizzy?”

“Would you like that slut?  You didn’t seem to in your stories. Have you developed new kinks?”  God I was learning to hate her smile.  “Tell you what, I won’t suffocate you with this bag if you tell me how you knew I was lying about how I found you.  OK?”

There it is.  Finally, Lizzy gave me a chance for a victory.  I’m her helpless toy now.  And for reasons I don’t know, she seems intent on torturing me.  Probably murdering me.  So any small victory is still something.

“I figured it out because you’re stupid enough to wear expensive clothes to a knife fight you sick, crazy cunt.  And I swear to god, I’m going …”

Lizzy didn’t like that.  The bad went over my head and the zip tie ratcheted down.  I didn’t want to give Lizzy the satisfaction of watching me struggle.  But I couldn’t help it.  My hands grasped and flailed finding nothing but air.  Moisture filled the bag as my CO2 replaced the oxygen.  I’d been choked out before but never suffocated.  It didn’t feel like breath play.  If felt like dying.  And I know what dying feels like.  I writhed on and on, much longer than I thought I could.  Long after I’d run out of air.  And then all was black and still.