The first thing you are aware of is the pounding of your head. Quickly on the heels of this intense discomfort is a thirst such as you've never had before.

You're sitting down, leaning up against something hard. You lift a hand toward your head to nurse the ache, only to realize that you can't move your hands. You open your eyes to slits—you have the sort of gut-roiling, brain-splitting feeling that accompanies a terrible hangover—and see that your wrists are bound together in front of you with strong nylon cord. It looks familiar, and it seems important to remember where you've seen it before, but you can't.

The restraints are fastened to an iron ring bolted to a filthy wooden floor littered with dead leaves and straw.

With a sense of mounting panic making your pulse race, you look around. On your left rises a short, wooden wall, and on your right, another; in front of you is a slotted gate. When you look up, you can see rafters high above you and a hayloft. You're in a barn. An old one, by the looks of it.

Your breathing quickens. Your first instinct is to get away. You tug at your hands with a whimper of fear, but the ropes hold fast. You shift your weight and raise yourself up onto your knees, and your stomach rolls.

When you move, you become aware of something tickling your neck. Looking down, you notice a noose of nylon cord just like that which has bound your hands. It's draped around your neck like some kind of horrifying necklace. With a moan of disgust and terror, you jerk your shoulders and dip your head, trying to pull the thing off, but you can't. The end trails loosely along the floorboards, not attached to anything, as if it's someone's sick idea of a joke.

Someone. You know it's not just anyone. Wes...Wes is the Back Road Butcher!

Wes must have drugged you. What could it have been? You hadn't tasted anything, but the feeling of drunkenness had smacked you in the face within such a short time, and you've never had a hangover this bad. Just the effort of kneeling upright makes you feel like you're going to throw up.

You draw a slow breath, trying to steady yourself. Your body is torn between the intense effects of adrenaline-laced panic and the physical sickness you feel, but your sizzling nerves are completely alert. It's quiet except for the summery song of crickets outside.

Once again, you twist and pull at your hands, but if you have any hope of getting free of these restraints, it's going to take you a while.

There's no way you're going to stick around to see what's next in this twisted story. You're getting out of here...if it's the last thing you do. [[Go to Chapter 18.]]

You're too afraid to do anything other than sit and shiver—the thought of escape clamors in the back of your mind, but you're paralyzed and stay put. [[Go to Chapter 19.]]