Page 88 of Her Wicked Knights
For the first time in my adult life, I'm doing really well, which is why I feel like I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The feeling creeps over me slowly, and then all at once. It's like pins and needles, like someone's watching me even though I'm in my own apartment, behind a locked front door and a shut bathroom door. I'm alone, so why all of a sudden doesn't it feel like it?
It's irrational, my insecurities trying to creep back in because they're being pushed out. I'm not letting my trauma control me anymore, and it's not going down without a fight.
I close my eyes and sink an inch deeper, letting the water rise to cover my shoulders, so that it skims the bottom of my ears, my chin. I let go of the tension, sighing as it melts away again.
By the time I get out of the tub, I've forgotten all about the strange feeling of being watched. I'm tired, the warmth of the water and the wine mixing in my stomach, in addition to the multiple orgasms from earlier, and it's all I can do to stay straight long enough to brush my teeth. By the time I shed my towel and throw on an oversized tee shirt and some panties, it's all I can do to collapse on my bed, not even bothering to slip under the covers despite the chill pressing against my windows.
I fall asleep immediately; I don't even realize I fell asleep until I feel something that makes my eyes snap open. I dart upright, glancing around the room for the source of the disturbance.
I swear I felt someone's breath on my neck... like someone was in bed next to me, breathing against me.
The thought alone sends a chill down my spine, but when I search the darkness of my bedroom, there's nothing. No monsters or men hiding in the shadows, no ghosts, not even a mouse. The thought occurs to me that it could have been a spider or something crawling on me, so I rise and turn the light on, glancing around the room once more... just to be sure that there's no one and nothing there.
And then I turn to my bed, tearing the sheets off and shaking them loose, like I expect anything to fall out of them. I don't know if I should be relieved or frustrated when nothing does. It doesn't matter, though. Clearly, I was dreaming, and my dream just started to feel a little too real, so it prompted me to wake up. Nobody is here, and I know I locked the front door— I double checked when I got out of the bath earlier. My brain and body are just at a disconnect; it happens more than I care to admit, and it's part of why Logan's therapy is so effective. After waking up with a knife to my throat once, I've never been able to sleep as deeply as I used to.
I don't have the energy to make the whole bed again, so I throw my flat sheet on the floor, deciding to make tomorrow laundry day. It's been a few weeks since I changed the bedding anyway, and I should retire the winter blanket since it's slowly starting to warm up now.
I've just laid my head back down when I hear it; the unmistakable click of a door shutting.
This time, I don't talk myself out of my panic. I snatch my phone off the nightstand, my fingers shaking as I dial 911.
Luckily for me, their response is quick. I don't dare leave the safety of my bed as I wait for the officer to arrive. Someone must have been in the area, because it's only a matter of minutes that feel like forever before I hear the knock on the door. The911 operator, who stayed on the line with me the whole time, assured me it was an officer who was close by, which gave me the courage to open the door to a man who looks oddly like a walrus in a denim jacket.
"Miss Lavigne? I'm Detective Morgan. I'm responding to a call about an intruder?"
Detective Morgan walks thoroughly around my apartment, his eyes taking in every surface until I feel like I'm under a microscope here. When he's done, he turns to me and asks me to explain what I saw.
And to my great embarrassment, I have to tell him I didn't actuallyseeanything.
It's been hard to sleep since that night I felt someone in my apartment. Detective Morgan implied that maybe it was a product of my imagination, that maybe I had been asleep when my dream started to feel real. He took a look in my bathroom cabinet, and I could feel him judging me for the prescriptions I hadn't yet flushed. And then he told me that there was no evidence that anyone had been there, but that he wanted me to call him if I had any issues going forward. I haven't, but at the same time, everything is starting to fall apart. The facade is cracking, and falling asleep in Criminology and waking up screaming is the last straw.
I didn't quit school easily. It's the only thing I had going for me, but I also watch my grades drop in record time, and with just over a month left in the semester, I decided to withdraw from all of my classes before my grades post. I can fix my degree later by finishing the necessary courses. I can't fix failing grades that show on my transcripts and keep me from getting into crucial classes next year.
To say Logan is upset with me about it is an understatement. And to say that I'm upset that he reacted like I'd committed murder is also an understatement. I didn't burn any bridges, and most of my teachers actually seemed to appreciate it when I explained that I was going to have to take some personal time to refresh myself. Yet when I told Logan I was just going to go pick up extra shifts at the diner for the summer and that I'd begin again in fall, he called me a quitter, a liar. He didn't believe me when I told him someone had been in my apartment, deciding that we had to be more aggressive with our therapy. The next month, almost exactly to the day, when I was leaving work and saw someone in the back seat of my car, I called him first... even before Detective Morgan. Both of them seemed to believe me this time, and Logan even stayed at my house for a few nights to make sure everything was okay.
I started to get the side-eye from Detective Morgan when I called to tell him someone was outside my back window. He was quick to deduce that that couldn't have happened; there's no fire escape since the building is only two stories. In the event of a fire, I guess I'm supposed to just tuck and roll. Nobody could possibly be standing out there, the detective told me.
And yet, every month, it's seemed like things have only continued to spiral, and the incidents keep coming. A note under my door that said 'See Ya Soon, Marley'. I begged them to look into Mark Holland. I gave them everything and asked them to search for him, but apparently, he lives in Serenity Hollow again, and he hasn't left in a few years. When the detective and one of the uniformed officers with him opened my laptop and the screen came on to the note, which had been typed on my computer, I think they gave up on me entirely. You can tell when someone thinks you're crazy. It's especially obvious when you start to think they're right. After months of thinking someone is around the corner, waiting for me at every turn, you start to question your own sanity.
And as I finally relent and take one of the sleeping pills, hoping to catch just enough sleep to not jump at my own reflection, I make sure every door is locked, every window is latched, and there's no way anybody is getting into my house without me knowing.
I fall asleep with the TV playing reruns of an old series I used to watch and sink into the comfort of the moment.
I don't even realize I'm asleep until I'm ripped out of it when I feel the vibration of the bass rattling my bones. I open my eyes, but they don't actually open... or maybe they do, but the darkness is too thick to tell.
I'm disoriented, sleep clinging to me so hard that it takes me far too long to figure out what's going on. In fact, it's not until Itry to sit up and slam my head into metal above me that I get a vague idea of where I am... what's happened.
I'm in the trunk of a car.
Someone took me.
Panic floods my lungs, making it hard to breathe the stale air trapped in here with me. I knew something was wrong, that I wasn't crazy. Someone's been creeping around my apartment for months, and now they've finally made their move. I shouldn't let myself think too much about who it is or what they'll do to me; it won't help me get away to lay back here and analyze why they'd chase me out of town all those years ago and then come kidnap me at random. No, I need to stay calm. I saw what happened to Audrey; I still see it sometimes when I close my eyes, grisly flashes of carnage. The men who did this to her are monsters, and they're coming for me now. But I know what they're capable of. Audrey didn't, and so maybe I'm in a better position than she was.
My arms are tired behind my back, but I still have all my clothes on, which is a small comfort... particularly when I force myself to relax enough to decide what parts of me are covered and what aren't.
Panic squeezes my chest in a vice grip when I realize it's not just that it's dark in the back of the trunk. I'm blindfolded, and unable to reach to take it off.
