Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 134133 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 671(@200wpm)___ 537(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134133 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 671(@200wpm)___ 537(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
It's absurd, but I feel like he's still lurking, watching me like he was earlier at the party.
I sit at the small kitchen table with my glass of water. My gaze drifts to the windows. It's so dark outside, I can't see anything. Rationally, I know there's nothing out there to see, but a chill travels down my spine, anyway.
I'm being silly. I'm safe here, in my house.
No one can get in.
No one is out there wanting to get in.
Just to be safe, though, I get up and double check the locks on the front door.
Feeling marginally safer, I go back to the kitchen table and grab my water. I don't want to be out here anymore. I feel exposed out here, even though I know I'm not.
I shut off all the lights on my way back, then I close my bedroom door and cross the room in the dark, carefully setting my water down on the end table.
The glass doesn't go right down. There's something under it, but it's dark, so I can't see.
I touch my phone on the nightstand to light up the area and gasp when I see the severed button from my shorts beneath the glass.
Where did that come from?
A fresh wave of terror floods my body, but I try to keep it at bay.
I tell myself I must have grabbed it, maybe I mindlessly shoved it in my pocket, but I know it's not true.
I couldn't find that button.
I would have brought it home to see if Mom could sew it back on my shorts so I can still wear them come summer, but I wasn't about to spend more time on that bed trying to find the severed button.
My heart slams in my chest because there's only one other person who could have put it there.
"Hello?" I say, hating how my voice shakes as it breaks the dead silence.
The room is dark. I sense no movement.
No one answers.
My chest constricts.
I tell myself I should walk over and turn on the light to make sure the room is empty, but I'm too damn afraid of what I'll find.
I swallow, listening again for movement. The sounds of someone breathing. Surely, I would be able to sense a person in this room with me.
I’m too afraid to listen for long, though.
As if ignoring the monster can make it disappear, I climb back into my bed like a kid after a terrifying nightmare. I pull the blankets around myself protectively and squeeze my eyes shut.
Please don't be in my room.
I feel safer curled up in bed under my blankets, but I have no idea if I really am.
If he's in my room, I can guess why he's here.
At best, to finish what he started in the escape room.
At worst, to silence me permanently.
Please, please don't be in my room.
I wait for the monster to emerge. For the bed to dip with his weight as he climbs on it with me, or the door to creak as it opens and a sliver of light spills in.
But nothing happens.
The air around me doesn't seem to move.
No monster joins me on the bed.
My heart beats more regularly and my eyelids grow heavy.
I'm safe in my bed, I tell myself.
He can't get me here.
I wish it felt more like the truth.
I didn't feel like this after my run-in with Dylan. I felt sick and disgusted, of course, but I didn't feel his presence hanging around me like Silvan's fucking fur around my shoulders.
I didn’t feel haunted.
Not like this, anyway.
Not by him.
It isn’t what happened to me that’s keeping me from sleep tonight, it’s fear of the man who did it, it’s a feeling that he won’t go away as easily as Dylan did.
The thought passes through my mind that maybe I should go to the police.
I didn't with Dylan. It was hard to even be sure he'd done anything wrong that night as I left, unable to focus and with trembling hands. I knew how I felt, but I didn't know if maybe it was somehow my fault. If I couldn't even fully believe what had happened to me and I'd been there, why would complete strangers?
I shouldn't have gone there that night.
Rationally, I know I should be able to go anywhere I want with the expectation of safety, especially when I'm there with a friend. He certainly could rely on being safe with me.
I should have been physically stronger, fought him with more force so I wouldn't have been in such a vulnerable position.
Rationally, I know I shouldn't have to physically fight someone off to avoid something I don't want from happening. Not wanting it should have been enough.
But it was hard to see it all clearly in the moment after it first happened, when I was freshly traumatized, and my brain couldn't comprehend what my friend had done to me.