Stay! By My Side

Chapter 35

Author's Note

Hi everyone, thank you for being here until today, I'm so grateful to have you all keep reading this story. I would like to apologize for not be able to give you a steady updates, but I promise I will try my best until I finished this one.

Also, I would like to tell you that due to technical errors, the last time I updated, I accidentally published the incomplete version of Chapter 34. So if anyone of you haven't reread Chapter 34 you might want to revisit the chapter before reading this one.

That's all I want to say, thank you for being with me all this time. Enjoy your reading! I'll see you soon :D

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Hide and seek was a fun game until someone had to be killed in the process. A nine years old girl, blonde, was found dead at the alley near a currently popular ice cream shop, shot in the head. It was supposed to be a happy Sunday afternoon, hanging out with her friends and their parents, thought the alley was a perfect hiding place for the game. How wrong she was. The ice cream shop was turned into a crime scene where the police roaming around observing the suspects.

Hundreds kilometers away from the scene, a tea-colored hair girl woke up in sweats. She saw herself died in her dream. Panting heavily, she brushed her damped hair back, her left hand tried to reach out for a glass of water which was placed at the top of her side table. She gulped the water until there was none then put the glass back and take a few deep breaths. The last four weeks had passed without nightmares, but today, it came back again. It was easier to find herself being the one who's dead in her dream instead of a certain someone, but it still gave her chill. Easier, but not less ugly.

She threw her gaze around the room and stop at the wall clock. She overslept. She then decided to jump off her bed after a few good minutes staring at nothing. She walked outside her room only to find the house was currently empty, but someone left her something to eat with a notes attached.

"You were sleeping soundly so we didn't wake you up. There's more inside the fridge. Gonna be home late. Stay inside" was what the notes said. Feeling a little hungry, she started to eat the meal without complain. She turned the TV on, surfing through the channels until some news caught her attention. It was a homicide. She immediately turned off the TV and all the way losing her appetite.

She was about to walked into the kitchen sink when the she heard the main door opened with a bang. Instinctively, she lowered her head, silently crawling to the back of the largest sofa in the room. She felt the rush of adrenaline throughout her body, making her heartbeats accelerate to the point of hurting her chest. 

It has been thirty seconds since the loud bang but she didn't hear any sounds yet, so she tried to crawl to the end of the sofa. Quietly, while trying to calm her breathe, she tilted her head from the sofa back, aiming to get a better view of the main door. From the mirror which was placed in the alleyway to the main house, she should have been able to see whoever coming through the front door. But she saw no one.

Two minutes in silence, she decided to go further. Crawling back to the direction of the kitchen, she jumped quietly to the back of the smaller sofa. She needed to reach the kitchen, to open the certain cabinet without putting herself in danger.

Another two minutes, the silence was bothering her, but she put the distracting thought in the back of her head. Safety first, she decided. More carefully this time, she quickly run towards the kitchen while still lowering her upper body.

PWRAP! At the same time she got off of the sofa back, someone firing a shot, although they missed it, but the bullet still dangerously close to her. A loud crack of a vase being scattered in the floor gave her enough diversion to quickly open the cabinet under the sink and took out a gun for herself.

Five minutes after the shot, she braced herself to confront the intruder. Calmly, she hide behind the kitchen wall, but still try to find a best view at the mirror. Thank god, she thought, that she was still in her children form. These past week's doubt of taking the antidotes turned out to be fruitful. Through the mirror, she could see someone's silhouette but not very clearly. Nevertheless, it helped her locate the intruder, given her an upper hand of their current situation.

After one, two breathe away, she fired a warning shot, to inform the intruder that she's armed. She fired the second shot when she received nothing in return. Odd, the intruder didn't fire anything back, yet they didn't move from the spot. And now she had no idea what to do, and clearly, she didn't want to waste the bullets. What if the intruder waited her to ran her bullet off only to fire mercilessly in the end?

So she waited. If she had to wait until the others came home, she would, but she decided not to move from the kitchen. Ten minutes that felt like forever had passed with nothing but silence. Once in a while, she would check the intruder through the mirror, only to find out that the intruder never move any single inch from their spot. Strange.

Another good five minutes passed when the house phone was ringing. Damn! she cursed under her breath, if only the house phone was also in the kitchen. It's quite ridiculous when the kitchen was declared to be a safe hiding place of the house, but the phone was placed beside the television. What's the point? she cursed again.

The phone was ringing endlessly, and the intruder location was closer to the phone. And the the funniest thing happened. The phone stopped ringing, but instead of it's stopped by itself, apparently the intruder was taking the phone. She could catch an audible murmur from her hiding place, but what she didn't understand was, why did they take the phone call? This wasn't their home.

The murmur stopped after a few minutes and she could hear a footsteps and the pone being placed down. Steady in her ground, she readied her gun again. The footsteps slowly getting louder and louder, indicating the owner was getting closer. Any moment, now, she said to herself.

She was getting ready in her feet when she saw a gun being thrown to floor, stopped under the cabinet across where she stood low.

"Come out, I'm not armed, you're okay!"

It was a woman's voice that she didn't recognized. She hesitated a few moment but decided to face the intruder. She didn't put her gun down, though, still in steady position. Slowly, she get out off her hiding, carefully aiming her gun towards the stranger. Her eyes wide after seeing the other person.

"Easy, now, big girl. I'm sorry, I wasn't informed that you're joining the party. Put that down, please, and let's have a meal in peace."