What Goes Around

5 - GET LOST

Someone was watching her.

She felt twin holes being drilled in the back of her skull, injecting her with ice. She twitched but tamped down the urge to look; maybe if she ignored it, whatever it was, it would leave her alone. Outside, twilight had fallen, and everything was still, silent. Sleeping, waiting.

Yeah, she was never so lucky. This only succeeded in making it angrier.

Tuesday had fallen asleep on her keyboard with the blank Google search still up. An endless string of random characters marched onwards in the search bar, eliciting a 'no results found' message. As she opened a fresh page, not bothering to clear the original query, the intensity of the stare she felt on her dialed up to searing hot. And when she still ignored it, still ignored the gentle rustle of paperwork on her desk–she did glance forward, and the window was shut–the anger morphed into vengeance. A hand, nearly large enough for the fingers to overlap, wrapped itself around her throat and tugged.

She went tumbling backwards, overturning the chair and landing in a pile of twisted limbs she quickly righted herself from. Scrambling back in a defensive crouch she prepared to grab the first object her fingers would find, the desk lamp; it wasn't all that heavy, but she'd made weapons out of less. She knew what she'd find when she was ready for the counterattack. She'd been anticipating this for days, for weeks. For a year, for ten, or eighteen depending on perspective. Her thorough imagination conjured up things dark, spindly legged, sharp, things with dripping fangs and searching tongues, eyes the color of ash or blood and everything in between. But the realistic side of her knew those were the stuff of fairytales. She knew exactly who was waiting for her to turn around, and when she did he–

There was no one there.

Her own hands flew to her throat, sure she'd feel those strong cold fingers there, or some gaping wound they must've left as a parting gift. The skin there was warm and smooth. And that's when the sinking, decaying suspicion rooted itself in the pit of her stomach, the realization that she was not in fact awake.

But she couldn't control the scene. It shuddered forward on creaking wheels of its own volition; she was a passenger, just along for the ride, unable to pull the lever on this thing.

So she watched herself stumble out of the room, into the empty kitchen, into the abandoned hall. The lights had been shut off and she only had her sense of touch to guide her to the communal restrooms. She tiptoed into the black, hands trailing over the wall to keep her balance, for a minute. For an hour. Perhaps even longer. The hall didn't end, didn't reach an stopping point until suddenly it did; flash forward, a momentary black-out, and she was there, standing in front of the mirrors. Here there was light, but it was wrong somehow, hazy and warmer than she remembered. Like looking through a layer of skin. Sinew. Marrow. When she leaned forward for a better look at herself, blood trickled from her scalp and down, down, pooling in the hollow of her throat, cascading over her collarbones and further down still. She was choking, and she was silent, and somehow her reflection was speaking too.

"There are some things you can't run from."

Someone was watching her.

She jolted up from her desk, the sunlight streaming in through her window stinging her eyes. The tears stung too; she felt her face and came back with a damp hand. She'd been crying in her sleep, something she didn't know was even possible. For a single, blissful moment, she'd forgotten what she was dreaming about... Then the thought came to her, how the real bitch of the matter, the real monster looming in the nearness, was that you take yourself wherever you go.

There are some people you can't run from.

Please God just let it end, was her next thought. The bitch of that matter was for all intents and purposes, she was an atheist now–at least wanted to be. That's where this kind of sickness gets you, praying to something that doesn't exist for a future you don't deserve. Seeing the CAPS card on her desk Tuesday dissolved into a fit of manic laughter, knowing the school therapists were not prepared to unpack her level of baggage.