Anthem, Silent

Ivy

I was terrified, like, straight to the core level of terrified. I was sure that I was losing my mind as I sat in my car, with my lunchbox in my lap since I now dreaded entering the very building I had been so excited to work at. It felt like things were going haywire, and I couldn’t explain it to anyone because it felt a bit like paranoia and I wasn’t sure that there would be anyone who’d be able to help. 

Firstly and most importantly, yesterday’s lunch with Schalk had been…unnerving and concerning. He had me sit in his lap as he fed me food, and he licked my lips clean, watching me like he wanted to devour me. Secondly, when I woke up this morning, the little things around my apartment seemed to not be placed in the usual places that I leave them at. I assumed that I may have accidently left my remote and folder in a different place than usual. I chalked it up to fatigue but I know my mannerisms. To add on to that, I had exactly three oranges left before I fell asleep, and when I woke up I had two oranges left? I had an orange for every day of the week, and I ate an orange a day. I was sure of it. To make it even worse, when I was leaving for work, I found orange peelings all the way from my front door to the gate. 

Strange things were happening in my apartment and all I could think about was how Lorna was the only one with access to my apartment since she has the only other spare key. I can only pray that it's Lorna and not her boyfriend that may or may not be entering the apartment when I'm not there. 

Basically, things were getting weird and I was scared and squeamish about it all. It was just my luck that things were getting so eerie during my first week of living alone. I kept dismissing my concerns, telling myself that I was overreacting.

Maybe I'm the one who ate an extra orange yesterday when I was coming back from work, or I don’t know, maybe I've been so exhausted from work and distracted by Schalk that I keep forgetting where I put my things.

I kept praying that I was doing things subconsciously because I worried about what the truth could reveal. If Lorna was the only one with the spare key and there were no signs of forced entry into my home…then it meant that it was either her or Kwanele. I didn’t want to think about it, but the chills that ran down my spine were an obvious sign of how thoughts like this were unnerving me even further. 

If it wasn’t work, then it was home, if it wasn’t home, then it was work. 

I sighed and leaned over to the radio, playing Lady Zamar’s Collide, as I increased the volume a bit to drown out my thoughts. I reached into my lunchbox pulling out my orange that I had already sliced and took one of the four slices into my mouth, creating an ‘orange-ey smile’. I looked at myself in the vanity mirror in front of me and laughed, watching the outer corners of my eye wrinkle as I entertained myself with silly faces. 

I didn’t think that I’d be spending my lunch break hiding in the car because I didn’t want Schalk to find me. I finally understood what Reeva meant when she said that Schalk has serious issues. Schalk definitely has more than a few screws l– 

The sound of tapping on my window pulled me away from making silly faces in the mirror, and with the orange still stuck on my teeth, I turned my head to see who it was, feeling my blood run cold as I met a pair of dark blue eyes. He tapped on the window, his taps slow and creepy as he gave me a bit of a smirk when we made eye contact before he waved his hand. He gestured with his finger for me to roll the window down. 

I spat out the orange and instead of starting up the car and speeding the hell out of there, I rolled the window down, “…” I prepared to speak but nothing came out as I looked over his features. He had his other arm on the roof of the car as he bent down to be at eye level with me. 

“You avoiding me, babygirl?” he asked me, his voice croaking out the words and causing a chill to run up my spine as I quickly shook my head. 

“N-n-n…no,” I stammered, my voice trembling.