Ineffable - S.REID

17

・゜゜・．THE FOLLOWING MORNING .・゜゜・

Clara had woken with a shiver she could not shake, even after checking that the doors downstairs were still locked shut. The feeling did not leave, even when she found herself distracted by the rising and falling of Spencer's sleeping breaths. She, after writing a note about the spare toothbrush and various other things in the downstairs bathroom she kept just in case someone slept over by accident, headed upstairs in search of warm water to rid her of the feeling.

She relished the feeling of the water cascading down her back, only touching the baby hairs at her neck as she had pinned the rest of her hair up. She knew the humidity from the bathroom would wreak havoc on her hair and make the usual loose waves into a friz filled mess that just couldn't be handled adequately but couldn't currently care. She tried to enter that blissful state she often frequented in the shower, where the sound of the water became everything she heard and all thoughts would just dissolve and drain away with the water. But she could not shake the feeling, the cold, the feeling of her hairs being up on their ends.

Footsteps came from downstairs and for a second, she merely assumed they were Spencer's and went back to ignoring everything outside the shower. Yet when those footsteps climbed the steps and she could truly hear them, her blood ran cold. Having had him over to her house quite a few times over the months and months of knowing each other, she had gotten used to the sound of his footsteps. She did not recognise the footsteps of whoever was climbing her staircase.

Instead of panicking completely and working herself up for what could be no reason, she cautiously crept her hand around the shower curtain and reached for her phone and a towel. She kept the water running but stepped out from underneath it, covering herself with a towel as she silenced her phone and called him.

"Is there someone upstairs?" she whispered after he picked up within two rings. Her attempt to keep her voice as quiet as possible when paired with the water hitting the bathtub beneath her feet, created almost certainly that whoever was outside her door wouldn't be able to hear a word.

"Clara, I'm not there, I'm walking to the bakery." She smiled briefly at the idea of eating one of her favourite pastries for breakfast soon after her shower but the smile soon dropped once she centred back in reality as the person stepped on a particularly creaky floorboard.

She made any and all attempt to make her voice softer, pushing her back up against the cold tile to get further away from the door. "There's someone in my house. My guns downstairs in the safe."

"Did you lock the bathroom door?" he asked rapidly, the sound of his quickened footsteps almost muffling the words completely. Clara, unsure as to whether she had, peaked around the plastic of her shower curtain and looked down to the silver door handle.

"No," she whispered and he broke into a run. She slowly reached for her pyjamas and pulled them back on, without shutting off the water nor moving from the shower. She did not want whatever intruder to see or kill her while she was wrapped in a towel. It would be easier to fight for her life without the restriction of just a towel, even if she did only have an ornamental metal statue as a weapon. She hid behind the shower curtain, angled to the point that she would be able to hear the most without the water muffling the sound too much. She listened and counted every movement of the intruder, trying to calculate from the sound of their movements where exactly they were. She listened as the person ran down the stairs, then to the kitchen where they lingered for a second too long. She heard the instant Spencer entered the house, gun probably ready to shoot at the first sight of whoever had entered her house without an invitation. Given her background, they would both be safe to assume that the person wasn't going to be understanding and leave peacefully. She hated that he had been somewhat forced to risk his life for her, they were both without vests after all. She heard a commotion, then some form of crash that sounded like a door either opening or closing. Then she heard the footsteps again, this time too frightened to figure out if she recognised them or not.