Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
*warning: blood and gore
CHAPTER FIVE
A false safety had clung to Ines throughout the evening. Once her friend showed up on her doorstep, she had convinced herself that she was untouchable. When Amanda had been called into her work for a late shift, the bubble she had created around herself dissolved and the comfort her friend had brought was gone.
She was alone.
The thing she dreaded the most, because she knew she wasn't alone.
It was like her stalker existed in the walls, crept until he was under her skin, taking everything that wasn't his.
She almost wanted to hide under the covers of her bed, like a child, tell herself that she would be shielded from what crept in the dark and the monsters that hid under the bed.
She had laid restless for hours, twitching at each noise that could be heard before exhaustion pulled at her, convincing her that she would wake to find her brother home.
Her room was dark when she woke and she knew at an instant she shouldn't be awake. The morning light wasn't there, her brother wasn't home, she shouldn't be awake.
Before she could see it, she knew it.
There was a man lying next to her.
On the soft pink covers of bed was a man lying in the dark, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his skin and smell the lingering fragrance of his perfume.
The realization washed over her and tore trough her body, the engulfing terror paralyzing. She closed her eyes so hard it hurt. Tears brimming them as her breath became uneven, while she desperately struggled to keep it unnoticeable that she was awake and utterly terrified.
He was beside her.
In her bed.
His hand lingered around her waist.
The stranger was comfortable, as if he'd held her a thousands times before.
"You're so pretty when you cry." He mumbled, his voice calm and endorsing. Her fear muffled his words, barely reaching her as her mind was drained with fear, his tone suffocated by the late hour and the silent room.
His hands reached her, caressing her hair as he pulled her closer to him and forced her to turn, pushing her against his chest so she couldn't see his face. She could see his broad chest, feel his heart as it pounded in a regular pace underneath the hard muscle. She could see that the hand that wasn't caressing her, held a knife, her knife.
