Embers | Jalex

six.

On rare occasions, about once every two months on average, I'll go to sleep at night and wake up gasping for air.

This has been quite scary on most occasions when this has occurred, as I am left unable to breathe and sometimes have to open the windows to gain as much air as possible.

This happened this morning.

I don't know what happened and why I woke up in such a bad state, but Nathan never came home.

When it had gotten to about 2am, that's when I had really started worrying if he'd come home. I thought he'd go out for a drink and stumble back inside and fall asleep with me.

I was too scared (stupid, I know) to go out looking last night because maybe Nathan was safe. He was the safest person I knew and always got out of bad situations.

I looked back over to the alarm clock.

10.34

That's it, I need to go out looking this morning. My palms were almost too sweaty to open the front door.

I decided to trace the Main Street, then look around the outside and front of popular bars. I had no luck. Some bars and clubs let me look inside and referred to places he might've crashed. I asked numerous people for his whereabouts, showed photos to see if people realised who he was. Still, no luck. This started getting scarier.

He was gone.

I tried calling him again, and no answer.

-

It was now 7.05pm.

It's been dark for nearly two hours.

No sign of Nathan.

For all I know he could be dead, or kidnapped or raped.

I've been out all day searching. I had no one to go to and didn't know what to do.

You could tell people were starting to know who I was from me asking every pedestrian if they've seen him. I printed out some photos today and put them around the club district.

Usually you have to wait 24 hours to file a mission persons report, and I didn't know if I was being silly but I was waiting till 8 to do so.

I kept seeing people walking along the street and thinking it was him, but it wasn't.

Then I started crying. Tears that came out of nowhere that wouldn't stop falling. My nose became blocked and there was only one person I could think to go to.

I walked around a few streets and found it.

Papa Kev's.

I walked in, the room was dimly lit and there was about 2 other people sitting in booths.

"Alex?" Jack questioned from the other side of the room. He was mopping the floor.

I sped over to him.

"He's gone, and I-I don't know what to do," I cried out.

"Who? Your Boyfriend?" He put the mop aside and held my two arms.

"Yes! We had a disagreement last night and he walked out," I broke out into another set of tears. "Then he didn't come home and I can't find him and I don't know what to do.