Letters from Kristie

chapter 2

Laura dropped the letter with a gasp, a shaky hand covering her trembling lips.

"No." She shook her head. "This is sick. This is a sick joke." A tear slid down her face and she snatched up the letter and stuffed it into her desk, not wanting to have to look at the offending paper. Who would do such a sadistic, cruel thing like that? Kristie was her best friend, she was devastated when she disappeared and to have someone send her a letter pretending to be her was a grotesque joke.

She stumbled back to her bed and sat down, sweaty hands trembling along with her body. She pressed one hand to her forehead and the other to her stomach, suddenly feeling ill. All the pain and memory of loosing the one person who cared about her when her adoptive parents decided that they couldn't handle another child crashed back down on her.

The slam of her front door knocked her out of the horror filled trance she was held under. She couldn't tell how long she sat on her bed, staring at the blank white walls of her room but it must have been quite a while since her husband walked into the room, a tiered grin on his face from work.

"Honey, I'm home." He opened his arms to her in a joking manner but his arms dropped back down to his side when he saw his wife's pale face. "Laura...What's wrong?" He asked, bending down next to his wife. He took her chin and lifted it up so that they were looking into each other's eyes. Laura had nice, soft brown eyes that always held life and emotion in them but now, they looked drained and scared.

"Baby, tell me what's wrong." Alarm rang in his voice. Laura shook her head. She didn't want to talk about it. She wanted to forget she ever got the stupid note.

And eventually, she did. The day went on like usual and she picked up her twins from school, helped with their homework, cooked and even got her baby Christian to go to bed without a peep. She was about to join her already asleep husband in bed when she heard a knock at her door. Her eyebrows furrowed and she walked up to the door. Who could it be at three in the morning?

She opened the door and no one was there. She rolled her eyes, although a smile twitched at her lips. She remembered when she was small and would knock on people's doors and think she was the bad kid on the block when they didn't get caught. She was about to close her door when red caught her eye. She opened the door wider and taped to her door was another familiar red envelope. She gulped and pulled it off the door with shaky hands. This couldn't be happening again. Didn't this sicko get enough of a kick? She decided that she wouldn't open it and went inside and left the envelope on her kitchen counter and went to bed.

She tossed and turned for half an hour, unable to concentrate on anything but the thought of that envelope. With a sigh, she got up quietly as to not wake up her sleeping partner and tiptoed to where the red envelope sat, taunting her. She picked it up and sat down on her old couch and opened it. The same hanwriting was scrawled across the page. She felt a hard lump form in her throat when she realised that it was the exact hand writing of Kristie. She began to read with a heavy feeling weighing her chest down.

Dear Laura,

I know you might not accept that it's me writing you this but you have to or this won't work and he'll win the bet -I don't need that, trust me. Anyway, here goes nothing. This is what happened the night I disappeared.

I was at a party like every friday. It was actually a bummer, since the person throwing the party had absolutely no taste in music or people, for that fact so I decided to go home, completely sober and disappointed. The night was an unusually dark night, no stars or moon.

I don't know where he came from but this shadow stood directly a yard in front of me under the street light. I'm not stupid, so of corse I went to turn around to avoid the shadow of a man but then he began to talk.