Snatch

I touched my tongue to the back of my teeth, sweat drenching into the crumbled sheets underneath me as I twisted on the spoiled mattress. A single light swung slightly back and forth over head with the pulse of the music upstairs. Through the cracks in the floorboards I could spy the movement of bodies though they appeared as no more than shadows. I had given up on the thought that someone would help me. I had screamed until I was practically blue in the face, it didn't take long for me to figure out nobody was listening.

I dropped my forehead to my tired arm, the muscles ached from the hours I'd spent stretched in the same position. I couldn't stop the depressing thoughts circulating through my head. Sometime tomorrow, Mr. Grimes, the town sheriff would most likely find the remains of my body discarded near Black Water Woods. There wasn't a better place in all of Sanford to hide a dead body, in my opinion. The next morning, the newspaper headlines would probably read something like; Juniper Stone, the girl who was born to be a tragedy. I would be the talk of the town, not that they didn't gossip about me enough already.

"Poor Juniper," they would say, "That girl must have been cursed from birth. First, her mother went crazy and tried to kill her, then that business with the Thompson boy...It's all so sad, really..." They would pretend to be tore up about it but in the end, they'd all go home, rest easy, and never shed a tear. They'd be glad to never worry again about my curse spreading to them.

I tilted my head back, eyeing the stainless-steel metal holding me captive. The skin on my wrists were red and angry, and my fingers had gone numb from lack of blood flow. As hard as I tried I couldn't remember how I had gotten here. The last thing I remembered was locking up the back door to the bookshop, a high pitch ringing noise then it was lights out. The sound of heavy footsteps and creaking stairs had me lifting my head. A dark silhouette appeared at the landing. I swallowed back the urge to scream as the figure stepped into the dim light filtering through the room.

"Wade?" My heart threatened to catapult itself straight out of my chest, "How is this possible? They told me you were dead. I went to your funeral. I watched them put you in the ground..."

There was a sardonic gleam in his dark gaze as I watched his foot come off the final step, "Is that what they told you?" I was going to be sick. I could feel the acidic burn in the back of my throat as my stomach somersaulted. How was this real? "Tell me something, did you cry for me, Juni?" Hearing the old nickname made my skin prickle with awareness. There was something different about Wade, other than not being the decaying corpse as I thought he had been for past three years. It wasn't just the fact that he'd grown a couple more feet or the way he'd filled out from a scraggily boy into a man. There was a heaviness in the air around him. I could feel it brushing against my exposed skin, pulling at the biological instinct to run from danger.

He was dangerous. My gut screamed and red flags twirled around in my mind. Still, this was Wade. I had grown up with him, known his family. He was the only boy I had ever loved and I had gotten him killed, or so I had thought. I watched, still in shock as he ducked his head as he passed under a low hanging beam, bringing himself closer to the bed, "This is a good look for you, Juni. Definitely, fulfilling some of my old high school fantasies of you..." He winked and my cheeks turned hot at his blunt words, snapping me out of my stupor.

"What the hell is going on, Wade? What am I doing here?" I tugged at the handcuffs frantically, biting into my lip went the metal pinched my skin.

"Consider this protective custody. This was the easiest place to hide...lots of bodies." He replied as he sat on the edge of the bed. His fingers brushed the skin of my thigh as he leaned toward me. I felt his touch like a hot brand, telling me that he wasn't a figment of my mind. That I hadn't lost my sanity...yet.