❝In which two people call up a helpline in order to find someone just as broken as they are. ❞
"Does...does it bother you that my dad's in prison for murder?"
"Well, judging by the fact that I moved away from America to get away from the memory of a...
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"Come out, come out wherever you are!" His voice sent chills down my spine, only adding to my petrified shaking as all of the terror became too much for my head to handle. There were too many thoughts to think of, each one more terrifying than the last as my heart began to beat in a way that seemed far too loud for my ribcage. It was like the drum inside my body, a sickening pulse to an already haunted song. It was going to break out at any second, a drum shattering the skin of itself as the instrument self-destructed whilst my head felt like a caged butterfly, wings beating wildly. Frantically. As it struggled to escape its confinements. Breaking its wings in the process.
My entire body was in a state of paralysis, only able to shake violently as I huddled into the tight space of the storage closet. All of my muscles were curled around themselves, painful knots as I tried to keep my breaths even. And quiet. My exhales of breath were brief and quick, every savoured inhale just as short as my life was about to become.
I had seized defeat like a glorious prize, body ready for death so that it would no longer be subjected to shaking in terror. It was like waiting for the punch line of a joke gone badly wrong and it begged for mercy. For the merciless nothing to become something so that it wouldn't have to wait in fear any longer. Because the torturous waiting just made the torture worse.
"Izzy! IIIIIZZZZYYYY! Where are you, darling? Don't you know that I looooovvee you?"
My face was wet with tears, the silent sobs disrupting my already ragged breaths as the darkness of the closet revealed the slight shimmering of light. Fright. Between the bottom of the door and the floor.
I just wished that it would all be over, that everything would just disappear into nothing so that I wouldn't have to feel anything anymore. Terror was messing with me, he was playing mind games with me.
I was so lost in my head that, for a few moments, there was nothing. His cruel, malicious taunts faded away into a hazy fog, a hazy fog of meaningless memories as I struggled with what I had known and what I knew now. My mind tortured itself with knowing, asking, ridiculing itself as to how I had been so stupid. How naive I had been to miss something so crucial.
I supposed that, in some sick way, I had brought this upon myself.
But how could I possibly have known? It was like...like he was a different person.
"Oh suuuunnnnshiiiiinnneee, where aaaaaarrreee you?"
I began to shake my head wildly, long hair falling in front of my face as if it could somehow shield me from what was to come. The inevitable. I found myself wishing that my life would flash before my eyes, that I could see anything but this nothing. This nothing of torturous waiting.
"ISABELLA!"
The footsteps were getting closer to the door, close enough that I could almost picture his soiled shoes, leaving a trail of blood as he hunted down what he came for. But the shoes were all I could picture, the shoes, because I couldn't put his face to this. No. Not to...not to murder.
"ISABELLA, WAKE UP!"
I began to shake harder, even more violently as I screwed my eyes shut. As the faint sound of sirens erupted from outside the school building. You're too late, I thought bitterly, the massacre has already taken place and the ******* guns in your belts aren't going to resurrect the dead.
"ISABELLA!"
Isabella woke with a start, heart pounding, sweaty and terrified as she was pulled into the arms of her aunt.
