LIA'S STALKER

The CD from X

Lia spent most of the day stuck to her mother’s side, but as night neared she realized she was going to have to watch the CD. X’s warning was clear in her mind.

She closed her door, turned on music then slid the disk into her computer, after waiting for it to boot up. The CD spun in the disk drive and a window opened up. Lia gagged, seeing the video. It was of a man and a woman having sex.

Nausea flooded Lia and she gagged a couple of times. She grabbed her wastepaper basket and emptied her stomach into the plastic lining bag. Again and again, she vomited. Finally, she wiped her streaming eyes, and looked back at the screen for the last few seconds and cried out- because the woman in bed with the stranger was her mother. 

“No…” she whimpered, tears sliding down her cheeks. The video hadn’t been taken that long ago, Lia could tell. She could see her mother’s clothes on the floor of the bedroom and included with the black dress was the pink scarf she had bought for her mum about a month ago.

Lia stared at the screen shocked, then words began playing. The words were horribly distorted, and someone- X- had obviously been using a voice masking device. “Hello Lia, it’s  X speaking. I hope you enjoyed this little video. I’ve got plenty more for you to see- your mum’s quite the whore! Anyway, you know what to do with the disk. If you don’t- you will regret it!”

“She’s not. She can’t be.” Whispered Lia. Angrily, she shoved the disk back into its case and then yanked the plastic bag out of her bin, tying the top so the vomit wouldn’t spill over the sides.

She ran down the stairs, and out the back, not wanting to see her mother. She threw the bag of vomit in the bin, then buried the disk under the garden gnome. She then sunk to her knees, her head in her hands, and let herself cry freely.

What the fuck had she done? Who had she hurt so badly, they seemed willing to make her life a living hell? Lia had no answers, so she just stared in the fish pond, watching the goldfish dart around.

They led such simple lives. Lia had never been jealous of a fish before, but suddenly she was yearning for the thoughtless life of a fish. Eat. Sleep. That’s all fish did, all they thought to do. And that was all Lia wanted.

A hand suddenly touched her back and Lia let out a bloodcurdling scream, launching herself away from the hand. She fell straight into the pond, and she felt the fish brush up against her legs as they fled from her. The water felt like ice and came up to above her waist. And unfortunately her wild dash had ended up with her going completely under.

“Lia!” Lia heard the owner of the hand exclaim, as she resurfaced. Lia’s heart sunk as she turned to see her brother Linc staring at her with a worried expression on his face.

“Linc…” she murmured, her voice barely audible. “You… scared me.” She told him, honestly. Tears were still running down her cheeks and she let out a sniff.

“God Lia, I’m so sorry!” Linc apologized. He stretched out a hand to her and Lia accepted it and let Linc pull her out of the freezing water.

The minute the cold air hit her, Lia started shaking violently, and Linc wrapped his arms around her. “Lia, what’s wrong?” asked Linc, looking anxious. Lia looked into his worried eyes and couldn’t help the choked sobs that emerged from her throat.

She wanted to tell him, just wanted to tell him so he could hug her and tell her everything was going to be alright. But… Lia suddenly pushed away from him, wrapping her arms tight around herself. What secrets did her brother have? What was he hiding from her? What if… what if he had done something unforgiveable like her mother had.

Lia shook her head, “everything’s fine Linc. You just scared the shit out of me.” Then she hurried back into the house. Her first stop was the shower, as she carefully avoided her mum. Her mum was the very last person she wanted to see, right now. That cheating bitch, thought Lia, sourly.

Lia’s mum had been one of the only people that Lia had always loved so unconditionally. Lia idolized her mother and now… now she had found out that her mum was a cheating whore. There was no mistaking that it was her in the video, that it was a video taken recently, and that the man was not her father- unless, of course, her father had shrunk, dyed his hair brown and put on a few kilos.

Lia locked the door, stripped out of her soaked garments and turned the shower water on so hot it scalded her. But she didn’t care. She curled her knees to her chest and let the pain of the boiling water tear her away from her thoughts. Of course, there was only so long she could bear the pain so in a few minutes; she stepped out and gingerly toweled her pink, scalded, tender flesh dry.

Someone hammered on the door. “Lia? Are you okay?” called out her mum. Lia felt white-hot anger flash through her. Her. Mother. Had. Cheated. On. Her. Dad.

“Just fine.” She yelled back, fighting to keep the bitterness from her voice.

“Are you sure? Linc said you fell in the pond!”

“Just dandy!” Lia replied, sarcastically.

There was a slight pause then her mum asked in a softer voice, “Lia… you’ve been acting strangely. Is there something you want to tell me?”

“No.” Lia said, her voice cold. 

And that wasn’t even a lie. She desperately wanted to tell someone about X, but she wanted to tell someone she trusted. And Lia's mother had proved that she wasn't that person.

But as she laid in bed that night, Lia reflected on the fact that she was desperate to tell someone about X- rhe crazy person who had been stalking her for 2 days, yet had already turned her life upside down. And the way X spoke… it sounded like they had been stalking her for a lot longer then just two days. They had access to her house, knew about her mother’s affairs, knew about her siblings, her love of Stephen King books…

She was scared. Because X wasn’t some joke. X meant business. And X had promised to kill her.