The Sinners and The Saints

Chapter Four

My nightmares are haunted with his insidious smile. I toss and turn, my bed has suddenly transformed into a rock and my hair is tangled across my sticky forehead. Damn. How am I expected to sleep with what has just happened? I thrust the blankets off of me and fling my legs over the side of my bed. I let my toes stretch until they hit the cold floor. The cooling sensation flows through my body, I sigh, and continue on my way. I tip toe as quietly as possible through the house and am careful to skip the third stair’s left side, due to the fact that it creaks, loudly. Once I reach the kitchen I feel around for my dad’s cigarettes, once I locate the pack I grab them and run.

Once, I’m about a mile into the vast fields behind my house I pull out the cigarettes and dig around for the matches that I always carry in my sweatshirt pocket. It’s the dead of summer and yet it’s cold, that’s what you get for living in Maine. I position my hand in order to strike the match and- something stops me. I hear rustling in the bushes beside me, no not the kind a bird or squirrel makes, no not even the kind a deer or a bear would make. I know this sound, this sound is distinct. This sound tells me that I am not only human roaming these fields.  

My mouth moves faster than my brain. I cannot even process what is happening. All I know is, my head is screaming “DANGER” while my body is forcing me to run. Although, every never in my body screaming for me to flee, I cannot move. I’m frozen.

I begin to stumble backward, my eyes locked with his.

“No...no.”

I close my eyes.

“This is not happening.”

I open them again, there he stands.

“No, no, no, no!” The “no”’s begin to jumble together as I stumble backwards into the dirt. I’m in utter disbelief.

“Able.” He say’s my name sternly.

I am not in the fields any longer, no I am not in Maine anymore. I’ve rewound time, I’m in Connecticut, the summer it all began.