Behind You.

Behind You. (Short Story)

Stuck... stranded in a reality I'm not even sure is real, the pain still lingers but the scars are gone and I don't know who to believe anymore.

I remember it clear as day...that awful dreaded day that ruined me. I knew I shouldn't have trusted him, he was just too good to be true... he was perfect? At least I thought he was anyway. Dark brown hair and deep hazel eyes, I guess I just got lost in his stare and fell into a pit of passion and pain.

He caught me while I was vulnerable. My father passed away 2 weeks before we first met and I finally felt like I had someone to hold me tight once again, My world had crumbled into a pile of rubble but he stayed and helped me glue it all together just as solid it once was. It was a dreadful day, I was getting my morning coffee before I went to work and there he was, he passed me my coffee with a simple note on the side that had ten little numbers that made my day. But why? Why was I so foolish?

Four years later he tells my daughter and Myself that he has a day out planned for us, to go to the movies to see a picture we'd been waiting to see while he caught up on some un-finished work... Now that I think back everything is so clear but my vision was hazy and I had lost what I loved most to the dark. My deeply troubled husband had spent the night before 'fixing' the car but I was not allowed near the garage, the second I came near he screamed abuse at me and told me to get me away like he was hiding something but I just thought nothing of it at the time. We set off on our journey early the next morning, it was pouring rain, he wished us a "safe trip" with a raspy half supressed laugh under his breath.

I strapped my little girl into her seat and slowly reversed the car out onto the street and we left. 15 minutes down the road the rain became heavier and the gutters were overflowing. We came to the top of a rise in the road and I could see that further ahead the road was flooding so I tried to slow down deciding it was too wet to go all the way to the theatre, but the breaks weren't working.... I Panicked and kept slamming my foot down because I knew if I had driven into the flooding road at such a speed I would crash so I tried grabbing the handbrake to slow down as much as I could but I lost it. The back drifted out sideways and slammed into a tree. I was knocked out and oblivious to everything including that the water that was rising quickly around my car but luckily while I was out somebody spotted us in the wrecked car and pulled us out... I don't really recall much from then on apart from fading in and out of consciousness for months on end. I started to have life like visions while I was out that became more realistic and harder to distinguish from reality each time they happened. It started with flashbacks of small things like moments playing with my daughter outside on the swing set and the more often these visions or flashbacks occurred the stranger they've become. I started to get delirious no longer able to distinguish the differences between reality and these dreamlike moments. I guess you could say I woke up but it never stayed that way because I just collapsed and went out again and sometimes I stayed completely normal but my mind would drift away once again. When I thought I was awake he would appear, I'd be doing my hair in the mirror and id see him behind me but when I would turn around he was never there. It was small things like this that worried me "am I losing my mind?". It was like he was after me to get his final victory over me but I made a vow to my baby girl that I would never give up and I'd fight for her till the end and I'd then be re-united with her once more for a long awaited hug.

The nurse came into my room to help me change my sheets, she was a short plump looking lady who seemed to be kind and loving but in my damn manic state she turned around and there he was... her face was gone and it was just his face instead, I collapsed and awoke once again. Was I still dreaming or was this another nightmare, which reality was I living? They put me in one of those crazy tops that stop me doing harm to myself or others, I just sat there rocking and crying. If he was to come for me again I had no way to escape because no matter where I was, I was living in a jail of my own mind trapping me everywhere I went.

I sat in my bed quietly watching the news of the coming storm that was forecasted... something wasn't right. It was like dejavu and I swear I had seen the report once before... that's when my mind ticked over and I remembered, it was the same report that was on the morning of the crash... I stood up to see where a nurse was because I knew what was to come I would be a mental wreck but that's when the first flash of lightning hit. I was terrified and stepped backwards but I slipped. And through the window I crashed, time slowed as I fell and that's when I heard his dreaded laughter one last time. He had his final victory as I slowly fell to the ground without much of a fight as I was without a hope of saving myself. The nightmare was finally over and no more could bother me. It went black again for one last time as I let out my final breath.

And then I awoke...