Coerced

Chapter 2

I think I am going to start putting a song or video on each chapter, in the hopes that you guys will either like them as a recommendation or... sometimes they will tie in with part of the chapter. Like this one. Enjoy :)

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I stifled a scream.

I was ready to tell my mom that I'd just catch the next flight back home and forget this house ever existed, but I was stopped short by this complete stranger.  I turned my head round, looking over my shoulders and through the doorway of the house, trying to spot the figure I had just seen. But there was no such figure. How had it disappeared? Surely I hadn't imagined it? I was clearly going mad.

Slowly, I turned back around and simply stared ahead, avoiding the man's gaze and looking instead at his well-groomed eyebrows. Did he get them done professionally? I needed to know where he went for it; mine were a mess. I had probably been staring for too long now, scared that my voice would betray me by quivering if I tried to speak. I was trying to calm myself down, because I realised I had started shaking and the blue-eyed stranger seemed like he had noticed. I grabbed my left arm with my right and tried to make it less obvious, but I just made it worse and failed miserably. The man gave me an amused look, with one perfect eyebrow raised, expecting me to say something.

"Um..." I paused. Did I want to talk to this man? I mean, who introduces themselves like that? I shook my head, as if to rid myself of the thought. I was being ridiculous, and rude. "Sorry, I- You just scared me." I said it with a tinge of nervous laughter. Although I was definitely not in the mood for laughing, I was definitely nervous. The man's gaze softened and he gave me a warm smile that calmed me slightly.

"No, I should be sorry, startling you like that. My apologies, young thing." His voice was deep but somewhat soothing, and in a way I was captured by it. Breaking myself from the trance he held over me, I noticed his hand move towards my left one hanging by my side. Before I could protest, or stop him, his cold fingers clamped around mine, holding a firm grip there as he lifted his hand with mine to his lips and placed a delicate kiss at my knuckles. Slowly unwrapping his fingers, I wasted no time in pulling my hand back rapidly, slightly furrowing my eyebrows giving him a confused look, as if to ask him 'what the fuck are you doing?'

To my sudden move, he simply smirked, his eyes glinting with amusement. Then before I could open my mouth to say anything to him, he turned his back on me and began walking down the driveway, leaving me speechless.

What the fuck was that? What was he doing on my driveway? Where did he even come from? And most importantly, who was he?

I stood still, staring at his back as he turned right when he reached the path, continuing to walk down the street. My gaze landed on his gelled-back hair, which was light brown with what looked like slight specks of blonde on the top of it. I willed my legs to move, running down the grass on the garden to try and reach the man. When I reached the path like he had done mere seconds ago, I turned my head to the right, and then to the left just to be sure.

But there was no sign of the stranger.

I darted my head back and forth, but it just confirmed my suspicions; this man was not normal. Who the hell just disappears like that? With one last glance at each end of the road, I turned around and slowly walked back up my driveway.

What was going on? I had been in this town for less than 10 minutes, and I was already unsure of how much I was willing to stay here. What if the man who had just kissed my hand was the man at the top of the stairs? No, that was impossible, no one could move that quickly between places. But then again, this man had disappeared from sight. My head was starting to hurt from thinking too much, but I couldn't seem to stop coming up with conspiracies about the stranger. What if he was a murderer? Serial killer? Pedophile? Drug dealer? Whatever he was, I sure wasn't going to follow up on him. That curiosity was something I would let go for fear of seeing him again, which I never wanted to do. Not when he gave me the uneasy feeling that he did.

"Mallory!"

I jumped what was probably 10 feet in the air, startled by the shrill shout that practically punched a hole in my eardrum.

"Huh?" I whizzed around just in time to see a duffel bag, held by a concerned and confused face, being shoved in my shocked one.

"Why did you run off and drop the bags like that? I've called your name 4 times like a mad woman and I've probably just made every single person on the street aware of our arrival with how loud it was!" She started flailing her arms about in my face, in what I'm assuming was an effort to put her point across more clearly,

"Sorry, I uhh... saw a fluffy cat?" I said with all types of uncertainty in my voice, not convincing her at all as she gave me a sceptical look. She didn't need to know that I was on the edge of insanity and imagining creepy, vanishing middle-aged men in our driveway.

"Just bring them in without trying to break them, would you?" She turned around with a bag full of about 7 lampshades in her hand. I mean, seriously, who needs that many lamps for one room?

Her bedroom was constantly lit up like a lighting store, and she never turned a light off so long as she was in the room because, and I quote, 'There are things in the shadows that will eat me alive.'

She didn't appreciate my response to that being to show her an episode of Doctor Who where shadows eat people in less than a second until they are skeletons.

"Hey mom! Remember the Vashta Nerada don't live in every shadow, but any shadow!"

She chose to ignore me, but I still saw the pace of her steps to quicken significantly, which I'm sure was in a haste to put up all her lamps. I chuckled and followed after her. It was so fun to torment this woman who was scared of everything imaginable.

I found her in the living room doing exactly what I suspected, caught in the act of screwing a lightbulb into one of the ceiling lights. I chuckled to myself again.

I was about to head out of the room and go upstairs when she spoke, and what she said didn't excite me in any way.

"Remember, you start school again in 2 days, so you best hurry up with setting yourself up."

Great. Just great.