JUST YOU

GUINEVERE BECK

I wake up in a sweat early on Monday morning. I saw her Charlotte. I saw Beck. She was staring at me, burrowing back into my head with her blue eyes, her blonde, wavy hair and her pink lips. She is a cancer on my life, my dreams. Why can't I forget about her, Charlotte...why? I need some air.

I walk outside and onto the porch as I stare up into the sky, it's still dark out. A single streetlamp stands on the opposite side of the road and under it, with her face slightly angled towards me, like something out of a goddamn horror movie, is Beck but she's not a ghost, not a figment of my imagination no...this time she's real. This time she's still alive and standing right in front of me...

She crosses the road and walks into my front garden and as I back away with terror no...dread filling my face, I notice that her bruises are gone. Healed...What the fuck?! I scramble up the stairs of my porch and don't pay any mind to the blister that's digging into my hand and drawing blood. I try to scream but my vocal chords are so closed up from fear that I can't utter a single word.

"Joe."

Her voice, I used to love it but now it brings pain to my every breath. Everything about her looks so real, smells so real...is she real?

"Beck, you're dead. You're not real. I killed you and you're dead."

She smiles and shakes her head. This isn't real.

"No Joe, I'm alive. After you choked me unconscious and left me back in the basement of Mooneys, I found some pills that lowered my heart rate to a single beat per minute. While you carried me in the trunk of your car in that makeshift body bag to help yourself frame Dr Nicky I was breathing the entire time, although I must admit it was difficult what with there being no air holes."

I can't believe this...I refuse to believe this.

"I busted myself out of the ditch you dug up in his back garden and ran into his house where I told him everything and we came up with a plan. He would go to prison and take the blame for my murder and I would use his house as a hideaway while I let everybody else think I was dead, his wife and kids had just moved out a few days earlier. Then I could work on finding you, uninterrupted. Obviously it took a while and I spent way too long covering my tracks but I found you, Joe. I finally found you and now...I don't know."

I ignore my bleeding hand and struggle to keep back the tears.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

She shrugs and sits down next to me as I back away even further.

"I was going to try and get you arrested but it seems Candace already failed in trying to do that so that's no longer an option."

"Candace? You met Candace?" My jaw hangs open.

"I was the one who told her you'd probably go to LA to hide. I always knew you hated it here and if I were you that's exactly what I would do."

Holy shit...

"So you were behind all of that?"

She sighs..."pretty much, yeah. I wanted to show myself sooner but I had to wait for the right time. It doesn't take a genius to find someone if you really know them." That's...that's exactly what Candace said to me at the restaurant...

"So..." I struggle to find the words..."so you fake your own death and follow me to LA, how did no one know it was you? I published your story, our story. Your name and your face were everywhere..."

"Really? That's the mystery you want solving? New ID, new name, new email, new everything. I even dyed my hair brown at one point but I hated that look so I just went back to plain old blonde Beck. I got a lot of people telling me I looked like 'that author lady, the one who died' which, honestly I found insulting."

New identity? Don't tell me it was Will.

"Who gave you that new identity?"

Please don't be Will, please don't be Will, please don't be Will...

"This guy named Jasper. Nice man, bit creepy. Looked like the manager of a really run down comic book shop."

Thank God...Jasper. Wait 'that' Jasper?

"Apparently he had beef with this guy named Will and when I asked him what he looked like he said he looked like you and I knew I had come to the right place."

At least she doesn't know that he's dead.

"Then he disappears without so much as a goodbye and of course, I immediately assume the worst so I just told everyone I was his girlfriend and they let me keep his flat. I never saw him again so I'm guessing that means you killed him?"

Shit...

"Don't bother answering, we both know you did."

My head is spinning and I feel like throwing up. This is insane, this is fucking insane. Beck was behind everything that happened to me in LA two years ago? Guinevere Beck was behind it all? I can't think...

Beck...

BECK!!!