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I need to move forward!
She wandered out of the library and stopped in front of a bakery window a few blocks down. The Kyla of a few weeks ago would’ve gone in and bought a box of pastries. Kyla of a few weeks ago would’ve enjoyed indulging as part of an adventure in a new place. When she’d moved into Daisy’s apartment the first thing she’d done was scope out the closest bakery.
But Kyla of today felt sadness at just the idea of even the aroma of dessert. She stared at the storefront with a faraway look in her green eyes for a few minutes and then someone walked out with a bakery box and the aroma from the shop wafted under her nose and she had to swallow past a lump in her throat.
She felt bone tired, soul tired, so took a bus back to the RV park. En route, it passed a long and winding trail littered with dog walkers, runners, and cyclists but while she stared longingly at the path, she didn’t even feel like running.
Back at the little one-bedroom trailer she made a grilled cheese sandwich, ate just half of it, and went to bed early, still feeling out of sorts. Would she ever feel normal again?
~~~In a dream she saw his face and heard his voice,
“You can’t run away. I’m inside of you. You’re inside of me. If you try to run and actually succeed at escaping for a little while, you’d be miserable. And it’d only be for a little while because I’d find you and bring you back and I’d be angry. Angry Tristan is, I think we’ve established, someone you’d rather not deal with, right? And I’ll be hurt, too. Do you want to keep hurting me?You’re hurting me, Princess.His face materialized in her dream. Black eyes, gray face, blood. So much blood.
She jackknifed upright from what felt like a dead sleep. The sheets were drenched with sweat. The RV was air conditioned so why was she so hot? She glanced at the digital alarm clock beside her. 12:04 AM. She groggily staggered out to the little kitchenette, opened the fridge, and got out a bottle of water and downed it. She realized that she didn’t feel any pinching in her veins but the moment that thought fluttered by suddenly there was a funny throbbing in her throat; it was thrumming, pulsing.
She got into the shower and although her body felt hot and sweaty, her teeth began to chatter. Were the withdrawals back again? She was parched. She decided to get out and get another water. Before she opened it, she stretched her neck left and then right, thinking she needed to work out a kink. Then the same throbbing was in her wrist but it felt stronger. She turned the light on and inspected her wrist, flexing her fingers and rotating it. She could still see a faint pink mark where Tristan had bitten her the night of the banquet. The throbbing was just below the surface in that same spot.
The throbbing got stronger both in her throat and in her wrist. Then she felt it on her hip, down low on her calf. On her shoulder. In her lower back. On her backside. Then her inner thigh. All these spots were all thrumming with the same sensation. Then her whole body started to pulse to a rhythm much like a heartbeat, especially strong in her inner thigh. It was like it was his heartbeat. Every time she’d listened to their heartbeats beating in time together it’d sounded just like this, it felt… personal.
She grabbed her inner thigh, “He’s tracking me.”
She said this aloud and dropped the water bottle and froze, horror-stricken. The sound of the bottle rolling across the floor a loud and hollow noise, almost like it was the only noise in the universe. Then after a beat she shook the trance off and she started to pace.
This sensation? She’d felt it twice before. Once, in the woods outside his house, the night she’d run. Then he’d found her. The second time she’d felt it was right after her period started and he couldn’t find her because she was in the panic room. She gulped and heard his voice in her mind, the night she’d run out of the house and he’d caught her.
“Tonight when you ran, I figured out I can track you.”
Was he tracking her from 3000 miles away? Would she feel that all the way here? It wasn’t as if she’d forgotten he’d said that but she hadn’t allowed herself to acknowledge that possibility until now. She bolted into the bedroom, flicked the lamp on, and sat on the bed, her palm over her mouth, her mind racing.
What do I do, what do I do, what do I do, what do I do?
