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“Hey,” I whisper, afraid I’ll start crying if I speak any louder.
“You’re never allowed to make plans, ever,” Nance says in a low rasp, almost too weak to talk.
A watery laugh emerges from the back of my throat, pushing past the lump lodged in there.
“Never again,” I promise. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Jen smile without showing her teeth. It’s forced, and it doesn’t reach the rest of her troubled expression.
I have to talk to her. She needs to know what happened, even if she never forgives me for withholding the truth from her.
So, I wait until we’ve said our goodbyes to Nancy and are in the empty hospital elevator to break the silence.
“Jen, about tonight…” I drift off, not knowing how to approach the subject, that the killer didn’t hunt me the way everyone thinks.
I didn’t have a traumatic experience, witness a murder, or find any dead bodies. While my best friends were getting tormented by what they encountered, I was too busy fucking the man who committed the crimes.
What kind of person am I? One rotten on the inside.
There’s no logic behind my actions. Perhaps the shock lingering in my system excuses me. It’s a good explanation for the way my throat closes when I attempt to utter the words.
Am I protecting him? It doesn’t feel like I am. Mostly, I fear I’m preserving myself and my dignity. I took pride in being someone who caught on to things that other people didn’t, yet I saw every red flag tonight and decided they weren’t enough. I heard screams, cries for help, blood, and had a knife against my throat, and I shrugged it off as nothing.
Jen holds my hands, squeezing them tight. I want to shake them off mine because I feel so undeserving of the comfort she’s trying to give me. The last thing I want is sympathy for my lies.
“Is it okay if we don’t talk about it?” Her voice wavers and tears well in her eyes. “We went through something incredibly fucked up, and I can’t think about it anymore.”
Slowly, I nod.
“Of course,” I mumble sheepishly.
Because we had different experiences.
She found a corpse left by Silver Mask; I was begging for him to come all over me.
We are not the same.
What is wrong with me?
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I announce once the elevator doors slide open.
Without waiting for her response, I jog toward the nearest restroom, pushing the door and locking myself inside.
Panic rises in me, numbing my senses, and collapsing my lungs. My breathing becomes a hardship, my sight turns blurry, and my ears ring incessantly. I’m lost in the turmoil separating me from my frame until it feels like I’m living in a foreign skin.
Looking for grounding techniques, I stare at my reflection, focusing on what I can see.
Dark, tangled hair. Big and anxious brown eyes. Blood-stained shirt.
Inspecting my body further, I spot some scratches on my jaw where the blade of the knife scraped me. Nothing that would bleed through, but enough to have red marks along the curve. I lower the hem of my jeans, checking the bruises forming on my left hip both from the fall and from his hand grabbing me during sex.
Grazing the abused flesh, a memory slashes its way to the front of my brain.
I’ll find you later, my darling Sadie.
It was a wicked promise, and now I can’t help but wonder… Is he going to kill me once he finds me? I don’t doubt he will.
It’s only a matter of time, and the clock isn’t ticking in my favor.
