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“With her sedated, there will be less of a struggle. Not quite as fun for me, but less risk. After the last time, I’ve decided to mitigate my risks whenever I can.” He reads from my book with wild, crazed eyes, twirling the knife in his hand.
“Please. You don’t have to do this,” I say.
The only sign he’s heard me is that his voice gets louder. “I open the knife.” As he reads the words, he opens the pocketknife in his hands. My body is made of solid ice as I scan the room, searching for a weapon I may have overlooked before.
“Please, Owen,” I cry. “Please don’t do this. You haven’t hurt me yet. If you cross that line, this all becomes so much worse. Please, just… Please, don’t.”
“Lowering myself over her, I take hold of her ankle. The skin is so smooth, it’s almost a crime to mar it. Almost.” He takes hold of my ankle, jerking me across the bed toward him. I kick my free foot, my heel jabbing into his stomach. He doubles over, but he doesn’t miss a beat as he tosses the book down, reciting the words from memory over my struggle. “I lower the blade to her skin.”
I can hardly hear him through my screaming, which is beginning to sound animalistic. He wouldn’t actually do this, would he? He can’t. It’s barbaric. It’s insane. It’s disgusting.
He’s obsessive. Delusional maybe, but I need to believe he’s not a monster…
I kick his stomach again and again, but he’s hardly fazed, swatting away my legs when they aim for him each time. He climbs onto the bed, straddling my waist with his body facing my feet. I pound my fists into the bed, rolling and squirming and screaming until my voice gives out. I can’t hear him reciting the words I once wrote anymore, but I know he is.
Then suddenly, it all stops.
I feel the blade slice my skin with a single, fluid motion. Everything in me turns to fire. I’m being scorched by lightning from the inside. Bile rises in my throat as I feel the blade slice into my skin again, and I barely turn over in time to vomit onto the comforter. My body is numb and yet somehow, in such excruciating pain. I feel as if I’m being burned by a white-hot poker. He’s practically masterful in the way he slides the knife across my skin, and when he’s done, I’m out of energy to fight. He stands, admiring his handiwork, and I lie still, my skin coated in sweat, chest heaving with fast, ragged breaths.
I can’t move. Can’t think.
I feel empty and weak.
What a terrible fate to have written for myself.
I don’t move when he leaves the room except to glance down at the initials he’s carved there.CP.Blood pours from the wounds—thick, sticky red liquid oozing out across my skin and onto the blue comforter below me.
He returns moments later with a medical kit, his eyes no longer dark and creepy. Suddenly, he’s normal. He works diligently from the foot of the bed, pouring liquid over the wound. If it stings, I don’t register it, but I smell the sharp hint of alcohol in the air.
He bandages it with care, taping it to my skin and smoothing his hands over the gauze.
“It’s going to be okay,” he promises. “You just needed to remember what it felt like back then. When you were in your stories. I have to bring you back there.” He kisses the wound, but I don’t have the strength to kick him in the face like I so desperately want to. “I don’t want to be the one to do it, but I have to.” He stands, dusting off his knees. “I’ll be back with some wine. You deserve it after that.”
He leaves, and I feel my adrenaline crashing. My body begins to shake with sobs I can’t feel. I can’t breathe. My heart is beating too fast.
This is what a panic attack feels like for me. I’ve had them before, not often but enough. The worst one was when I got the call. When they told me what had happened. When they told me there was a shooter and they couldn’t find my husband or my son.
Chills line my body when he returns with another silicone glass of wine. This one saysDrink your wine. We have crafts to do.
He pulls me from the bed and eases me onto the hard floor, making quick work of stripping the comforter from the bed and replacing it with a clean one.
Then he lifts me back up onto the bed and hands me two pills from his pocket. “For the pain.”
I don’t ask what they are or what they’ll do to me. This time, when he leaves the room, I swallow the pills and suck down the wine, hearing their voices again as I drift off to sleep within minutes.
CHAPTERTEN
The next time he comes to my room, I’m lying on the end of the bed reading the back cover ofThe Faculty’s DVD casefor the hundredth time. I practically have it memorized at this point, but there’s quite literally nothing else to do in this space.
I understand now why people lose their minds when left alone for too long, particularly when your mind isn’t a safe space to begin with.
I sit up, watching as he walks into the room and locks the door with his key before approaching the bed. I didn’t realize I was cold until he hands me a bowl of steaming oatmeal. He’s also brought a bottle of room temperature water and my glass of wine. Today’s glass saysIt’s not really drinking alone if the dog’s home.
A single sip of the chardonnay sends my insides into a frenzy. So much so that I don’t notice when he crosses to the other side of the bed and pulls my leg toward him.
“Ouch!” I try, but fail, to jerk away as he rips the bandage back, staring down at the wound with a hard expression.
It’s red and weeping—clearly infected. He pulls the bandage the rest of the way off and reaches for the tray, opening the first aid kit and pulling out the trial-size spray bottle of rubbing alcohol.
