He pours a glass of water and pulls out
a vial from the cabinet. He pops off the cap and takes one of the pills.
Quetiapine for paranoid delusions. Yeah, they would be paranoid too if someone
was stalking their every move. He
takes a long drink from the glass he just poured, then carefully, he makes his
way into the living room. He has gotten pretty good at navigating the house in
the dark. Its been a week now, since he last dared turn on the lights. All of
the doors are dead bolted, every window locked, and every curtain drawn. He makes
his way to the street facing window, then using two fingers, he gently parts
the curtain just enough that he can peek out.
Sure enough, there it is. Parked
across the street and one house down, a tan Chevrolet. It is too dark to see if–
who is in the car, but he knows. It’s the same car that has been following him
all month. The same girl. The same long brown hair, the same pale skin, and the
same eyes peering at him from every shadow. She does not approach him. She does
not speak to him. She just watches. Taking in every move he makes.
I’ve tried the police, but without a
threat of violence, there is nothing they can do. I’ve tried staying at a hotel
for a week… she was there. I considered trying to catch a mob boss offing
someone just so I could be put in witness protection. Hell, I’d off them myself
if I wasn’t convinced she would be there working at the prison. There is only
one way out of this.
He grabs his keys, fills another glass and
gulps it down, wishing it were vodka instead of tap water. He gets into the car
and turns on the ignition. The garage remains closed; the garage door securely
locked. As the car runs he begins to feel the effects slip over him. Slowly his
senses dull, his eyes holding shut longer with each blink, and just as he
begins to slip into sweet unconsciousness, he hears a banging noise. It’s loud
at first but growing smaller with each second as everything goes silent black.
…
…
…
Faintly he hears a fan. Steadily it grows
louder. Now chatter. People are talking. The fan continues to whir. A dream? He
tries to open his eyes. No use. The voices are nondescript. Suddenly an alarm
begins to sound. He manages to pull his eyes open. They take in light, but he
cannot see. Not yet. Everything is a blur of white and grey. But he can hear
now. Yes. He can hear clearly.
“Code blue. Room 434. Code blue. Room 434.
Code blue. Room 434.”
He is in a hospital. Now his vision is
returning. It’s still blurry, but he tries to focus. Is he alive? Is he dying?
There is a board on the wall opposite him. Focus! Names. Dr. Patel. Nurse Carla.
Room 428. 428. He’s not dying. Not yet anyway. But how did he get here? And is
not dying anything to be celebrating? Well, he is alive for now. One step at a
time. The girl. The girl! She’s here. She is standing in the doorway. He tries
to speak. There is a tube in his throat. How did he not notice that earlier?
That’s not a fan, it’s an oxygen pump. Another alarm sounds. This one is
different, and also closer. It’s coming from one of the machines in his room.
He looks back at the doorway. The girl is gone. Soon a nurse comes in. “You’re
finally awake,” she says with a smile. “You’re a very lucky man, do you know
that? The good Samaritan that saved your life had to bust down your door to get
you out of there. It’s a good thing she was watching over you.
When he finally gets to see the
doctor that evening, he learns that he was found passed out from carbon
monoxide poisoning. A young woman alerted emergency personal and delivered CPR until
they arrived. She saved me? But why?
“We’re going to have to keep an eye
on you for a while longer,” the doctor explains. “Make sure there was no further
damage from the lack of oxygen and ensure you’re breathing okay on your own,
but I think you should make a full recovery. Hopefully we will have you out of
here in the morning.”
That night his eyes never leave the
doorway. Looking for the girl. He knows she’s here somewhere. He hits the call
button for the nurse a couple times when someone flies passed the door. A brief
panic followed by the realization it is just a staff member with somewhere to
be. Maybe he is paranoid. He battles sleep all night. Eventually, sleep wins,
and he drifts off for an hour or so, only to jolt back awake. The fear of being
unable to stay awake compounds his fear of the girl, and come morning, he is
delusional from fear and exhaustion. He calls his nurse and tells her he needs
to leave.
“You haven’t been cleared by the
doctor yet,” she tells him. “He’ll be around in about an hour to see if you’re
fit to go.”
“You can’t hold me here.”
“We’re just trying to keep you safe
dear.”
“I understand the risk. I wish to
leave.”
“Frankly, sir, the doctor has some
questions about how you ended up in that car in the first place.”
Damn it. If they think it was a
suicide attempt they’ll put me in a psych hospital until they’re convinced I’m
not a threat to myself. “It was an accident. I was heading out to pick up a pizza,
but when I tried to open the garage, the door was stuck. I was so preoccupied
trying to get it to work, I didn’t even think to turn the engine off. Next
thing I know, I’m waking up here.”
“The doctor will be around in about
an hour. You can explain the situation to him then, okay? Until then just try
to relax. I’ll go get something to help calm you down.”
A sedative. That’s no good. I need
to get out of here. Play it cool. “Alright,” I say, “I’ll just wait for the
doctor then.”
“There you go. I’ll be right back,
okay?”
He nods, and the nurse walks out to
get the sedative the doctor ordered if he became agitated or anxious. He takes
a deep breath, counts to ten, then changes into is clothes and slips out of the
room. He makes his way to the stairwell and quickly descends the stairs, ever
vigilant for the girl, and now also hospital staff that might be looking for
him. He makes it to the ground floor and calmly walks toward the door. As he
does, an overhead speaker calls security to the third floor. He does not break
stride and continues out the door.
Out in the morning sun, he spies a
bus pulling up to a nearby stop. He runs over waving at the driver not to drive
off. He hops on, pays the fare, and takes a seat. He doesn’t know where this
bus line goes, but at the moment he just needs distance between him and the
hospital, and hopefully the girl as well, although he knows deep down, that is
too much to ask for.
He rides for a while and gets off
downtown. As the bus pulls away from the stop, he catches sight of something. A
tan Chevrolet that had been one car back from the bus. He looks on down the
road where the car turns into a nearby parking garage. How!? How did she
possibly find me? He never did see her at the hospital. She must have been
waiting outside. Watching the doors, waiting for him to leave. Then when he got
on the bus she just followed it here.
Seriously, does this girl having nothing
else in her life but to stalk me? Why me? What did I do? What does she want? I
think its about time I found out. A deep breath. Then another. And then he
walks toward the parking garage.
“What’s the story up there?”
“One dead.”
“How’d it happen?”
“Honestly. I have no idea. No
apparent wounds or trauma. No drugs. Too young for a heart attack. Some underlying
illness is my best guess.”
“We’ll have to wait for the autopsy
I guess.”
A siren swells as an ambulance pulls
up to the scene, its lights dancing in time with the other emergency vehicles
already there. A small crowd of people has gathered around the area. Some waiting
to get their cars from the garage, others just overly curious passersby.
As he walks into the garage, the
woman is just stepping out of her car. “Hey!” he shouts. The woman jumps,
startled. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting him to approach her. She probably didn’t
even think he’d noticed her following him. He begins toward her, but she quickly
takes off toward the stairwell in the corner of the garage. He bursts into a
sprint and follows after her. He gains on her at first, but as he reaches the
stairwell, she turns to look at him. It then dawns on him that he still has no
idea what she wants, or for that matter what she is capable of doing. This specter
that has inhabited the dark corners of his life for the past two years. Clearly,
if she had wanted him dead, he would be by now. Hell, she even saved his life.
But why? She takes off again up the stairs. He must know. After a brief pause
he climbs the stairs after her, albeit more cautiously than he had pursued her
before.
The woman continues to the top floor
of the garage and makes her way to the far end of the roof. The garage is only
about half full, and there isn’t a single car up on the roof. He walks across
the empty parking spaces, not quickly, but deliberately. The woman turns to
face him and calls out in a cracking voice, “What do you want?”
What do I want, he thinks. What do I want? This is not exactly how he saw
this encounter playing out. Then again, he really didn’t think about how this
would play out at all. He just knew he had to put an end to it, one way or
another. “Why have you been stalking me?” He asks, finally.
“I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”
“Don’t pull that shit on me. I know
its you. You have been stalking me for two years. Everywhere I go, everything I
do. You are always there, watching my every move. Now I want to know why.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told
you. You would just say I’m crazy.”
“Funny, that’s what everyone has
been saying about me lately. So come on, try me,” he says continuing toward her
again.
“I have to… to keep you alive,” she stammers.
“What are you talking about? Keep me
alive. Was I in danger?”
“No, but… I just couldn’t… risk it. The
fear was driving me insane. Always worrying, always wondering, if today was gonna
be the day. Wondering when it would happen. Knowing any moment could be the
last.”
“And why would you care what
happened to me,” he asks, now stepping within arm’s reach of her.
She tries to take a step back, but
there is nowhere to step and her foot hits against the foot-high lip of the
roof. “I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
Without warning, he reaches out and
grabs her by the arm. “I’m getting real sick of you saying that.”
She jerks back in surprise and
almost loses her balance. She quickly throws her weight to the side to keep herself
from toppling backwards. As she does he loses his grip and stumbles forward.
His foot catches the concrete rim that runs the perimeter of the roof and his
knee buckles sending him toppling over the roof. The woman screams and
scrambles toward him. She reaches her hand out over the roof in vain, but he is
already beyond reach and speeding toward the asphalt below.
Sirens blare as emergency vehicles
make there way down ninth avenue toward the parking garage. A panicked caller
explained to the 911 operator that he saw a man fall from the ninth avenue garage.
Another caller was in hysterics after a man fell from the sky and almost landed
on top of her. The police arrived and quickly secured the scene. “We got a name?”
one of the officers ask.
“Michael Sorrows,” another answers, pulling
out the victim’s license.
The first officer radios the name and
details of the scene back to the station. A little while later they respond and
inform him that Michael Sorrows recently left a hospital against medical advice,
and before he could be questioned for a possible suicide attempt. Well that
would certainly explain the situation, the officer thought.
Not a minute after the station responded, the
radio crackles back to life. This time it is one of the other officers on the
scene. “I’ve got another body on the roof. A young woman.”
Maybe it was the stress from being
understaffed at work… yet again. Maybe it was the frustration from sitting in
traffic for forty-five minutes to go two miles to her exit because some idiot
flipped his car after cutting off a semi-truck. Pick a fight with a semi, and
the semi is going to win. Then again, maybe she had just grown complacent in
her indifference toward other people. Whatever the reason, the didn’t think
much of it, when she accused the old lady of breaking into her car, and she didn’t
give much credence to her story of an honest mistake, and the same model and
color, and blah, blah, blah. She was obviously another homeless bum, trying to
make a quick buck off of whatever she could pawn. And she certainly didn’t expect
to see the old woman standing in front of her house that night when she glanced
out her window.
Frightened by the unexpected sight, and worried
she’ll try to break in, the woman quickly checks to see if all of the doors are
locked. With her phone ready to call the police if the lady steps foot on her
property she goes back to the window to keep an eye on her. But when she looks
out, the woman is gone. She checks the back windows, but the yard is empty. Maybe
she left, she thinks to herself.
“You would be so lucky,” a voice from
behind her cackles.
The woman turns around to see the old lady
standing in her kitchen. “How did you get in here?” she asks.
“Child,” the old woman croaks, “you couldn’t
even imagine the things I am capable of. But fear not, I am not going to hurt
you.”
“I’m sorry if I offended you earlier,” the
woman tries to explain. “It was an honest mistake. Anyone would have thought
the same thing in my position.”
“You did not believe me, so tell me why I
should believe you.”
“I’m sorry. Please, just take whatever you
want and leave me alone.”
“You lack trust. Even now, you distrust me.
Even after I assured you I would not hurt you. Let me assure you, it will be
your own undoing if you do not learn to trust in others.”
“Okay, okay. I trust you. Now please, just
go.”
“Your fate is in your own hands, dear, as
well as those of this man.” The old woman waves a hand and the visage of a man
appears.
“Who is that? And what does he have to do
with me?”
“Your lives are now connected, and you
will have to trust in him as you do in yourself. His fate is your own. If he
lives, you live. But if he dies, you die. Can you trust your life to another?”
“Wait, I don’t understand.”
“Yes you do. Trust in him and you will
have nothing to fear.”
“But,” the woman starts, but the old lady
is gone. She stands there for quite some time, alone in the kitchen staring at
the now absent face of the man she must trust, and thus begins the first of
many sleepless nights to come. Who is this man? She must know. She must find
him.
-AMS
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