( xii )

— 120 hours ago —

Gabrielle’s cravings have been uncontrollable lately. It is late at night and she already had her supper. She would never cook so late at night under normal circumstances. But now she eats for two. Within moments of smelling the lasagna that she got out of her oven, her other bun in the oven kicked out of appreciation. 

“Oh, you’re an impatient one, aren’t you?” She rubbed her belly to feel her child’s presence and smiled. She then rubbed her lower back and groaned in pain. Ever since she kicked out her boyfriend, she has been living alone. There were not a lot of people to help her out. She is not on speaking terms with the rest of her family, but at least the neighbours take good care of her and help her when she’s at her wit’s end.

She got startled after the doorbell rang.

“Who is it?” She was surprised that her doorbell rang this late at night.

There was complete silence for a few minutes and then the doorbell rang once more.

“Who is it?” She repeated herself, but this time with a more stern tone.

After a few seconds of silence, a few gentle knocks fell on the door.

“Thierry, I told you to stop calling me, and now you’re at my door.” The anger in her voice raised. She heard a few more knocks, regardless of her tone. Gabrielle angrily rushed to the door, tears streaming down her eyes.

“I swear to God Thierry, what part of ‘It’s over’ do you not understand?”

She opened the door to let her anger out, but instead, she froze. She was dumbstruck for a few moments. The person at her door was not Thierry, but a hooded figure. She stayed frozen until the figure entered her home and embraced her tightly. Her muscles released all tension and she smiled. They enter her home and the hooded figure closed and locked the door behind them. 

The figure slowly led her to the bathroom, and without any question, as if in a trance, she followed silently. The hooded figure commanded her to remove all her clothes, get inside the bathtub and lie down. She obeyed without any objections. The unknown individual was carrying a large bag. The figure cast Gabrielle’s clothes aside and got rolls of plastic sheets, bottles of bleach and a small pouch out of the bag. A scalpel emerged from the small pouch, with which the figure made a vertical incision on her hand. Even though fresh, warm blood poured out of her wrist as she moaned in pain, she remained in her trance.

The figure pressed its lips against her fresh wound and started gulping down her blood and obscenely grunted in pleasure. Gabrielle kept watching as the mysterious figure started sucking the life out of her wrist with a blank expression.

All of a sudden there were loud bangs on Gabrielle’s door.

“Babe! You can’t keep ignoring me forever!” A man’s loud voice pierced through the door, as he kept banging loudly on the door.

“Bitch, open the fucking door! Or I’ll bust it open.” 

The hooded figure got spooked. 

“I’m coming in whether you want or not!” The man kicked the door and wooden debris fell off the moulding, but the hinges held on. 

The figure opened the narrow bathroom window and slid its slender figure like an expert contortionist, while Gabrielle’s life kept draining away down the bathtub. 

The man kicked the door again and this time the lock dislodged from the borehole and broke, revealing a dishevelled, enraged man under a drunken stupor.

“Gabrielle!” He yelled out of his lungs and went first to the bedroom.

“Gabrielle?” He thought at first that her former lover wasn’t home. He walked to the corridor again and saw the bathroom door open. Through the small opening, he saw Gabrielle’s body lying in the tub. 

He went in, and upon seeing Gabrielle’s pale, lifeless, naked body, jitters inside her large, protruding belly and her blood’s crimson trail draining down the hole of the bathtub, he let out a bone-chilling scream. By this moment, the neighbours already alerted the police and they were on their way. During all the commotion, the hooded figure crawled up to the roof like a lizard and before one could blink, it leapt and disappeared into darkness.