Chantal
Blood sprays the walls, streaking upward and cutting into the plaster like the desperate claw marks of a dying man. Dark shadows bleed toward me from every angle and eyes, ever staring, peek out from the surrounding doorways. I try and turn to run but I can’t. I’m frozen in place and unable to even breathe while the thumping of footsteps draws closer and closer. The sharp click of a gun’s safety sliding out of place deafens me and the glint of the barrel rises in the single stream of light.
The gun fires and I open my mouth to scream but nothing escapes my throat. Something is over my mouth and I’m drowning in blood, drowning in death—
I jolt awake with a gasp, smothered by my duvet that’s up around my head. As darkness surrounds me, panic swells and I thrash all my limbs in my desperate attempt to escape the trap. My head bursts free, I take a deep, hoarse breath and my bedroom comes into view.
There’s no blood on the walls, no dark shadows creeping menacingly toward me, and certainly no stranger with a gun. Sitting upright, I continue to suck in air with short, sharp pants while tightness constricts around my belly and my heart pounds wildly.
Thank goodness. It was just a nightmare.
Only…
Last night wasn’t a dream. Last night was real.
The pressure around my stomach increases and acid rises in my throat. Kicking the duvet free, I throw myself from the bed and sprint out into the hall. I make it to the toilet on the other side just in time to spew bile into the bowl. Cold sweat races down my back as I hurl thrice, then I sag down onto the cool tile floor. The chill is a shock against my bare legs but I welcome it. It’s grounding.
Last night… it doesn’t feel real. That man on the floor, dead. That other handsome man landing in front of me as if there was any hope that I could help him.
I have to forget it.
I have to pretend like it never even happened.
I can’t go to the police, I can’t get involved with the law. The second I do, I’ll be ripped right out of this life I’ve tried to build for myself and thrown into another shitty apartment in another state with another faux clean slate.
I can’t go through that again. I have a life here.
Witness protection doesn’t care about that though, all it cares about is keeping you hidden.
Flushing the toilet, I clamber onto unsteady legs and turn on the shower. If I think about it, really think about it, no one even knows I was there. Sure, the guy that fell saw me but if I learned anything from watching my tyrannical criminal father, it’s that people with guns never leave witnesses. That handsome guy on the floor likely died before he could tell anyone he saw me.
He’s dead, I’m sure of it.
He has to be. My father would never leave anyone alive like that and I can’t imagine any other smart killer in an office of all places wouldn’t do the same. They wouldn’t leave cameras behind either unless they were complete idiots—and even if they did, the police would use that footage to catch the killer, not me.
By the time I wash the shampoo from my curls and scrub every last flake of dried sweat from my skin, I feel better. My line of thought has calmed the rampant anxiety in my chest and my determination to return to normal life rises.
No one saw me. And I saw nothing.
This lie will get me through the rest of my life.
I dress in light blue jeans and a peach tank top, throwing a cream cardigan over my shoulders as I hurry down the hall. Light colors keep the darkness and dread at bay, or so I tell myself.
Busying myself in the kitchen, I brew some coffee and toss two slices of bread in the toaster. I have class today and I’ll be damned if some bad decisions from reckless men are going to fuck up my life any more than they already have.
Five spoons of sugar land in my favorite teddy bear cup and I turn to the fridge to grab a spot of creamer when the yellow Post-it note in the center catches my attention. I pause, hands on the door.
The name Lydia Franklin glares at me in a messy black ink scrawl complete with a number. She’s my witness protection liaison. The one person I’m supposed to be able to reach out to if anything goes wrong, and the one person I hate almost as much as I hate my father. Days on end she spent with my mother, talking her through potential court proceedings and files until the cancer took her.
My witness statements aren’t enough and yet all the FBI have in terms of trying to put away some very bad people, so I remain in protection limbo.
I should call her.
No!
No, I can’t.
Jerking open the door, several bottles clatter together and I grab the creamer just as the coffee machine beeps its completion.
Calling Lydia will solve nothing. I can’t become involved in another crime, they’ll just tear me out of this life and I have tried so hard to be normal. They’ll pluck me up and drop me several states away to start over and as soon as they do, any watchful hawks from my father’s organization will come knocking on the doors of the friends I have made here and I’ll never see them again.
Worst case scenario, they come knocking on my door.
It’s not worth it.
“I didn’t see anything,” I recite out loud as I pour coffee and creamer together. “No one saw me. I saw nothing.”
I repeat it over and over as I stir my coffee and lift the cup. Inhaling deeply, the warmth of the coffee seeps directly into my soul and wraps loving hands around my heart. Two sips later of coffee so sweet it can barely hold the title, and I start to feel better.
Until the toast pops with the sharpness of a gunshot and I yelp. The cup slips from my hand and crashes to the floor, splintering into a hundred pieces while milky coffee splashes all over the floor and up the cupboard door under the sink. I barely have time to jump before hot coffee splashes over my bare feet.
“Fuck!” Stumbling backward, I end up on my tiptoes hugging back against the far counter as my heart thunders wildly in my chest and silence falls. It was just toast.
Just the fucking toast.
My appetite dies with the remains of my coffee and a low groan rumbles in my throat.
“Fuck, I loved that mug.” The sad remains of the teddy bear stare up at me, only one eye and the barest hint of the button nose visible amongst the shards.
By the time I gather the shards and clean up the coffee, my nerves have calmed and the telltale triple buzz from my phone in my back jeans pocket tells me my best friend Millie is already on campus waiting for me. I toss the shards into the trash with a beat of sadness in my heart, then pull out my phone and type a quick response to Millie that I’m running late.
She replies with several disbelieving emojis and finally, a smile teases at the corner of my lips. Without fail, and without knowing a thing, Millie can make me feel better.
I grab my bag from where I’d dumped it by the front door before work and throw on my shoes, catching sight of myself in the hallway mirror.
“Come on, Chantal. We just forget. Nothing happened last night, just a bad dream.” A stroke of lip gloss across my lower lip and a ruffle of fingertips through my curls and I’m ready to put that terrible dream behind me.
I step outside into the morning sun and take a deep lungful of the crisp, fresh air. There’s barely a hint of last night’s storm and I’m going to take that as a sign.
Last night didn’t even happen.
Locking the door, I hurry down the steps two at a time and I have to squint as the morning sun bounces harshly off the hood of a shining, sleek black sedan car parked across the street. It’s not like the usual cars that park around here and my steps falter as the prickling anxiety from this morning begins to stab once more at the back of my neck.
No.
I shove those thoughts down deep and lock them down.
Nothing happened last night, you’re just paranoid, runs like a prayer in my mind, matching the pace of my steps as I scurry to the bus stop.
I’m just a nobody college girl late for class.
Nothing more.
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