Red String, Blue String

Chapter 2

 Dark. Pitch black and in the dead of night. The lights flickered before they had turned off completely, a Thursday, in January, during a storm, what had I been thinking? Maybe I was thinking that I did not have to do this if I made it as impossible as I could, but with my phone flashlight, I could still accomplish the task at hand. Guess now I just had to do it in the dark. Murder that is. Murder of the innocent man asleep in his bed. The man that I didn't want to kill, not at any point, but just a task I needed to check off of some sort of to-do list.

I turned his doorknob as slowly as I possibly could, and with little accuracy, my hand slipped off the handle, I didn't realize how much I had been sweating. At least it warmed up my body from the below freezing temperature present outside, not to mention the inches of snow that had been accumulating for a few hours. The reason for the recent power outage. His door finally creaked open and I was shaken to a stark version of reality by a scream, his scream. Theodore was awake. That wasn't supposed to happen.

I guessed that a random lady in your home during a blackout is enough reason for being scared, I didn't blame him for screaming. I had never been so speechless in my life, at least not since the basement.

"Who...what?" He had barely been able to muster, It was clear that he had just woken up, I felt so stupid that I had been loud enough to wake him, I thought I had taken all the possible measures to be quiet.

"Hi, um, well you see...my car broke down outside and I saw your door open."

"My door was definitely closed..." he said with surprise. I had already been imagining my future jail cell, it was just a room with four walls after all, no different than my childhood bedroom.

"Well I fiddled with it a bit, you should fix your lock," I told him as I straightened my belt, carefully ensuring that my jacket was concealing my weapon. When he didn't say anything else, I decided it was an impromptu time to run downstairs, as if that was not extremely suspicious, the anxiety was creeping up within me and like a pot, I hoped I wouldn't boil. I shook my head at my own stupidity down all twenty six steps, through both flights of stairs. Each step provided me with another moment of fear.

"Hey! Isn't your car broken?" I had suddenly remembered the lie I had just fashioned as I whipped my head around to look up at Theodore, he was up on the third step of the second flight of stairs.

"Right, yeah, I'll call a tow truck," I said as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I pretended to dial the number and turned to face the wall, I could feel his presence creeping up behind me. His breath on my neck before he moved away and towards his front door. I had made it to the living room after running down the stairs.

"They won't answer, it's one thirty in the morning," he told me and I could swear that he was smiling, but still trying to assert his dominance. He was cute, in a "I'm about to get arrested" type of way. I should've pieced together that a tow truck company wouldn't be answering calls at that late of a time during a blackout.

"True, I'll go wait out the storm in my car," I said as I went to pull open the front door, I was greeted with a quickly growing mound of snow, and I had just realized that my boots were still in the basement, on the tissues, that were probably soaked by then.

"Did you just not bring shoes?" He asked, beginning to sound amused. I decided to ignore him and hoped he wouldn't push it, I took a breath and put my sock covered foot straight into the snow, my brain didn't seem to function at that time of night. Theodore pulls me from behind and shuts his door, "you are so hard to read." I just shrugged at his statement and looked down at my feet in debate, I wasn't really sure what he meant by saying that.