A TOUCH OF DARKNESS

15 •

Three months later.
Home sweet home. Finally.

Entering my apartment was my favorite feeling, I enjoyed the second my exhaustion left my body and the second my smiles widened, knowing nobody would be around me and disturbing the sight of composure I claimed.

I shut the door behind me and place down the plastic bags bagged up with groceries. The fridge hasn't looked very well recently, it was empty and if I ever got a guest over, I'm sure they'd rather stay starved than eat the brown bananas and leftover Chinese food that positively has survived over a week. I can't blame myself for that though.

I haven't seen my apartment in a week or two, I don't remember what day, or what time. What I do remember is missing my comfort zone which I didn't have in Alex's house.

I switched on the light and headed towards the kitchen. Vegetable soup sounds extremely delicious on a cold night like this.

The pan was in my hands, but the next second the sound of it falling on the harsh ground flinched me. As much as the sudden cold hands that wrapped over my trembling body.

"Nothing to be scared of, babe." Skin, hands, and sharp breaths cut the flesh of my body. The strong voice of his put me frozen in my place, the sensation of his kiss flabbergasted me.

It felt real. However real it felt, it felt terrifying.

"Joe..?" I blinked down at the counter, I wasn't able to look behind, his arms felt sharp against my abdomen, and his lips, the way I could feel his eyes slide off my neck horrified me to breathe or dare to look behind.

"You remember me well...very well." My breath ragged. "I bet you're glad I'm back, aren't you?"

A huff left my lips feeling the sudden pain run through my head. It hurts. I was hurting and it will keep hurting. It hurts, it fucking hurts.

A cry broke out of my lungs. I was soaked with sweat, and the heaviness on my chest got pushed harsher on me. Nightmares crept back into the walls I didn't own.

I sat up again. The lights that were dimmed I switched them back on and for a little moment of silence, I was feeling blank and out of solutions.

The twilight zone I've been going through day by day never ended, I continued to ignore it no matter how much worse it got, how much it kept feeling real. There was no point in believing it.

Nightmares were nightmares.

Joe was gone, from every inch of my life, he doesn't know where I am, where I live, what I do, or who I am at this point. Neither do I know anything about him. Not like I want to.

He was in jail, no idea for how long or if he was freed, but it was a place where he deserved to rot. There was no need for me to worry, it had been months and weeks. He's gone.

And so should he from my memory.

I tried to reassure myself with thoughts like that, most of them were true, but when it came to standing up to the night and the dreamland itself, I lost it all. I turned fragile and too stunned to remember any of them during my sleep.

I tried that and this, sometimes I slept down on the couch, but when I woke up the next morning in Alex's bed felt a little impropriated. He gave me a room to myself, full of privacy and whatever I wanted to do I was permitted.

I can't imagine what it would feel like to have a guest over in my place, giving them a great room to have all to themselves, and waking up the next morning to see them like rats sleeping anywhere but there. Great opportunity, wrong person.