Over the Edge

Ch.14-Freedom and Imprisonment

"That's just because you care too much," Michael added. "You with your heart of gold."

Breathe, Emma.

Michael grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. The reporter was a woman with curly black hair and popping red lipstick. Her eyes were serious and laced with just that bit of disgust directed at the man who was literally the bane of my existence. "Mike Packer, who was arrested and sent to jail two years ago without bail after various charges were placed on his person on the assault of a girl-who had asked previously to remain anonymous-in his high school class, has just been released today." It then shot to an image of him. He would be twenty now, since he had been a senior at our old high school. He looked worse for wear. Stubble covered his face and his dirty blonde hair was shaggy and unkempt. He had on a quick change of rumpled clothes. Reporters snapped photos and popped questions left and right. I recognized his mother on one side of him, his father on the other.

"Out of my way!" he snapped, ushering his family through.

Breathe, Emma.

My knees trembled, threatening to collapse entirely on me. Visions of the past and that wretched night passed through my mind like some sick slideshow. They wouldn't stop; wouldn't go away. I chomped down hard on my tongue, hoping the pain would prove something else to focus on.

It didn't work.

"What are you going to do now?" a reporter had to ask, and at that Mike's shoulders stiffened on the screen. He angled himself so he was facing the camera of the man who had spoken. His eyes were abysmal and depthless, like two black holes. They betrayed the insanity, the sadism, he held inside of him.

"I have some unfinished business to attend to," he growled in a husky, gruff voice that promised nothing pleasant. His eyes stared straight into the camera, and I swore they looked right at me, right into my soul, tearing me to shreds. I was trembling something horrible, needing to escape before Clara or Michael saw. Before they could ask me what was wrong and I would give them proof of the mentally broken girl I really was inside. "And they know who they are."

His last words sent a tremor of fear- pure, unadulterated fear-straight through me. The kind of fear that ripped you in half and exposed your raw, vulnerable layers to the world. That revealed the scars you tried so hard to keep concealed. The helpless kind of fear you couldn't do a thing about.

The car sped away and I zoned out when the reporter started speaking once more. Holy shit. Mike was out. Mike was . . .

I had nightmares of this moment. I had always hoped they would find something, anything to convict him and put him away longer, but apparently there was nothing. There was just him with his freedom, and me stuck again in the imprisonment of my fear.

That threat was meant for me. I knew it with all my heart. He had said something similar after the trial. I had been present for it.

"You'll pay for this," he had spat, words oozing venom as he slowly poisoned me. "When I get out you better watch your back, because I'm coming."

I had pushed it to the back of my mind. But seeing it . . . It was all so real. And he really had poisoned me. Just knowing he lived and breathed was a toxin and I was dying slowly, every day, that he endangered my life. Every day he woke up in the morning and wished I were dead. Every day a little bit more of me would be reduced to nothing at the thought of him ever finding me.

Already I had a permanent reminder of what he could do to me, of just how disturbed he was. How cruel and cold-hearted he was. What made me most sick was the fact that I had dated him. We had kissed. He had once said I was his whole world.