Stalked

Chapter Eight

The smile I now feared.

I walked into the room filled with equipment. Some things I could identify, like a simple blow up ball in the corner, sitting among other colorful ones, and other things looked like a medieval torture device. He gestured towards a stool and I sat, as he asked me questions about my accident, my state of health before the accident, my injuries.

After that, we did some weird exercises and stretches to test the limits of my body. I don't even know what the point of half of the stuff we did was, but he seemed to know what he was doing so I kept quiet.

While demonstrating an exercise, he pushed my leg towards my body and extended it out again.

"You wuss! Why are you running away!?"

I struggled to crawl away from the man terrorizing me. I heard his work boots clomping behind me and I looked over my shoulder: He was just a tall figure looming above me, the sun behind him making it hard to see his features.

I didn't need to see his features though. They were already permanently ingrained into my brain. There wasn't much else I could do except wriggle underneath the coffee table and hope for the best. He grabbed my left leg.

"I'm gonna make it so you can't go anywhere," he snarled.

He shoved my leg back into my body and I yelped. My eight year old limbs didn't like being yanked around. He repeated that action over and over until the pain was horrendous. He then stopped, all the life gone from his eyes, a blank expression overtaking his features. This was always the scary part because when his eyes went blank, he was either going to continue his beating, but even worse, or he was done. I never knew which one it would be.

He turned around after giving me one last kick. I sat there breathing heavily, sobs escaping my mouth and bruises littering my body.

I sat up suddenly and the physical therapy man looked at me, startled. The air became nonexistent and I struggled to draw a breath. Looking at the man, and then at the door, and then the man again, I made a split second decision: I ran out of the equipment room and through the front door. Sprinting down the sidewalk, I probably caught the eye of more than a few passerby.

I was never much of a runner, only running to use it as an excuse to get out of the house, but I kept going until I realized I didn't recognize where I was. I stopped on a deserted little street and leaned against the brick wall of a dilapidated apartment building. I put my head down and tried to catch my breath and think about where I might be. The physical therapy center was two towns over and I had never been in this area before.

I thought to myself, "I am so screwed. My mom is gonna kill me."

But I didn't really care. All I knew was that when the therapist moved my leg, my first instinct was to run as fast as I could.

A car pulled up to the curb.

"Kelsey?" A voice said in disbelief.

"Kieran," I half said, half breathed out. I was trying to calm down my shaky voice.

"What happened to you?" Kieran asked, an unsure look on his face.

"Oh..I just went for a run..."

"And you almost passed out?"

"I...had an asthma attack..."

He gave me the same skeptical look that Ethan gave me the night I saw the bright eyes outside. It didn't bother me before, but sitting here now, under Kieran's scrutinizing gaze, I felt like he could read my mind. I looked at the ground sheepishly.

I stood up and said, "I should get going now."

He nodded and walked to his car. I started walking back the way I came, resigning myself to a long walk home. It's funny how I came so far just running on adrenaline. Now, feeling drained, I trudged along.