5. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
Harbor
My mind clicks on, but the room around me is still fog. I blink, trying to clear the blurry sleep from behind my eyelids. Then a ceiling takes shape, a window, a blur of walls, as though they all waver on whether to appear. A crisp chill of wind stabs my cheeks and neck, and I see the window, definitely open. My mouth is salty. It tastes like ocean. It tastes like someone else. But even stranger than these little unpinned details is the inexplicable urge moving through me like electric fire, making my pussy throb. What is wrong with me? And why—despite this—does it feel so, so good?
I roll over in my bed, twisting the blankets into a limp and tangled mess. My sheets stick to me, glued and clammy. Weird, I don’t normally sweat so much. Outside, the world is pale gray, the hesitant light of morning just beginning to show through. Maybe I slept through the night for the first time in ages? Maybe I slept through the entire world ending? Or maybe it’s just my brain that feels like it has.
The more awake I become, the more I can’t shake the feeling that something is very wrong. Off. Lopsided. Uneven in a way I can’t quite piece together.
Like how I’m positive I closed the window last night.
And how there’s that strange taste.
And how there’s a smell in the air I don’t recognize, something like earth and sweat and someone else...
Reaching down, I touch between my legs. My fingers come away soaked. Did I have a wet dream? What the fuck is this?
I laugh out loud to myself. An unhinged laugh that makes the wrongness feel even worse. What if I’m finally losing it? What if I’m unraveling like an old sweater? That would make sense, right? That’s probably what’s happening.
The covers stick to my legs as I kick them off, little flashes of last night coming back to me now. Finishing another cup of mint tea, shutting down my laptop, climbing into bed, trying to dream myself somewhere else—anywhere else. Somewhere that the words come easily. But I must not have dreamed, because I feel heavy and jagged. Like maybe I barely slept at all...
I grope around in the fog of memory, but the pieces keep drifting away. I reach for more than I can hold, and that never works out, does it? I think about all those people they say went to bed and never woke up. That must be nice. I wonder what they’re dreaming about now.
There’s still the salty taste. Like… I can’t even describe it. Manly? A taste I’ve never woken up to before.
My eyes dart to the door, then to the window, then back to the door. Did someone—? Was someone—?
It’s okay, I think, I’m just losing it. Nothing I’m not used to. But I’m spiraling, I know it, and spiraling is worse than the window being open or the taste being salty or the smell being strange, right? This is what Lila says I do when I’m stressed. I make shit up. It’s the stress from my deadline. It has to be. That’s all this is. The same ole pattern. When I’m too inside my own head. But why do I keep thinking this feels different? Bigger than just the regular noise of my brain. Darker, somehow.
Like the end of the world.
Or the beginning.
I lift the sheets up, and that’s when I see it.
Why everything is sticking. Why it feels so damp.
I blink at the mess, the puddle of sweat and the tangle of sheets and... oh. The semi-dried come stain, coming off my skin in flakes, some of it still sticking to my thighs. Everything suspended mid-air. Little bursts of sensation everywhere at once. No idea where to look first.
This must be a dream.
This must be someone else’s dream.
I want to laugh again, but I think it might make me cry.
And what’s really wrong with me is something I can’t even think, let alone say out loud.
Is that I don’t hate it.
Is that it feels so good.
Fuck me. I laugh again. Well, someone did. I look over at my night stand, determined to pass this off as some sort of odd dream and there’s something there. I squint, trying to make it out.
A blur becomes an object, becomes a photograph, becomes a silent scream. Just sitting on my nightstand. Like it's been there all along. Like it's waiting for me to notice. My breath jumps out of my lungs as I snatch it up and stare at the picture, horror rushing through my veins and freezing into cold, heavy calm. Four bloody, severed hands. Entwined. Holding each other. But I know them, even without their bodies. Father. Brother. My life. My ghosts. This is sick. This is awful. This is exactly what they deserve.
Who knew? Who did this? Who loves me enough to?
I think my body might disappear around me.
I think this might be the last breath I take.
The picture swims, but the hands stay sharp. Jaggedly sharp. They've been waiting for me. Someone's sent me a present. Probably the same someone who left his fucking baby batter between my legs and didn’t even bother to clean it up. A terrifying, terrible, perfect gift. And that feeling I can't quite shake—the feeling from this morning that I'm still not entirely alone—flares up. Hot. Cold. Like a flash of light on metal.
Then it dims into a less terrifying truth.
That someone knows me.
That someone sees.
I trace my finger along the edge of the photograph, then pull back as though burned. The hands are unmistakable. Oh my God… I know that counter…
My throat tightens around a dry, airless sob.
Maybe I'm not supposed to breathe.
Maybe I'm not supposed to feel anything at all.
And that should be true, but then why do I feel so light? Like the pressure that's always been there is floating up, up, up and away? A sick little balloon. A ghost that's decided to find some other writer to haunt. Someone knows about them. Someone's made it their business. It's sick. It's wrong. But maybe it's not...?
I fold myself into my own ribs and listen to my heart, waiting for it to beat normally again. To thud and slow like I haven't just woken up to the impossible. Like this is no big deal. Like nothing happened.
How did it get here?
Who brought it?
Who could love me enough to?
And more terrifying, why do I love them back?
Fuck, this was ridiculous. I cannot possibly love a stranger I’ve never met, but fuck it if I don’t. They saved me from this perpetual nightmare.
Man, I’d marry this psycho right now.
I put my head down and choke on the strange, raw sound that pushes its way out of me. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a cry. A scream that's lost its voice. Is this real? Did someone send this just for me? I don't know if I'm more afraid that it is or it isn't.
It must be some sick joke, I think, staring at the picture with one hand pressed over my eyes.
It's disgusting.
It's amazing.
It's mine.
I sink my face into the pillow and hug the photograph to my chest. Whoever it was—whatever ghost left this little offering behind—they must really know me. And then, because I can't let it go but also can't stand to keep looking, I slide the picture into the nightstand and close the drawer. I shiver at the thought of it being so close. I shiver at the thought of it not.
I try to ignore it. I try to pretend it isn’t burning through me like it wants to eat my heart. But it’s all I can think about. That photograph. Those hands. So I pace around the apartment and hold my breath at the sound of every creaking floorboard. The same uneasy feeling follows me like a shadow, the sense that nothing is in its place. That someone else’s eyes have been here, running up and down the walls. There are little signs of it everywhere. But instead of calming my nerves, they set fire to my thoughts.
The first is the mug, my favorite chipped one with a rainbow heart. It sits by the edge of the kitchen counter, facing the wrong direction.
Or the right direction if it wasn’t mine.
Or if someone else put it there.
This is not helping, I think, setting it down and picking it back up, like that will make it magically turn itself around again. What if I imagined it? What if I'm so inside my own head that I don’t know which way is up? What if that's exactly what they want?
I swallow the sound that rises in my throat.
Someone else’s fingerprints are on this. I could go to the cops.
If I wanted.
Which I don’t.
They saved me.
I’m unraveling, I think, feeling that tight pull in my chest where air is supposed to be. Unraveling, unspooling, untangling everything I’ve worked so hard to knot back together. But I look around the apartment again and know that something is off. That it’s not just my brain turning somersaults inside my skull. Someone has been here. That must be it. That must be the answer.
But if I face that terribly obvious truth, then I must also face the fact that they pushed their cock inside me.
Which, to be fair, sleeping me got a lot more action than awake me. I hadn’t been laid in months. Maybe even a year.
I turn to face the window.
Then I face my hallway table.
A drawer, exactly one inch open.
And I know, I know, I never leave it like that.
I shut it, then yank it back open. Shut, then open. Again, again, again. A raw, wild movement that finally—finally—loosens the grip of fear enough to let me breathe.
But I hold that breath and keep moving. I sweep through the apartment, my thoughts dragging behind me like torn pieces of tissue paper. I look at every surface. Under. Around. Above. If someone’s been here, I need to know. If someone knows me, I need to be sure.
I sink into my knees in front of the bookshelf, where things usually make sense. Where things are exactly as I left them. And now? Now they seem shifted. Rearranged by a ghost. Alphabetical order out of whack, spine colors all mismatched. These little reminders everywhere. Little signs. And that dark little part of me that loved the photograph wants to know more.
But I don't let it.
I get up.
I stand and tell myself I'm going to the kitchen to make tea.
And I tell myself I'm going to my room to write.
And I tell myself this is all one huge misunderstanding, that it's nothing, that I’m fine. But I know I'm not. And I know it's not. Because the front door catches my eye, and I can't stop staring, and there's a lock that needs to be checked.
I twist the bolt until my fingers ache.
The windows, too.
Once.
Twice.
Enough times to make sure they won't swing open again, letting in that chill, that fog, that salt. The smell that someone else left behind. And once more because the creak of the floorboards sounds like an echo of footsteps.
Even the lock itself feels different.
Even the hinges on the windows.
And I should feel safe, knowing everything is closed. Knowing that no one else can get in. But this sick, strange feeling keeps turning circles around my ribs. Keeps tightening, burning, squeezing me out of myself until I don't know what I really want.
To feel secure?
To find more clues?
To be afraid or to feel alive?
To keep pretending or to actually know?
The locks don't hold, not really. No matter how many times I open and shut them, I’m still uneasy. They just sit there like tiny, silent ghosts, waiting for me to finally fall asleep so they can slip back open. I go out and buy another deadbolt. Maybe that will help. I can't stop myself. It drills into the door with the sound of a dying animal, but even that doesn't drown out the thought: what if I can never escape this feeling?
The dark seeps into the apartment like a fog. Every flicker of light seems to blink a warning, spelling out my name. This is the last chance, they whisper. Before what?
I tighten the screws until they make that whirrrrrr sound. Until I can't tell if they're holding or if it's just an illusion, the same one I keep telling myself I'm not falling for. The same one that doesn't feel real. I force myself to look at the door, to see if it’s enough. To see if anything will be. And the more I look, the more I doubt, the more I think, the more I know that it isn't.
The shadows crowd in like a dream that's too easy to remember.
I jump at the sound of my own breathing.
I pace back and forth in the living room, my nerves running laps around me. Back and forth. Light to dark. This can’t be real. This must be a dream. The mug. The drawer. The books. They haunt me like the photograph. Like the come between my legs, that somehow made me feel wanted. Made me feel… whole. Some sick fantasy come to life. Like the strange comfort I felt knowing someone’s out there, and they’re protecting me, like my own fucking family couldn’t.
I flick the lights on and off, on and off, hoping that the right combination will settle the chaos in my head.
All it does is confuse me.
All it does is leave me alone, wishing there were more signs.
Maybe I should call the police.
Maybe I should call anyone. Maybe Lila, but she’d freak the fuck out.
Maybe I should pick up the phone and let them know. Let them know what? I stop in my tracks, the thought like a shot of ice through my brain. Like a bad connection. This is Harbor, yes, hi, someone left me a... gift? Someone broke into my apartment, and I think I might be... grateful? How would I even start? How could I ever explain?
How could I want this?
And what, what, what if I do?