Chapter 15 Fifteen
Fifteen
The corridor stretched before her, disappearing into shadows in the distance.
The space was devoid of color, the walls and floor a dull, lifeless beige.
Long stretches of cracked and crumbling plaster on both sides were interrupted by closed doors, each set with a large pane of frosted glass.
Harsh, cold light filtered down from above as if from an equally endless number of fluorescent fixtures, but the corridor didn’t look like a place that would have active electricity.
In some places, chunks of plaster the size of a grown man had fallen away in piles that spread across the floor. The only furniture, a small table sitting outside each door. She ran a hand across the nearest one as she passed and dust coated her hand in a sticky film.
She made a noise of disgust and brushed her hands together. The sound boomed through the space as dust flew up into the air, choking her. She waved the cloud away and reached for the knob. The metal was cold under her fingers and refused to budge. Locked or rusted in place, she didn’t know.
She continued down the corridor, weaving from one sealed door to the next.
After a half dozen doors, she stopped and looked back, mentally tallying up her steps.
The doors were getting closer together, she was sure of it.
She took deliberate, measured steps to the next one across the hall, eight steps.
And to reach the next, seven. Yep, they were definitely closer together, and all firmly closed.
She looked to her left to where the end of the hall had always disappeared into the distance and her heart started hammering. The end had never been visible before, but there it was, and the narrowing of the corridor? Definitely, not an optical illusion.
She abandoned the doors and broke into a run.
Within moments, the crumbled plaster had thickened until it was coating the whole floor like windblown sand dunes and just as treacherous.
There was no noise, but the walls pressed in, the tables toppled over without warning, forcing her to weave and jump every few steps to avoid them.
Soon, she was shuffling sideways to be as narrow as possible.
She grunted as her hip collided with a table, the force of it nearly sending her flying over the top.
She shoved it aside and pressed her hand to the offended spot, her frantic pulse throbbing under her fingers and continued on, half-limping, half-slithering in the dust that now covered her feet nearly to the ankle.
The end was growing tantalizingly closer, but sweat prickled at her scalp as the air grew thicker and warmer, as if the walls were compressing it too.
Her weaving had become unbalanced, her shoulders and hips throbbing now as she ricocheted from one wall to the next, grunting with each impact as if the hallway had turned into the floor of a pinball machine.
A chunk of plaster skidded out under her foot, and sent her crashing to the ground. The room spun and her forehead collided hard with a fallen table. Choking dust flooded her nose and mouth, and coated her from head to toe.
With no time to lose, she shook her head to clear the bells that now rang in time with the drumming of her heart and half-crawled, half-stumbled forward.
There were only a pair of doors left, but the space between them had continued to shrink.
She tripped over the last fallen table and nearly fell again.
The end a tantalizing brightness just ahead.
With only a few feet to go, the walls started to crush her shoulders with a frigid unyielding pressure that was a stark contrast to the fetid air.
She grunted, pushing back against the walls that threatened to freeze any exposed skin.
Somehow she forged forward, gaining inch after precious inch though the space continued to contract, the air so hot her lungs felt charred on the inside.
Ahead, the last foot of wall seemed to curl around her, becoming a seemingly impenetrable wall of cracked beige.
But still, she continued to push against them, her feet struggling to find purchase to help drive her forward.
A whimper of desperation escaped her throat, her arms strained against the wall, her thighs and calves screaming.
It wasn’t fair that she was this close to the end, only to be crushed by the collapsing walls.
She gasped for oxygen as if the heat had burned it up, her skin thickly coated in white, but she couldn’t stop.
She didn’t dare look behind her, but there was something about the weight to the air that told her there was no going back.
The walls contracted further, bracketing her shoulders in a shroud of solid ice. It was now or never.
Her whimper turned into a scream of rage as she rallied her strength for one last hard press. Her feet slid, then found traction, while her hands pushed against the two ends of the wall, winning a fraction of an inch, the faintest crack of light appearing between them.
“Let me out!” she screamed at the wall. Still, she pressed forward, the gap widened to the width of a finger, then her arm. One hand slipped off and she thrust her shoulder forward into the gap instead. Her legs continuing to drive, until suddenly with a pop, she was free.
Her momentum should have launched her into the wall a half-dozen feet away, but instead, she staggered only a single step forward. She looked down at herself and found all of the plaster dust that had coated her skin and clothes had disappeared.
No longer choking on dust, she gratefully filled her lungs with air that, while musty, was at least clean and significantly cooler.
A resounding boom filled the air, the first sound other than her own voice.
She scrambled away, arms covering her head, and whirled to find only a blank wall, its plaster, while still aging and cracked, was at least still intact.
There was no sign of the corridor that had haunted her dreams for weeks.
She panted, her chest heaving, as she looked up and down the dimly lit corridor. It was the opposite of the one she’d just escaped. No doors or windows, just identical, endless stretches of beige extending into the distance in both directions.
Find a way out, her mind screamed, and she stood for a moment, debating her next move.
There was something in the air, a crackling tension as if energy was building up the longer she stood still.
Building to what, she didn’t know, but she also didn’t want to wait around to find out.
But which way? Right or left? They both looked the same.
Her heart raced, her feet shifting uneasily under her until she was almost jogging in place. She drifted slightly right, then left, then back. Each time to the right, there was a subtle increase in the charge that prickled along her skin, to the left, it eased.
She did it again, on purpose this time, and sure enough, the air grew more charged to the right, enough to lift the hair on her arms. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant, but it also got stronger with each step, like a static charge built with each shuffling step on a carpet.
And she didn’t know what might happen if she let it build up too much, and then, like static, it somehow released.
She back-pedaled to the left again and the charge dissipated. A few steps further and the temperature eased a little as the barest whisp of a breeze brought a loose strand of hair brushing against her cheek. Soft and gentle like a caress that said yes, left was the right direction.
“I’m on my way!” she called into the gloom and headed off at a slow jog down the hallway.
Jal woke with a start, as she always did from one of her nightmares, but this was different, not nearly as violent an awakening as before. She opened her eyes and, for a moment, she didn’t know where she was.
Light coming in through the window forced her to squint while she got her bearings.
The pillowcase under her cheek was soft, the sheets and duvet covering her warm, but tucked around her so tightly she could barely move.
Her nose filled with the familiar floral scent from the fancy laundry soap that she’d splurged a little over a month ago.
Her room. She was in her room, and the light coming in the window above her was tinged with orange.
She sat up, the covers pooling at her hips and gasped as the cool air of the room hit the bare skin of her breasts and back.
Jal snatched up the covers and clutched them to her chest, her mind reeling.
She glanced beside her and found only an empty bed. “Ciaran?” she called out and received silence in answer.
How had she gotten into bed? Had they… she lifted the covers and glanced beneath. No, she still wore the same black leggings and slouchy socks as before. He must have carried her to bed after…
The memories hit her like a freight train, and she collapsed back on the bed with a groan, one hand clapped over her eyes.
The afternoon’s events replayed in her mind, Ciaran appearing at her door, her pulling him inside and kissing the ever-loving shit out of him.
She felt an echo of the swoop in her stomach when he’d scooped her feet off the floor and carried her to the chair in the living room where he’d made her come with his hands not once, but twice.
Her face heated and her thighs clenched around a throbbing that began at the memory of his touch. Good Lord, had he known just what she needed from him. And then some. And when he’d set her back to take a breather, she’d… The rosy haze of memory shattered and her whole body went cold.
“Oh no…” She bolted upright again. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no.”
At first, she’d wanted to reciprocate by kneeling at his feet, rubbing his considerable length through his shorts.
She’d wanted to touch him. But then, something had come over her like a haze, and it was a very different pair of feet she’d been kneeling between, a different cock, attached to a body that had very different expectations of her.
She had stroked him, and taken him into her mouth… “Oh, Ciaran…”
Jal flung back the covers and dove into the sweatshirt laying on the floor.
A different one, she noted from the one Ciaran had removed however many hours ago, the one he’d draped over her shoulders after he’d shaken her free of the daze she’d fallen into before she’d cried herself to sleep in his arms.
She dashed out into the living room, to find it empty.
Her stomach twisted in knots, as did her fingers, knotting together under her chin.
They dropped to her side a moment later when the spear of hope that maybe, just maybe, he’d fallen asleep out here, pricked her heart instead.
Why would he have stuck around? She asked herself.
Especially after everything she’d done, and said while doing it?
She glanced out the window, expecting the light to be coming from the right, from the west, meaning she had only been asleep for an hour or two. But instead, the sun’s rays, still tinged with orange, were slanting in from the left, from the east. She had slept through the whole night.
“Phone, phone…” she murmured as she headed for the kitchen. Where the hell was her phone?
She found it on the dining room table beside a notepad. His voice echoed in her ears as she read the words, the same as the ones he’d murmured as she’d fallen asleep against his chest, his heartbeat strong and steady under her ear.
Your truth is safe with me.
His voice curled over and through her even in memory. No harsh words, no condemnation, just patience. Beneath his note, as if an afterthought, he’d scribbled his phone number. A shaky laugh escaped her.
It had been a little game between them, that they hadn’t exchanged phone numbers, or emails, or anything really of any importance. Yet, even in a city of millions of people, their paths had continued to cross.
Jal snatched up her phone to find a stack of notifications.
She winced and unlocked it, noticing the missed calls but going first to her texts, the dozen or so from Elena that got increasingly more worried when she didn’t answer.
There were a few from Lexi, too, Elena must have looped her in.
Sure enough, she had missed calls from both of them.
Jal pulled up their group chat.
Jal: Hey, guys, sorry I missed you. It has been a DAY…
Elena’s response was almost immediate. Lexi’s hot on her heels.
Elena: She’s alive!
Lexi: OMG Jal! Is everything okay?
Jal sighed, though her lips twitched at her friends’ obvious relief.
Jal: Yeah, sorry, crazy afternoon. I fell asleep and only just woke up. I’ll tell you about it later.
Jal: Still need help at the restaurant?
Elena: You better believe it. Eduardo quit yesterday and there is so much that needs to get done.
Lexi: Ugh, my morning is slammed with meetings. Don’t go discussing anything juicy when I’m not there.
Elena: lol, no promises.
Jal: I’ll be there as soon as I can.
Jal dismissed the messages and added Ciaran’s phone number to her contacts. For a long moment, her finger hovered over the buttons to text or call him, but there was so much she needed to talk out first, so she locked the screen and headed for the shower.