Chapter 15
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Seeing the snowmen had clearly gotten me thinking about Prince Seth and Princess Me, because I had the wildest dreams. Of course, they had to be ruined by my monster… which, I suppose they weren’t ruined because he was still hot as hell, but as soon as I saw him, everything twisted.
It shouldn’t be any shock that I couldn’t have my adorable prince and princess dreams anymore, but for a while it was nice to remember. The next thing I knew, he was strangling me and babbling about cookies.
All morning, I think about my dream—it doesn’t fade like they so often do. Instead, I keep feeling phantom fingers around my throat, keep seeing Prince Seth when he turned and revealed himself to be my nightmare, keep hearing the desperation in his voice when he told me he’d make it right.
I shake my head, groaning as I try to get it out of my head. I have a shit ton to get done today, and I can’t waste time dissecting a dream. Henry, who had been sleeping peacefully on the couch next to me, looks at me, his eyelids drooping in a way that I can only peg as annoyance.
“Hey, don’t give me those eyes.” I ruffle the fur on his neck. “I had a bad dream.”
I lean over to lie on him. Little dogs are cute, but I love that I can splay myself across my big boy in a cuddle puddle. He lifts his head and sets it on my shoulder, harrumphing in my ear. Henry’s used to my shit and doesn’t hold it against me.
We cuddle for a bit, the slow rise and fall of Henry’s breaths calming my nerves and centering me. He can’t talk, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t the best friend I have. My wrist vibrates, letting me know I have a notification. Groaning, I raise it, but smile when I see it’s from Fae.
F: I got the shipping notification! Thank you so much, seriously, dude.
A: No problem, happy to!
F: What do you say about lunch today?
A: Deal!
Just like that, the day looks a little brighter.
We don’t need to have a one on one, I’ve got plenty to keep me busy for the next week, so it seems like we might just be hanging out.
Sometimes it can get a bit complicated working with friends, but it’s also more rewarding, too.
I want her to succeed, so helping that in any way I can makes me feel great.
Half an hour or so before it’s time for lunch, an idea occurs to me. Henry can’t give me advice… But maybe I could talk to Fae about it. After all, I’m not just her employee… I’m her friend… right?
I nod, decided, but that doesn’t stop the nerves I feel flopping around in my stomach. There’s no way in hell I would have said something if I still thought it was me doing all the weird things around here, but maybe she’ll have a perspective that I haven’t thought of yet.
By the time our lunch hangout rolls around, I’m a sweaty, pacing mess. I grab a salad from the fridge—Tom always buys me these premade salads—and sit down in front of my laptop. It rings, right on schedule, and I pop open our voice chat.
“Hey girl!” Fae beams. Her long brown hair is up in a messy bun with a pen stuck through it, and her large glasses give her this adorable “quirky librarian” vibe that immediately makes me feel at ease.
“Hi! How are you?” I crack open the salad container, silently yelling at my nerves to get their shit together.
“Good, I think I have all the kids’ presents for Christmas. I still need to get Steve’s, but honestly, I might just get him a big ol’ gift card to the hobby shop, and he’ll be on cloud nine. How are you?”
“I’m f—” I stop myself. I’m not fine. Today, I’m semi-fine, but this is my opportunity. “I’m… weird.”
She raises her brows. “Oh?”
“Yeah… I have had some weird things happen to me lately, and I just don’t know what to think of them.”
Fae digs into what looks like a big bowl of pasta, and damn if it doesn’t look way better than my wilted salad. I appreciate what Tom is trying to do… I guess, but he obviously doesn’t actually look at the salads to ensure he’s selected the freshest.
“Say more.”
“Well, like I’ve had a few… gifts, show up randomly? Books and wrapping paper and things? Nothing huge… just little stuff.”
“Oh my gosh, like a secret admi—no! A secret Santa!”
“Yeah… I guess…” I trail off, because now we’re about to dive into the really weird stuff.
“Except they also put my Christmas lights up?”
Fae has the most expressive face, so when she screws it up in disgust, she looks like a meme. “They came into your house?” she shrieks.
“Oh, no…” She’s thrown me off, because that would have been way worse.
“No, they just like, went into my garage, I guess…”
She purses her lips. “Okay, so still trespassing, but less…”
“Yeah, less.”
“Do you think all this could be a surprise? Like from your parents or something?”
I pause, frowning. Because… maybe it could? I don’t remember if I ever logged into my on their internet, but I probably did. And they could have paid someone to do my lights… as a surprise… overnight…
“Did I mention they put up my lights in the dark?”
“While you were sleeping??”
“While I was sleeping… like ten feet away.”
“Okay, well, I was prepared to say, ‘oh it’s just someone being nice,’ but nighttime lights installation is fucked.”
“Damn.” I halfheartedly stab a piece of limp spinach and a mozzarella ball.
“Yeah, damn is right…” she lets it hang for a moment before continuing. “So what are you going to do about it, dude?”
“I don’t really know… my neighbor guy set up some trail cams to try to catch them?”
“Oh, that was nice of him… have you seen anything?”
“I mean, I haven’t heard anything yet, so I assume not?”
“Huh?”
“Well, he said if he saw anything that he’d let me know…” As soon as I say it, I feel stupid. “It’s hooked up to his stuff.”
“No. Nope, nope, I don’t like that.” Fae is shaking her head and stabbing her fork into her pasta like it might hurt Tom through the internet.
“I guess it is kind of weird that I don’t have the feed, huh?” My stomach hits the floor because I feel so dumb.
“Did he offer to put them up for you after you bought them or…” she trails off, and I can already tell from the way she’s squinting that she’s not gonna like the answer.
“He bought them after I told him what was going on… he’s a nice guy, just a little overly neighborly.”
“Overly neighborly?” she squeals. “Dude, he’s your stalker!”
“That’s what I thought!” I scream. “But no, he was out of town!”
“For real?”
“I saw the boarding pass and everything.”
“Damn. I was ready to call the cops on that motherfucker and have this done with.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Okay, well I know we are the same age, but I’m going full mom on your ass.” Fae crosses her arms and leans closer to her camera. “Tomorrow, you are gonna march your little booty—”
“Big booty,” I interrupt.
“Fine, big booty—over to his house and demand access to the feed. You don’t need no weirdo watching your house.”
“I—I hadn’t really thought of it like that…” I trail off, thinking of Tom zooming in to see through my windows or something. I shiver. “I’ll be right back, I’m gonna shut my blinds.”
“Good thinkin’, dude!” she calls from the table as I shut the living room blinds. Sure enough, there’s a camera trained to see perfectly into my living room.
“Flip him off for me!”
Even though I feel like vomiting, I do flip off the camera, because fuck this guy.
It never really occurred to me that he might watch the feed outside of alerts or whatever…
maybe during the daylight. I shiver again, curling my hands up and thrusting them away like somehow it could clear the severe case of the ick I’ve got.
“Oohhh kaaay,” I say, my voice unsteady, as I sit back down.
“Good. Now tomorrow, you’re getting that footage. No creeper is gonna watch my bestie.” She pauses. “Do you need me to come out there?”
Her face is all sincerity, she’s dead serious about this. I can’t help the tears that prick at the corners of my eyes, because maybe I should have told her a week ago… maybe I didn’t need to deal with this alone all this time.
As sweet as it is, I really still don’t need to explain why I couldn’t get her from the airport or take her literally anywhere if she came here.
“No, no, I’ve got this. He’s totally harmless. I promise. Like I said, overprotective, but harmless. He’s one of those ‘provider’ types, so it probably didn’t even occur to him to give it to me.”
“Okay, I’m taking your word for it, but if you don’t tell me you got it back tomorrow, I’m calling in the Army National Guard.”
“Deal. You wanna know the funniest part?” I say, because talking about all of this has somehow made me feel better. I guess that’s just how it works with your best friend. “They also made me two little snowmen.”
“Oh, that’s darling!” She shakes her head and smiles wistfully. “I don’t know man, the nighttime shenanigans have got to stop, but otherwise, they don’t sound so bad. Snowmen are cute.”
“Yeah, and what’s wild is that they looked just like these snowmen I made as a kid… in my dreams. It was like a recurring one, I’d have it all the time.”
She blinks, her eyes huge behind her big glasses. “Now that’s wild. Have you ever, like, made art of them or something?”
“Never! It’s almost like… like… they could see into my head or something… that or the guy from my dreams has come to life.” I laugh it off, but now that I’ve thought about it, the idea seems to resonate in a way that makes me feel like it’s not so crazy.
“Oh, we wish!” Fae closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “If the man in my dreams were real, my life would be a lot different, let me tell ya.”
“Mine too, girl. It’s the weirdest thing—”
I cut off when her little girl comes in. I’ve seen her a few times on calls, she’s a pajama-clad, popsicle-smeared tiny clone of her mom.
“Momma, Barbie’s got her hair stuck in the fan.”
Fae shoots me an exasperated look. “And how did that happen?”
Her daughter scrunches her nose and tilts her head. She knows exactly how that happened. She squirms a little bit, and then I hear a shriek from the background. Her daughter’s face goes white, and Fae runs out of the room.
“I’ll be right back!” she calls over her shoulder.
I chuckle because I grew up in a big family. I miss this chaos.
“Bye!” her daughter says and exits the call.
Okay, guess that is done.
Still, I feel better, calmer. I have exactly zero answers, but the beginnings of a plan on how to address things.
I pull up YouTube, letting myself be an iPad kid for a few minutes while I wait for Fae to call me back.
I’m halfway through a power-washing video when I get another message from her.
F: Jesse got hit in the face with the barbie and I think his nose is broken. We’re going to urgent care, I am sooooooooo sorry!
A: Oh no! Take care, no worries!
There it is—the chaos.
F: I’m serious about tomorrow, though! Army. National. Guard.
A: Okay! I promise! Good luck! I hope Jesse is better soon!
The ease I got from chatting with Fae sustains me through the evening, and I even manage to make myself a really nice ramen bowl from scratch-ish.
Maybe I am just dissociating my way through it, but Fae’s reaction really did help me put things into perspective.
Nothing that has happened, outside of Tom’s weird creeper cams, has been dangerous.
Whoever is doing things seems to be genuinely trying to help me have a happy holiday season, however ill-advised and ham-handedly they are going about it.
And hell, if I’m really lucky, maybe my nightmare monster man has come to life.
Tomorrow, I’m sure I’ll be a nervous wreck, having to go tell Tom to give me the tapes… or having to text him because it’s not like I’m going over to his house. But for tonight, I shove all of it aside and snuggle into bed with my book.
A while later, I wake up, lights on and drool all over my pillow, because my book slammed down into my face… rude. “Computer, lights off!” I yell in my sleepy haze, closing my eyes.
I’m just about to drift back off when I realize that Henry isn’t in bed with me. In fact, he’s in the kitchen, because I can hear his little tippy taps on the tile.
That’s… odd.
“Henry, c’mere!” I call, and in seconds, he hops back up on the bed with me, tail wagging and tongue lolling out.
“What’s going on, bud? What were you up to?”
He doesn’t settle like I expect. Instead, he jumps off the bed—arthritis forgotten, I guess—and heads back out to the kitchen.
“Silly dog.” I close my eyes again, smiling at his antics.
A few seconds later though, I hear the clatter of metal from the kitchen. I squeeze my eyes shut. Has my dog suddenly decided that he’s a puppy again? That it’s time to get into everything? Please let that not be the case.
I disentangle myself from my sleeping pod and pad toward the door.
“Henry, what on ear—” I stop talking and scream instead.
In my kitchen, my very dark, unlit kitchen, is a man.
He’s huge, practically bent in half to lean over my counter. Dressed entirely in black, he turns his head, and I scream again, but this time, it’s a warbling, unrestrained sound.
I’d know that white and red mask anywhere. This is not possible.
My nightmare is standing in my kitchen, lifting a rolling pin like he’s about to attack me.
“Ada, it’s me!” he says, looking at the rolling pin in his hand and dropping it to the ground. It lands with a bang, and he growls, “Fuck!”
“Get away from me!” I yell, reaching to my side to grab blindly for the knife block. I find a larger handle and whip it out in front of me. I lucked out, the shine of my microwave clock reflecting off the thick blade of a butcher knife.
“Get out of my house or I’m calling the cops!”
He moves toward me, and I slash the knife. Instead of dodging it though, he grabs it, barehanded, along the blade. He hisses but doesn’t move his hand away. Instead, he steps closer.
“I would, Princess,” he says, his voice a whisper that permeates the kitchen. He’s close enough that I can feel the heat of him on my bare skin. “But you’re in front of the only exit.”
Oh fuck, he’s right. I’ve got a U-shaped kitchen, and I’m trapping him inside.
“Oh.”
“I said I was going to make you cookies. You didn’t need to attack me.” His eyes shift to his hand on the knife, where thick blood so dark it’s nearly black runs down the blade to drip on my floor.
The second I see it, everything comes crashing in on me. The blood drains from my face, and I feel cold all over.
I’m naked.
He’s bleeding.
There’s cookie dough on the counter.
My nightmare is in my kitchen.
My dog stands to his right, tail wagging.
He’s real, he’s bleeding, and the room is getting darker.