37. Emma
37
EMMA
H ot pain throbs at the back of my skull, seeping through the comforting darkness I find myself in. I want to stay here. If I sink further down, then the pain will lessen, and I can return to the dreams of my men.
I want to sleep.
My lower lip twitches and pulls slightly, highlighting how dry it is, so I slide my tongue out to wet it. But my mouth is dry, parched like a desert. I swallow and something catches in my throat, tickling enough to pull me further from my slumber. I can’t stop the cough rising up and it escapes me in a harsh, dry rush.
Suddenly, something clamps down around my jaw and jerks my head upward, flaring the pain in my skull. I yelp and my eyes flutter, leaking my surroundings to me in quick, vibrant flashes.
Then I see him.
“M—Mike?” My speech is sluggish and slightly slurred as I force myself awake, and confusion swirls like tight static in my chest. I try to move but only my legs listen. Pressure around my wrists prevents my arms from lowering and the confusion becomes a tight band.
“About time you woke up,” Mike says, and his voice drifts slightly like the lingering end of a song you pause too quickly. “I was getting impatient.”
Mike. Mike was here? Why was Mike here?
He crouches in front of me, holding my head up by gripping my chin. I try to turn away from him but his grip is unrelenting. His fingertips press into my soft cheeks, preventing my lips from closing properly.
My mind catches up slowly. I came back here to get a package and the door was open. I was going to call the police when something struck me on the back of my head.
Someone. Mike?
“I don’t understand. Why are you here?” Pulling on my wrists again, the pressure preventing them from moving grows. I lift my head the best I can and glimpse a belt wound around my wrists, securing me to one of the looped handles of my dresser.
“The fuck?”
“I can’t believe we’re finally here.” Mike forces my head back down to look him in the eye, and he smiles. “I just wish it didn’t have to be this way.”
“Mike, what is going on? What the hell are you doing?” Panic trickles through my mind like the running water before a large flood. The band around my chest tightens and my breathing becomes labored as Mike pats my cheek.
Then something glints in the light. A long knife clasped in his free hand waves at me, and the panic bursts through my mind like a firework.
Oh God. Is he insane? Is he going to kill me?
“No,” I whimper, pulling at my restraint and sliding my heels across the floor trying to find something to grip onto. “No, no this can’t be happening. This can’t be happening!”
Mike doesn’t move, and his eerie wide smile doesn’t falter. “I know, I can barely believe it either. I dreamed of this moment, Emma. Though I won’t lie, I was enjoying wearing you down. Getting to see a version of you that no one else sees. You always put on such a show for me. Did you have as much fun as I did?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I snap, increasing my struggles. I shift forward, then slam back against the dresser to try and dislodge the drawer.
Mike’s grip tightens on my jaw once more and he shakes my head, then slams his knife-clad fist into the drawer beside my face.
“Enough!” he yells. “Enough with the games. Enough with the pretending. It’s time to stop all of this, do you understand? When I say the game is over, it’s over. So stop !”
I freeze. My muscles lock up and cold fear gently clasps my racing heart.
“I’m stopping,” I gasp, unable to tear my gaze away from the knife. “I’m s-stopping.”
“Good.” His smile wavers as he looks me over, then he leans away and resumes toying with the knife in the air. When he finally releases my jaw, I part my mouth slightly and try to ease the lingering ache left behind.
“I-I’m just … confused.”
“I know.” Mike’s tone is sweet and sympathetic as if talking to an injured puppy. “I’ve had to change all of my plans because of that fucking teacher.” He stands abruptly and paces jerkily in front of me. “I should have gone after him first, really. Honestly, I thought you would have come running to me much sooner. I lost track of you for a bit there but when I found you again.” He laughs hollowly, then crouches back in front of me.
“But it doesn’t matter, see?” His brow lifts. “It’s ahead of schedule but that doesn’t matter. Don’t you see? Now we can be together, really be together just the two of us!”
What ?
My mind trips over too many thoughts that get tangled in the vines of panic rushing through my mind. What teacher is he mad at? He wants us to be together? No, there has to be some kind of mistake. There has to be.
“Mike? I…I’m sorry but I don’t want to be with you.” I remember what feels like months ago now, when he asked me out at the coffee cart and before that, in the club. It had felt so…unimportant. Barely a ripple in the chaos that has been my life.
“No, you do.” Mike nods sharply. “You do, you just—you still don’t see it!” He waves the knife and straightens up. “Those fucking old men have gotten in your head but I see you, Emma. I see the real you. We’re supposed to be together. I’ve been doing all of this to make you see that you-you…and if you can’t see that then…then…” He pauses and slowly faces me. “Then I will make you see.”
His confusing words send a cold slurry of shivers across my body, and something finally clicks in my mind like the first touch of a cold breeze on a sweltering day. The first burst of light when coming out of the dark.
Mike.
It was Mike. Is he my shadow? My tormentor?
“You.” I fight with the word and twist against the dresser, drawing my legs up to my abdomen. “It was you that’s been fucking with me?”
“I wouldn’t use such language. It’s not becoming of you,” Mike replies flatly.
“You have me tied to my dresser and you hit me on the head. I’ll use whatever fucking language I want to!”
“No!” Mike yells and he launches out his leg, kicking at the dresser just an inch from my face.
I scream and curl away, my heart pounding from my stupid, bold attempt to talk back. “I’m sorry!”
“You will be,” Mike snarls and he resumes his jerky pacing. “I’ve tried to get your attention for months, but you were always looking the wrong way. So I did what any sane guy would do to get you to look where you should be looking.”
I don’t want him to continue. I don’t want him to do anything . I need a way out of this but my head throbs, my gut tangles itself together and Mike stands between me and the door. Even if I can slip my wrists free of the belt, he’s taller and stronger than me.
I glance at the window, contemplating how quickly I’d be able to get back onto my feet if I threw myself out of it.
“I broke into your care, made you a damsel in distress because all you fucking women crave being the center of attention, don’t you? Only, instead of turning to my obviously placed shoulder for comfort, you humiliated me.”
Mike stops pacing and faces me, his eyes dark and his brow pulled low. “You humiliated me in public, no less. At first, I thought it was part of a game you were playing. You didn’t want to seem too eager. I understood that, so I waited. And waited .”
He crouches down again and sighs deeply. “But you were too fucking blind to see what was right in front of you. I knew you needed a little more help and I wanted to get to know you better, so I drugged you.”
My heart seizes in my chest and I can’t breathe. The hot sting of tears creeps up behind my eyes and the next time I blink, my world blurs. “You didn’t?”
“Oh, I did. It was easy, really. Because you’re so fucking blind I bet you didn’t even see me that night. I drugged you but don’t worry, you were perfectly safe with me. I just needed you to let me in so I could clone your key and your phone. I was working hard, don’t you see? Removing the obstacles that were keeping us apart.”
“What, like my door?” I mutter, fighting the rising tears but it’s a losing battle.
“I knew you wanted me to get to know you; that’s why you were playing so hard to get. I came here every day and just existed in your life. I felt so close to you, y’know?”
It’s becoming clear. The window being open. Things being moved around. Missing underwear. It was all him, being here when I was out. My stomach rolls and bile crawls up my throat. He was in my home , my safe place doing God knows what.
“But then when I had your phone?” Mike sucks at his teeth. “Seeing that you were being taken advantage of by those creeps was one thing. I understood that your feeble mind was probably just hungry for attention and looking for it in the wrong place. Because you kept overlooking me .”
He talks as if we’re having a normal, pleasant Sunday conversation. The knife twirls dangerously around and around.
“But then…oh, then I saw those pictures. I followed you and I realized you’d been tainted by them. My lost little lamb.” His smile is wide but it completely lacks all warmth. “So I stole the pictures and destroyed Caspian’s studio so he would see that you weren’t worth the effort.”
He’s a coin flipping back and forth. One minute, they’re not good enough for me. The next, I’m the worthless one.
“Of course, I had to remind you to be good for me, so I sent those pictures to your parents. They are so strict I was sure they would help me but…” He scoffs and points at me with the knife. “Well, you are just too stubborn. I wanted to teach you a lesson at the cabin. I tracked your phone and heard that you would be alone. Emma, when I tell you I had a weekend of fun planned for us, you have no idea. But then those old dogs arrived and ruined everything.”
He kicks at my rug and a flash of cold anger moves across his face.
I don’t know what to do. Keeping him talking is literally my only option.
“Did you unlock the door?” I ask, fighting to keep my voice steady.
“Yeah, those old locks are piss easy. And then suddenly you were on the other side. It was like…fate.” The weird, off-tilt look returns to his face. “But you were asleep and walked right past me. It was like you were begging me to help you. You left them and came to me!” He bounces down to his haunches like an excited child. “I was going to burn the place down until one of them woke up and spotted me. I knew I had to lay low. We couldn’t be together quite yet.”
His hand lands on my knee. The contact burns as his thumb strokes in small circles but I can’t move. I’m wound so tight that all my muscles are locked.
“And then I saw you trying to leave me.”
“L-leave you?”
“That application to the summer class? I looked into them and their campus is too far. I couldn’t have that, so I showed them who you really were. Who those men made you into. Because, Emma. This isn’t you. Being fucked and ruined by men old enough to be your dad? Come on, surely you can see how fucked that is?”
“You know nothing,” I snarl, pulling sharply at my bindings as a sudden urge to protect the men I love rises up. “You see what you want to see, but them? They see me. They care for me and none of these sick, stalker games you’ve been playing has put them off. That shows me they care?—”
Mike strikes me across the face with his fist, sending my head snapping to the side and agony flares up across my jaw and cheek. Before I can swallow the rising blood across my tongue, he grabs my chin and jerks my head back up.
“I’m not a fucking stalker,” he growls. “I’m trying to help you, protect you. But I see now that talking won’t get through to you. I suspected as much, but don’t you worry Emma. I know how we can be together forever.”
The taste of iron sweeps across my tongue as Mike releases me and stands. He heads to my bed and leans over the side, then picks up a white plastic container filled with amber liquid.
I can’t begin to imagine what that is and as he approaches, I twist more violently in my bindings.
“Mike, Mike, wait. Wait, we—we’re still talking, right? We’ve still got so much to talk about!”
“No,” Mike sighs blissfully. “No more talking. I’ve worked my ass off to help and protect you and even now, you don’t see it. But this?” He unscrews the white cap on the large bottle and flicks it to the side. “This is the only way I can keep you with me now that that teacher knows. But don’t worry, I promise that once we’re together, I’ll treat you properly. You’ll realize how wrong you were.”
“Mike!” I squeal as the first large splash of liquid hits me. Given the white bottle, I fear acid of some kind but the liquid is cool to the touch and doesn’t burn as it soaks into my clothes and splashes over my face.
I cough, choking as he pours it over me and then, when I breathe in, a sharp, familiar, metallic scent fills my nose.
Cold terror grips me and I start to thrash violently.
I know that smell.
Gasoline.
“Mike! Let me go, let me fucking go! Don’t do this, please, don’t do this. We can be together! Fuck, I’ll leave with you right now and we can be together but not like this! Please!”
Mike douses himself and tosses the empty bottle onto my bed, then he pulls a small matchbook from his pocket.
“Don’t be scared, Emma,” he says with a calm smile. “It’ll only take a second and then we’ll be together forever.”
The spark ignites with a flick of his thumb, and a single orange flame licks into existence.