by Sweet
He waited for her acknowledgement and smile, which she gave because she couldn’t help not liking the kind man, and then he left her. Krystal quietly leaned against the wall beside her, telling about her Sunday, as Lauren and Anne walked up.
“Once I’d loaded up on aspirin, lots of water and soft pillows, I slept through until this morning. That was the biggest hangover I’ve had in a while. Well, ever, really. They must make those drinks extra potent. That’s probably why you can’t see straight today.”
“Yeah,” Cassie giggled, softly.
They all joined in but, in a peculiar way, their laughter soon grated on Cassie’s nerves. It even made her cunt hurt. So she stopped laughing with them, and also stopped really acknowledging them at all and went to her next class sooner than necessary, because she knew they weren’t in it.
It was like that all day, like all vital energy had been squashed or sucked right out of her. Like most people feel when they broke up with someone special, and didn’t know what to do—didn’t have the energy for anything else anyway.
Her feelings didn’t make sense. She liked her new friends, but not today. She just couldn’t connect with them or bear their whining about their discomfort.
Cassie’s limp attitude was noticed by her friends but they left her alone, thinking it was just a problem she wanted to deal with alone. Or that she still had a ghost of her hangover or she had that and her menstrual period arriving, too.
Hell, they were all dragging still, too, so no one was all that curious.
It was a long day for them all. Plus, her body remained sore. The bright and busy day was too brief, as well. The shadows were already lengthening and spreading to everything, making Cassie's fears grow.
Her heart raced with the realization that she was going back to her apartment soon, the same one she’d been so ecstatic to move into just days ago.
Either way, she didn’t have to say goodbye to any of her friends, since her last class was with a totally different group of people. She dawdled after class with them until they cheerily said “goodnight” and left for home or dorm. Then Cassie loitered about on campus, at the Commons, unwilling to go home, as the day darkened into night.
Without direction, Cassie finally walked off the school grounds with no plans of going back to her apartment. She let her feet take her away from school, as buildings were locked and others went into dorms or wherever their lives led. She headed in the other direction, away from her new home.
Then she found herself in one of the coffee shops near where she lived anyway.
Chapter Eight
“DAMN,” she cursed under her breath. Exasperated, she ordered espresso and chocolate crinkles – the first bite to eat she’d had all day.
With no friends to distract her or class notes to take, Cassie sat down in the corner facing the door with her back against a solid wall and the entire room visible to her view. She again tried to make sense of how she could get such bruises as the ones on her body, and pain like in her nipples and other parts, while totally alone and asleep.
“Maybe you’re possessed,” she quietly whispered to herself, then shuddered.
She also steered her thoughts away from her dream that she knew in her gut was actually a nightmare though she did not remember what happened in it. Slumping, she picked at the sugary crinkles and crushed one into dust as she obsessed over the dream that had turned on her. It was too much of a coincidence that the bruises had appeared in exact spots where she would be held if she had been fighting. What was scared was… was she fighting in her dream? And what was that feeling of dread, that inly darkness, that scary presence when she woke up? Was that also part of the dream?
And where the hell was the rest of her shirt?
She was still trying to analyze what happened to her on her second round of espresso and chocolate crinkles even though at the beginning, she wanted to forget them. She decided to find a logical – medical – explanation and signed onto her netbook to avidly search the internet.
By the end of her second cup of coffee, Cassie had believed she had a medical condition and decided that it would be best to get an appointment with a professional to find out for certain. Women sometimes exhibited a trait of being easily bruised when nearing their period. It was often a sign of anemia, too. Perhaps she was anemic and had grabbed her own arms… and ankles… and neck, in her dream and….
Okay. That explanation should be good, but it doesn't fit.
It didn’t explain her shirt, how it disappeared except for the torn sleeve. And that indentation at the foot of her bed!
She shoved away her cup. Maybe she’d had too much caffeine, chocolate, and sugar and not enough protein. The coffee shop was closing so she had to leave. Cassie trudged back out into the lonely darkness, taking note of the café door being locked behind her, before slowly treading the path towards her apartment building.
* * *
THE NIGHT night felt thick. She felt its weight upon her.
You are just imagining things. There’s nothing in your apartment to fear. Grow up, already. There’s nothing in the proverbial closet or under the—
Someone blocked her view and pushed at her, making her trip and fall back on her ass.
“You voracious slut!”
It took a second or two to realize it was a man, then another to understand who it was.
Jimmy screamed down in her face, his eyes wild, rimmed with dark bags as if he’d not been sleeping. Oh, and his eyes were glazed with craze, too.
“You fucking slut! What have you done to him! Polluted him with your bright lust and your insatiable angel’s cunt!”
Cassie’s heart was pounding. What the hell was his problem? Who was he talking about?
From behind him, Karen appeared running around the building’s exterior through the bushes and trees that landscaped it with a large flashlight.
“Hey-hey-hey! Jimmy! I’ve told you about that shit!” she shouted at him. Her appearance caught Elise’s attention. Karen looked ragged and beat, her hair standing up every which way. Being the super of an apartment building with Jimmy and his “pipes-to-hell” was telling on her.
“You, too!” Jimmy shrieked at Karen. “You keep him from me! He protects me from THEM! But YOU’RE playing with him, DISTRACTING him, from ME!!!”
Then, he ran into the building, his mail left scattered in the entryway.
“Well, he’s calmer today,” Karen snarked in a sarcastic deadpan. “You okay, Cassie?”
Cassie stood and took a quick inventory. She had no injuries, not from the last few seconds, anyway.
“Yeah, I’m fine. What’s his problem, Karen? And who’s this guy he’s talking about?”
Karen shrugged. She looked like she was about to fall down on the lawn and sleep. “Not sure who he’s talking about. He was gushing about – oh, the day before you moved in – about running into this ‘amazing, hot, sexy guy’ in the locker room at some gym or something. That they’d hit it off, right away. Guess Mr. Amazing Hot Sexy Guy is wandering off the path already and Jimmy’s gone from feeling his oats to getting the full-on crazies joneses for his new man.” She lapsed into silence a while, as if she’d forgotten something. “I think he thinks we’re detaining his lover in our beds.”
Cassie made a wry face but Karen was too tired to answer it with her own. “You do know he’s crazy, right? Not to be judgmental or whatever.”
“Preaching to the choir. You haven’t seen a cat out here, have you? Ever since I moved here, my cat keeps hiding under furniture like she’s hiding from stuff and, last night or two, she’s high on top of other stuff, instead, like she’s trying to see what’s coming before it gets her. She darted out this morning, and I haven’t seen her since.
“Then, again, maybe I wigged her out. I had some crazy wild sex the other week myself with my own amazing, hot, sexy guy. That man fucked me sore, in the best way. But, this week… I woke up the other night with the screaming meemies. And I don’t drink or do dr
ugs.”
She glanced at Cassie with a look of embarrassment. Like she had not planned to say too much. Then she realized Cassie had no clue what she was saying.
“Screaming meemies. Nightmares. Been having these intense, super horrific nightmares, lately.”
Cassie scrunched her face. “M-Me, too.”
“Huh. Strange. Wonder if it’s like that girls’ menstruating-in-sync stuff, except it’s nightmares.”
“I-I wouldn’t know. Do… Do you have any bruises?”
Cassie thought she saw Karen flinch, but then the woman shook her head. “Yes, but that’s creepy. Impossible. Or…” She looked up at their residence. “Maybe, we’ve moved into one of the places like they have in horror movies and the place is eating our brains and doing… things… to our bodies,” she teased.
Cassie’s eyes went wide with surprise. She hoped Karen would do a stagey movie ghoul’s laugh. What she had said was absurd. She didn’t, thankfully, so Cassie said nothing, although she got an impression that Karen wanted her to say something. She’d already asked about the bruises and Karen had already said she’d had kind of rough sex, so bruising…
Cassie couldn’t think more than that. Having two of them experiencing this was terrifying.
Then Karen sighed. “If you see a striped tiger cat, Cassie, grab her for me, if you can. She’s been zipping about all spooked. God, I am so tired all the fucking time! I just want to sleep like a normal person again.”
They both started in. But Karen paused with her foot on the step of the building’s threshold to look up at their building again.
“Are… are you coming?” Cassie asked, hopeful that she’d have company part of the way in, especially if Jimmy was lurking in the halls somewhere.
Karen nervously shifted on her feet, almost like she might be considering running away. But that was a weird thought to think about your super. “Nooo. I-I’m gonna go for another cup of super-caffeinated coffee, I think, before I turn in.”
Karen turned on her heel and walked away from the building she managed, as if her heels were on fire.
“But, the coffee shop’s…” Cassie’s sentence trailed off as Karen nearly ran out of sight of home.
She took a deep breath or two. Or three. Then she finally turned and stepped inside alone. Maybe she was ill because the halls seemed to be longer, more silent, and far emptier than she’d remembered. If she were ill, that’d put the difference in perspective. Even the elevator’s quiet rattling and stomach-unsettling motion was wholly disturbing.
A sudden, dark movement in the hall out of the corner of her eye had her jumping, afraid it was Jimmy or one of the horrible things from her dream. But it was a striped cat frozen in place, watching her with its wide-eyed fixed stare, until it slunk away a few steps before darting out of sight.
Chapter Nine
FINALLY, Cassie reached her door.
She quickly shoved her apartment door open, as if to startle a possible intruder, and her hand darted in to find the light switch.
CLICK!
Her entire apartment was bathed in bright light. Cassie’s eyes darted to every corner and minutely swept every inch of the floor and wall and ceiling before she fully stepped inside and reluctantly shut the door behind her.
It felt like she was shutting herself within.
She swallowed hard. The air in here felt heavy, humid, thick with… something.
My imagination is running away from me again, she told herself. Stop it!
That did not stop her from straining her ears to check for anything. But nothing was out of the ordinary. She justified that the air felt heavy because the apartment had been closed all day, with the windows locked and the air conditioner off so the air inside had had no circulation.
It’s just muggy humidity.
The phone suddenly rang. Cassie started at the sound, jumping clear off the ground like a frightened cat, her heart pounding. Then she laughed at herself.
“Calm down, stupid, it’s just the phone. Ugh, stop ringing like that!” She grabbed up the receiver. “Hello!” she practically shouted.
A pregnant pause answered her query.
And then, “Cassie? It’s Mom.”
Cassie almost slumped to the floor in relief. And then she felt her eyes getting rapidly warm. It felt so great to hear her mom’s voice!
“Hi, Mom! How are you?” She walked to the windows then unlocked and opened them. The gush of cool night air was refreshing and seemed to lighten up the place, giving Cassie some comfort and assurance. She shook her head and relaxed even more.
“I’m fine, baby. Missing my little girl, though.”
“I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m grown up, remember.”
“Well—”
“I know. I’ll always be your little girl. Always.”
Light, bubbly laughter warmed Cassie’s heart through the phone. “Exactly, young lady. I’m so glad you’re finally out of that transients’ motel, though. How’s your first apartment?”
Different parts of Cassie’s inner person were screaming.
“Horrendous!”
“Haunted!”
“Terrifying!”
“It’s… remarkable,” she answered. That seemed a neutral statement from a grown woman on her own who wasn’t going to cry to her mother at every mysterious creaky sound. Or nightmare. Even mega-nightmares she couldn’t even remember. “I haven’t been sleeping too well here, though,” she ventured, not too childishly, she hoped.
“You’ve stayed in hotels with us and yeah, you have always been very listless when you are not sleeping in your own bed here. I guess you’ve never outgrown that, huh? But it will pass. You’re just adjusting to grown-up life on your own.” Her mother sounded wistful, and also like she was trying to convince herself to be calm and let her daughter be a full-fledged adult.
A part of Cassie wanted to sob in hysterics and asked them if they could come and get her right now? That it wasn’t working out and she wanted to leave this place, board the bus, and just come back later for her stuff—with them.
But grownups should not bitch about being on their own when they had been bitching about wanting to grow up and be out on their own as soon as possible.
So they talked a little longer about classes and her new friends. She skipped the details of what happened—not that she fully knew what had happened—when she and her friends had gone out to their first classy nightclub together.
“No, I didn’t drink much.” Not much as the other girls, she was sure. But her mom did not know that, and she did not want her to worry. It wasn’t’ going to happen again. Not if she could help it. Especially since everything started since that night.
Again, could the drink be the culprit? Maybe, that magic man slid a powerful drug on it and she was suffering from withdrawal ever since?
She also didn’t mention the “magic man” with his possibly too magical drinks to her mother because that might lead to her blurting, without anything to support her theory that, I think we’ve fucked, Mom, but I can’t figure out how he could have gotten in and out of my place. And I’m sore, bruised, and am having a hard time pissing. She could not prove that. Or maybe she was just going crazy? “How’s Dad?” she asked instead. And her mom transferred her to her father.
“Hey, Dad. Yeah, I don’t stay out too late and I walk strong, not timid, like you taught me.”
Before long, she’d said goodbye to Mom and Dad. They reminded Cassie to always have cab fare. Her Dad said that he didn’t care what she said; he was going to buy her a new car to make certain she didn’t ride with any oddballs on the bus, dangerous men with cars or motorcycles, or evil cabbies.
That made her smile. She knew her Daddy. He was serious.
After her call, she prepared a healthy meal and sat to eat it in front of her internet-linked TV monitor. There was a new episode of a show she liked that she’d wanted to see. But Cassie didn’t absorb any of it. It proved to be a distraction, though, something t
o keep her from thinking about what lurked in the back of her mind. She was merely whiling the hours away until bedtime.
After the show, she did some homework. Then she decided she could not put off going to bed. All the lights were left on, no matter how bright.
She slipped into her pajamas, closed her bedroom door, and locked it behind her. Not that she had any concerns that someone might get in. Of course not. She laid down in her bed, pulled her blanket up to her chin, and tried to relax, to drift into sleep. She normally would do so within five-to-ten minutes, tops.
Not tonight.
The bedroom light was directly above her and despite her self-assurance, she was still terribly afraid. Could anyone come inside a locked door? It’s hard to sleep when you’re too afraid to even close your eyes, or that you’re used to sleeping in a nearly pitch black room. But the lights were all on and it was so damn bright.
Cassie opted instead to place a pillow above her head to get a little relief from the relentless light shining into every corner of her room. It seemed better, instead of lying on her side or turning off the light altogether. This was just some adjustment her inner little kid had to go through, she assured herself. A night or two of this and she’d be fine.
But she tossed and turned and became more tensed. In fact, her body was more at full alert lying tensely curled up in her bed than she’d been all day on the street or in class. Her heart would not stop racing and her thoughts would not stop chasing her heart’s racing beat.
So she took several slow and deep breaths. She opened her eyes wide. Maybe keeping her eyes open until they’d close on their own would work. She stared into the dimness under her pillow that was blocking the bright light. And, for a long time nothing happened.
Finally, as she stared at her fluffy pillow, her tension slipped, and dropped little by little.
Cassie began drifting through pleasant imaginary scenes and happy half-memories, as if escaping from her current plight of nameless fears. And, finally, without noticing it, Cassie slipped into the arms of sleep.
