by Frankie Rose
Waking up about an hour ago had been a challenge, and opening my eyes entirely out of the question. The whole eye-opening plan had been set aside after my first attempt, when the weak lighting in the room had threatened to crack open my skull and liquefy my brain. That was something that usually only happened after a hallucination.
Everything was fragmented and jumbled, making it hard to recall why I felt so disconnected in the first place. It eventually came creeping back: being followed, the fire, that black-haired guy, Miller’s weird attitude. Not to mention the very unnerving night spent alone in my house, waiting for the mysterious ‘they’ to finally swoop down out of the ether and finish me off for good.
I shifted my body, testing to see if it would move properly. My limbs responded, if a little begrudgingly. I probed further, cautiously seeing if I could sit up. Once that was accomplished, I rested for a few moments, preparing to finally open my eyelids. I braced for the skull-cracking pain. A dull thump…thump greeted me instead, throbbing behind my eyes.
I flung back the covers and swung my legs out of bed, the room spinning dramatically as I rose to stand. Too fast. For a few seconds, the danger of throwing up threatened to become a horrible reality. The moment passed, but a few deep breaths were required all the same. These were the worst after-effects I’d ever had, and yesterday hadn’t even been a hallucination, as far as I could tell.
I hobbled across my room and slowly pulled on a hoodie, feeling the cold sink deep into my bones. I headed downstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water. The clock on the kitchen wall showed three twenty-five p.m. as I opened the refrigerator door. I didn’t usually sleep in. How I’d managed to pass out for fifteen hours was a mystery.
The water glugged loudly out of the cooler, taking forever to fill my glass. I gave up halfway and let the fridge door swing shut. Spinning around, I raised the tumbler to take a sip, only for it to slip from my hand. It shattered on the floor. I froze, trapped by the discovery of a stranger in my kitchen.
A knife.
I needed a knife.
I ducked back and grabbed hold of a handle from the wooden block on the counter. I held it out, recovering from the surprise, and took in my assailant.
My assailant didn’t look very much like an assailant, however. It was him, the driver of the Dodge Charger, wearing a slightly torn black t-shirt and a pair of grey boxer shorts. Still smolderingly angry, still pale and intense. By my guess, he couldn’t have been any more than eighteen or nineteen. And he was chewing. Not gum, either, but properly chewing, like he was eating something.
It was then that I spotted the huge half-eaten sandwich he brandished in his right hand. Okay. He’d broken into my house to slit my throat in my sleep, but had found time to fix up a snack first. And taken off his pants. The nerve!
I eyed him up and down again. He swallowed and took another bite without saying a word, meeting my gaze with a shadowed look of amusement on his face.
“Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my house?”
He continued chewing with raised eyebrows, obviously enjoying my irritation. Of course he was enjoying it. That’s what happened when a trembling girl threatened a big, strong guy with the tiniest knife in the world. Crap! I gasped and threw down the vegetable knife in order to snatch up the meat cleaver. Much better.
It seemed to entertain him greatly when I juggled to get a firm grip on the handle. He lapsed into a coughing fit as he choked on his food, alternating between trying to catch a breath and laughing at me.
“I mean it!” I yelled. “Who are you?” I took a step towards him, still grasping hold of the meat cleaver. He cleared his throat one last time, and then glanced down at the knife before holding his hands up in mock surrender, sandwich still in hand.
“I am wet.”
“What?”
“I’m wet. Again.” He went to take another bite from his sandwich. I growled and stepped forward. “Whoa! I’m wet because you smashed a glass of water all over my feet. And now you’re about to cut yours open.” He nodded to the debris of broken glass strewn on the floor between us.
I stopped in my tracks and scowled. Smartass. “Look. I’ve had a really bad night. I’ve been waiting for those creepy guys to show up here and kidnap me. So please,” I begged, “tell me who you are and what you’re doing in my house.”
He sighed and dropped his smile, straightening up to look at me seriously for the first time. “I’m Daniel, the guy that saved your ass yesterday. But don’t worry—you’re welcome.” He turned his back on me and walked over to the kitchen sink, putting down his food and dusting off his hands. “And for the record, those guys aren’t coming. I wouldn’t get your panties in such a twist.”
I shook my head. “Detective Miller said—”
“Miller’s one of us. I told him I’d be coming over.”
My hand shook as I studied him, looking for any signs that he was lying. There were none. Okay, so he knew Miller. That meant he was a good guy, right? It was wrong to stab a good guy with a meat cleaver, even if he was incredibly obnoxious. I placed the meat cleaver down on the sideboard but kept it within arm’s reach just in case. “Why did you help me?” I asked.
Daniel blew out his cheeks. “I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.” He leaned back on the counter and crossed his arms. “I had no choice but to intervene. They would have killed you.”
“Well, I really am glad you felt compelled to stop them,” I told him, as his gaze leveled with mine. “But if you wouldn’t mind just shedding a little light here, why would it be necessary for you to come to my rescue? Why did those guys wanna kill me in the first place?”
“Look, all you need to understand is that you have to stay away from people like that, okay?”
“Well I didn’t exactly go looking for them! They found me! I was in my truck, remember? The one you’re probably responsible for blowing up? You hardly expect to run into crazed killers when you’re stuck in lunch hour traffic. If you know why they attacked me, then you should tell me. I might not be safe. And what’s your role in the whole thing? Are you and those guys buddies or something? They didn’t seem to need an introduction.”
He rolled his eyes and pulled his arms tighter across his chest, huffing. The corded muscles in his arms flexed and contracted. He would have been able to take that meat cleaver off me, no problem.
“Trust me, I’m not friends with people like that. And they won’t be bothering you again.” His eyes flashed with resolve.
I wanted to ask him how he could be so sure, but my head had started to pound again. I groaned as a wave of nausea twisted in my stomach. This was much, much worse than usual. I reached out to the counter to steady myself and felt the room swim as I took a deep breath, waiting for the unpleasant sensation to end.
“You should be in bed, anyway,” Daniel scolded, like I should have known better. “I know the light hit you. Most people would be really sick by now. I’m surprised you’re even standing.”
“All this is from that light? I thought…” I shook my head, staring at the faded zigzag linoleum on the kitchen floor. That explained why I was feeling so terrible, at least.
“You thought what?”
“Nothing.” I took a deep breath. “How did you know where to find me?”
“Your insurance card. And before you ask, I’m in my boxers because my clothes got soaked yesterday while I was saving you. I’m not sleeping on a sofa in wet jeans. But now that I see you’re alive, I can leave you in peace to get on with your life.” He stepped over the glass, heading towards the hallway where I had walked right past his drying clothes.
He couldn’t leave. If he left, I would never get any answers. Walking slowly after him and feeling worse by the second, I gripped hold of the banister. I propped myself against it as he pulled on his damp jeans. A picture of me and my mom pulling goofy faces amongst the photos on the wall caught my attention, and for some reason I found myself repositioning in front of it, blo
cking it from view.
“Please…I really need to know what’s going on. Has this got anything to do with my mother?”
He reached for a worn leather jacket slung over the railing, and then stared down at it in his hands. “I don’t know anything about your mother,” he said quietly, his hair falling into his face.
“But yesterday, you said—”
“Trust me, you’re better off not going any further down this path. It doesn’t lead anywhere good.” He slid the jacket on and pulled a set of keys out of the pocket, still avoiding my eyes.
“What path? What are you talking about?”
“Just go to bed. Sleep. Go to school. Get on with your life. Stop thinking you have it so bad,” he said, his voice gruff.
I shrank back as he stepped towards me. He was so close I could see the small flecks of amber that surrounded his irises; they flared and sparked as he drew his face even closer to mine, and the smell of him filled my head. Citrus and smoke—not cigarette, something else, like he’d been standing in front of an open fire.
“Don’t think that next time there’ll be someone there to pick up the pieces. Because there won’t.” His eyes told me he meant every word.
“So that’s it. You’re not going to tell me anything?”
He straightened and gave me a strange, long look before stepping back and walking to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob.
“No.”
With that, he opened the door and walked out without looking back, slamming it shut behind him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Agatha
