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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.
