Page 1 of Obeying

1

KRISTEN

Breathe.

Breathe.

Don't make a sound.

But the breath comes out shaking, too loud in an apartment that has gone wrong somehow, the walls pulled in tighter than they were an hour ago. My back is flat against the door. My palm covers my mouth so hard I can taste my own skin. Somewhere past this room, he is moving, and I track him the way you track weather, by feel, by the change in pressure. A cabinet opens. Closes. A door I know the sound of, the bathroom, the hinge that always sticks. He's being patient about it. That is the part that turns my stomach. He's not rushing.

"Kristen."

My name in his mouth is soft. It's always soft right before it isn't.

"Where are you?"

I don't move. I can't. My legs have stopped belonging to me, and my hands won't quit their trembling, and I press back harder like the door might agree to take me in, fold me into the wood, hide me. The floor gives him away. One board near the hall closet has a voice of its own, and it speaks. It says he is closer now. Close enough that I can hear him breathing, slow and unbothered, a man who has all the time in the world because he knows the apartment better than I know my own pulse.

My heart drops with each step. The walls are closing in on me.

The footsteps stop right outside.

"Found you."

I watch the handle turning, and there is nowhere behind me, no window, no second door, nothing but the corner of a room I thought I'd be safe in.

Don't scream. If you scream, he wins faster.

The handle finishes its turn.

The door slams open.

I sit up, gasping for air.

I'm in my room. My own bed, my own house, the light coming in the way it always does. My shirt is stuck to my back, and my hair is damp at my temples. I press my hands flat to the mattress and just feel it under me. Solid. Real. Only me here.

A dream. Just a dream.

Actually, a nightmare if I'm being honest, and I'm too tired to be anything but honest this early in the morning.

I sit for a while and just breathe through it. In, hold, out. I've done this enough times to know it passes eventually, my heart slowing, my hands going still again. I'm fine. The door's shut. There's no one behind it, no one in any of these rooms but me. And that's the whole point. New place, new start, a life I'm building out of nothing. Mine.

The phone says 5:31.

No reason to chase the last half hour of sleep. It never comes back clean anyway.

I get up.

When I leave the house, it's early enough that the streets are mostly empty. There's a café near the hospital that opens at six, so I stop in, like I have most mornings this week, and get a coffee. The same girl is working. She remembers my order now, which is a small thing, but it's nice not having to explain myself, even about coffee.

By the time I get to the hospital and change, it's almost time for the morning huddle. A few of the residents are already there, bent around a phone, shoulders shaking, trying to keep it down and failing.

"He outmogged him so bad," one of them says. "It's actually criminal."

"Bro got cooked. Look at his face. Look at it. He's done. He has to move towns."

I smile like I'm in on it. I'm not. I haven't touched social media in years. I deleted it all when I decided to disappear and pause my life. It felt like a loss then, but when I had to disappear the second time, it proved useful. It was easier.