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Tick, Tick, Tick

The best feeling is waking up and realizing that you still have time to sleep. Unless you don't know where you are.

By Lauren .Published 6 years ago 7 min read
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Tick, tick, tick. The soft sound of my clock greets me, letting me know that I’ve woken up before my alarm has gone off. I open my eyes, praying that there’s no light streaming in through my window, the telltale sign that I still have a few hours of sleep before I have to get up for work. Thankfully I see nothing. Its pitch black. I can’t see the light from my router in the corner of my room, or the flashing beacon that is my smoke detector. No, I see nothing. This is not my room. Awareness has set in and I realize that these are not my sheets and that I’m still wearing the same jeans from last night. Last night. I went out with friends after work to celebrate the weekend. Relief courses through me as I realize that I must have made a drunken spectacle of myself and Vanessa probably took me home with her, to her new apartment that I was clearly too drunk to fully appreciate. As I come to my senses, I hear Vanessa’s hard breathing coming from the other side of the bed, though I don’t feel her next to me. She must have slept on the floor. How odd. It seems louder than her usual delicate breathing, but I attribute my sensitivity to sound to the migraine that is now making itself known. I’m sure I won’t be going back to sleep for a while, so I might as well get some aspirin and water and check out the new apartment. I push down the covers, hop out of bed and onto the cold floor. Cement? Surely, I would have noticed that my hardwood-obsessed best friend had rented an apartment with cement floors. I hobble about the room, searching for a wall, while my head pounds with a steady beat. I find a light switch and flip it. Fortunately for my headache, a dim glow filters through the door-less threshold of a small closet. On the shelf in the closet is a bag of pills, a single car key, and a clock. I vaguely consider how strange it is that Vanessa would have these things sitting in the closet and not on the nightstand. As I turn around to look for the door, I freeze. I can’t move. I can’t even scream. Every nerve in my body is ablaze and my muscles tense until I feel like they’ll tear. To my right, at the foot of the bed -that I now realize is just a box spring and a mattress with dirty sheets- is a body. It is naked, sitting in a pool of blood, and a chilling light blue color. The curly brown hair is matted and plastered across the unrecognizable face, covering the eyes and forehead. The cheekbones are crushed, the lips are swollen to at least five times their normal size and the nose is completely obliterated. Her chest and abdomen are covered in dark red marks, that can only be the product of a knife. I didn’t think that I could have feelings of sadness and horror so strong for a stranger until this very moment. It has taken me only seconds to process this scene as my attention is drawn to the form lying next to the woman. As I look at the man on the floor, I have a visceral reaction to the fact that it was his breathing I had been listening to just moments ago. His slack face looks peaceful, a stark contrast to the rest of him. Poking out of the collar of his shirt is a tattoo of a bull with beady eyes and black horns. His hands are bloodied, his light hair snarled, and sitting on his stomach is a knife, the knife, covered in dried blood. The steady rise and fall of his chest tells me that if I have a chance at all of getting out of here, this is it. I don’t have time to think about how I got here, why I am untouched, or who these people are. I need to think. Think back to the self-defense techniques that my dad taught me when I was younger. I look around the room, and find the door which is directly across from me, about twelve feet away. I have no choice but to step in the blood surrounding the dead woman, as there is so much of it covering the floor. I hold my breath as I step between the man’s legs. I decide it would be best if I had the knife and not him if he were to wake up, and so I carefully inch forward, and gently reach for the knife on the man’s stomach, keeping my eyes on his face, praying to God that he doesn’t wake up. I pick up the knife and glance at the woman for one brief moment. It is this decision that changes everything about the situation. I see, on the left side of her ribcage, just under her left breast, a tattoo. It is in very delicate script and it's marred by blood enough that I can’t make out the words, but I don’t need to see the letters to know what they say. They say “best friends”, and I know this because Vanessa and I got matching tattoos for her twenty-second birthday. I realize, a moment too late, that I am standing over a man, a murderer, who is over three times my size, and he is awake. I look into his dark brown eyes and a rage that I have never felt before comes bubbling out of me in the form of an unfamiliar screech. I take the knife and stab at him just as he reaches for my throat with his brawny hand. I see nothing but blackness as he slams my head into the concrete where he was just lying. He sits all of his weight on my stomach and I cannot breathe, but I concentrate on the feel of the knife in my hand and I plunge it into his calf. His lips pull into a sickening sneer, exposing unexpectedly straight, white teeth. I realize that he isn’t feeling any pain, and that must be attributed to whatever the pills are in the closet. I stab him in the leg again, lower this time, making sure that I damage something important, his Achilles tendon. He picks me up by my hair and throws me onto the bed. He grabs the knife from my hand and rips off his belt, tossing it on the bed next to me, staggering as he does so as his left leg can no longer support him. He says something to me but I can’t hear it over the blood rushing in my ears. He grabs the hem of his shirt, and I know that I have to act now. As he pulls his shirt over his head, I grab his belt and jump towards him. I catch him off guard and we both crash onto the floor. I slam my knee into his head, and when it makes contact with the floor, I wrap the belt around his neck. I tighten it as much as possible and hold it. His shirt is still over his face and its now covered in the blood coming from what must be his nose. He flails and tries to grab me, but the combination of head trauma and drugs are clearly too much for him. After what seems like the longest five minutes of my life, I hear a gurgled gasp and his body goes slack. I stand up and run towards the door. I throw it open and see that I am in an abandoned housing complex. I run down the stairs, and across the parking lot. It’s dark out, but there are a few cars in the road in front of me and I run out into the road, waving my hands above my head. I run up to the only stopped car and the driver rolls down his window. I ask the man to help me and he tells me to get in. As I put on my seat belt, I look over to him to express my gratitude, but the words are caught in my throat. He is leering at me, and all I can see is the faded tattoo of a black-horned bull.

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