The voice boomed through my subconscious and my eyes flew open. It took me a few minutes to figure out where I was. My brain felt heavy and swollen, the thoughts too constricted to be coherent. It was dark where I was, the shadows bouncing off of the things around me and causing shifting shades of black and gray on the walls.
Then I saw the flowers… and the wilted balloons… and the stack of cards.
I was in my spare bedroom. The door was shut, but I wasn’t tied to the bed. Even so, it took me a few minutes to sit up because my body felt stiff and unmanageable. I took that time to study the flowers before me. Why hadn’t I noticed that there among the dead and decayed petals were exact duplicates of the flowers that Jessica had kept in her condo?
“I didn’t know.”
The voice surprised me. Especially when I saw Jess sitting beside me, staring at the dead flowers too. Her head was hung low and tears glistened on her cheeks. When she turned to look at me, devastation, regret and surrender where warring for dominance in her expression. She reached out and placed her hand on mine. It didn’t pass through the flesh like you see in movies, but it also didn’t feel solid either. It was just like a tingling sensation where I knew her hand should be touching mine.
“I didn’t know that when I let him kiss me, it would open up a whole new facet to his obsession with me.”
My heart constricted in fear, “what do you mean?”
She sighed, “When he began to give me flowers, at first I was flattered that someone as handsome and successful as he was could be interested in someone like me. I mean he’s only ten years older than I was, but still, it had felt like so much more; especially since he was my shrink. I was seduced by the thought of some grand romance and I let myself succumb to it.” She stood up and began pacing back and forth.
“You mean you and Dr. Benning were… dating?”
She smiled. “At first it felt like we were. I wanted to keep it a secret because I knew that mom and dad would never understand. They would say that he had taken advantage of me. I was scared. Then things got weird.”
“What do you mean ‘weird’?”
“He was jealous… of everything. School, my friends… Spencer; any time I spent away from him was time that he said we could never get back… time that he said I owed him. So I stopped talking to him. I wouldn’t answer the door when he rang the bell, I wouldn’t answer his calls, I stopped responding to his texts; anything I could do to distance myself from him, I did.”
I stood up and walked toward her, her face was so empty, so devoid of emotion. “Then what happened?” But I knew… I already knew the answer. It had become clear to me as I was feeling the effects of the drug he had given me.
She spoke quietly, her face turned toward the ground. “Then he killed me.” I gasped; a reaction that I knew was ridiculous since I had already known what she was going to say. When she raised her eyes and looked directly at me, I wasn’t expecting what she would say next. “And now he’s going to kill you too.”