Shadows
Angie Martin
This edition published via Amazon KDP
“The First Step” © Angie Martin and Marisa Oldham 2016
All other stories © Angie Martin 2016
ASIN # B01LYYMXLE
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. In accordance with U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from this book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Cover Art by: Amanda Walker
To learn more about author Angie Martin,
please visit her website at www.angiemartinbooks.com.
This work of fiction contains adult situations that may not be suitable for children under eighteen years of age. Recommended for mature audiences only.
Novels by Angie Martin
False Security
Conduit
The Boys Club
Poetry collections
the three o’clock in the morning sessions
Anthologies
Eye of Fear
The Cat, the Crow, and the Cauldron
Discovery
Table of Contents
Shadows
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Reflection
Sold
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Flawless
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Cycle of Life
Chapter One
Chapter Two
The First Step
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
More by Angie Martin
About Angie Martin
About Marisa Oldham
One Last Thing…
Dedication
For horror fanatics everywhere. May your sleep be ever disturbed.
Shadows
Chapter One
Darkness.
I open my eyes, and all I see is darkness. Even the light shining in from around the thick curtains is a disturbing gray, full of shadows and hues of nothingness.
I roll over on my side and curl up. I clench the navy blue comforter to my chest and pull it up to my chin. I am pretty sure it is morning, even though I unplugged my alarm clock a week ago, the same day I decided not to return to work. I didn’t call my boss, didn’t even text a co-worker with a made-up illness as an excuse for not coming in. I simply disconnected my alarm clock when it yelled at me to get out of bed, and I fell back into a dark, dreamless sleep. It’s much nicer in that comforting, enticing world of nothingness. There’s nothing to remind me of how awful things are when I’m awake. Just blissful, precious darkness.
But, I can’t sleep all the time. Not yet, anyway.
I shift around in my bed, but nothing is comfortable. Not the thick blanket or the starchy sheet. My pajama bottoms don’t fit right anymore. My lengthy, dark locks have lost all luster, absent of the healthy appearance which only sunlight can provide. I’ve probably gained ten pounds staying in bed the last week, despite barely eating. I seem to gain weight just thinking of food, so I try not to acknowledge my stomach when it bothers growling.
Out of habit, I grab my cell phone to see if I missed any calls. I forgot that my phone has been off the last several days, dead from lack of charging. I was sick of my work calling me, tired of the angry rings from my friends. My family seems to have forgotten me altogether, as if I was never born in the middle of a frozen, December night two and a half decades ago. They haven’t called in quite some time.
Then again, I suppose I’m not the best person to call. I can’t seem to get excited about anything anyone says. On some level, I should be happy for all the great things in their lives. Yet, while they are off winning the life lottery – getting a raise, falling in love, and moving on up – I’m standing still, with a cyclone of life whirling around me. They don’t notice I’m living in the eye of the good luck storm.
Somehow, they blame me for not feeling alive anymore, as if it’s something I can control. No one understands this void inside my soul, this vampiric black hole sucking all joy out of my veins. I don’t want to feel like this anymore, but the darkness has swallowed me up, and I can no longer see past the bubbling, acrid bile leisurely digesting my life.
How quickly the “friends” disappeared! The moment my world cracked, just before it shattered, one by one my “friends” – the ones I carried in their times of despair – stopped calling, stopped responding when I needed them. They acted like I was invisible. They pushed my head down under the quicksand and kept on walking, as if nothing had changed.
Once I discovered so few of my “friends” cared, it became easy to cease caring myself. The world continued spinning for them, but even the sun could not be concerned enough to shine for me. A wretched existence, a disposable person, worthy of nothing, not even a brief smile from a caring face. I am invisible. Maybe I always have been.
I draw a shaky breath and tears follow. For someone who no longer experiences emotions, whose soul is dormant and numb, I cry an awful lot. Ever since my tear duct dam broke, a never-ending river rushes out of my eyes most of the day. The tears stop for a short intermission, replenish their strength, and then burst through, unchecked and uninvited.
I flip my pillow over and wash the other side of the sky blue material with more tears. I tell myself to stop crying. There’s no reason to be sad, if that’s what one calls my disgust with life. Pity has taken over my world, and I am simply surviving in a broken shell, with the last of my essence draining from my eyes. I have no more strength. No more resolve. I cannot continue to expose myself to the hypocrisy that chews up everything I have to offer, only to spit it back out onto my decaying soul.
The bottle of pills on my bedside table calls my name. The sleeping pills have been my faithful companion during the last several weeks. When I no longer want to hurt, they take me into a dreamless emptiness, a place where I can avoid being alive. Lately, though, I’ve considered taking a permanent trip to that beautiful land, that perfect vacation from the pain of life. There is no longer anything here for me to hold onto, nothing that can piece together my tattered soul or remove the bruises from my heart.
At the beginning of my spiral, I thought I had fixes. I tried this or that, followed by some more of this. I thought I was on the right track, until the temporary bandages peeled away from my ills. Once a corner comes undone, the adhesive rubs away, and the bandage will never stick again. I cannot help but to pick at the edges, slowly rolling it away from the wound and eventually pulling it off completely. With the sore exposed, a scab tries forming, but no child can resist picking at the frail scab and making the wound bleed over and over.
Scabs cover my entire body.
The pills call to me again. They are the only ones who still speak to me. I cannot force my eyes away from the bottle. My tongue moistens my lips, and my heart leaps with a bit of excitement, the f
irst I have felt in a long time. Maybe I can make this end. Maybe there is an out. I don’t have to keep suffering. I don’t have to endure another second of pain. I can drift off to sleep and never wake. No more reopening the wounds under my scabs. No more helpless days and restless nights. No more me.
I smile, and leave myself no time to debate my decision. My hand reaches for the bottle. With the last of my strength, I push myself up in bed. There is an almost full bottle of water on my bedside table, and for that, I am grateful. I didn’t want to have to get out of bed and look at myself in the mirror while getting water from the bathroom sink. Seeing my reflection has the possibility of making me change my mind.
I twist the childproof cap on the top of the bottle in the secret way that only adults know about, and it frees itself from the grooves. The contents of the bottle – oblong, white pills – show themselves. I shake one out onto my open palm. There are numbers carved into the body of the pill. I don’t know what these things mean, but for me, they translate into peace.
The pill falls onto my tongue, and I pick up the water bottle. Warm water gushes into my mouth, and the capsule journeys down my throat without resistance. It’s that easy, and I take this as a sign. I set my water bottle back down on the table. One pill down, twenty-some more to go. If I can take one, I can take more. I can take them all.
I shake the pill bottle again, and the rest of the pills spill out in my cupped hand. Some fall off the side, trying to escape their fate in a boiling pit of stomach acid, but I pick them up and add them back to the pile. If I have to take them one by one, it will take forever. There will be ample opportunity for me to think that something better awaits me out there in that dark, evil world beyond my bedroom door. The same world that allowed me to disappear without a blink in my direction. But, there is nothing left for me out there, nothing but more pain.
Two more pills make it past the obstacles in my mouth and rush down the slick slide of my esophagus, falling headfirst into the pool of acid. They splash around, helpless and crying out to be saved before being consumed and destroyed forever. Two pills follow, and two more after that. I get down to the last few tablets in my hand when tiredness hits. My body sways a bit – or is that the room tipping on its side? – and the rest of the pills tumble out of my hand. The water bottle takes the same route, and some of the remaining water dampens my comforter.
My body slips down into the bed. I drunkenly pull the covers up over my torso and melt into the cloud disguised as my mattress. A smile finds my lips again and spreads across my face. I finally feel happiness, and it is the most amazing sensation I have ever experienced. I never want it to end, but it won’t be long now.
Chapter Two
A light sears my eyes through the lids. When I first open them, it’s hard to see, but my adjusting vision focuses on some objects. A blanket over my body, a strange table off to my right, bedrails in a raised position. I don’t remember rails on my bed or that bedside table, but I also don’t remember much of anything right now.
Other unfamiliar sights come into view. A curtain, a window, a door. Ugly, beige-painted walls with chips and scratches. The piercing odor of antiseptic.
A hospital. I’m in a hospital. How did I get here? I hate hospitals and would never come here willingly.
Maybe I was in a car accident. It seems to be the only explanation that makes sense, but I don’t have aches and pains I’d expect after an unfortunate crash, at least not one severe enough to require not only a trip to the hospital, but also admittance.
I raise my arms to see if I have any bruises to substantiate my working theory. Restraints stop my limbs from moving. I tug several times on the binds wrapped around my wrists and restricting me to the bed, but the off-white straps do not release my arms. My curiosity deepens, along with my concern. If a car accident put me in the hospital, I would not have restraints preventing me from leaving.
I search the depths of my foggy mind and memories jump out at me. Lying in my bed, reaching for a bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills, swallowing them down, many more than the label advises.
Anxiousness burns the pit of my stomach. My depression had lasted most of this year. It began with a bad breakup. I thought our relationship would culminate in marriage, but instead, his multiple indiscretions cut it short. It didn’t help that two of them were with alleged friends of mine. I eventually stopped going to work and contacting my remaining unsympathetic friends who thought I would “get over it” like everyone else in the world. After finding no relief with my psychiatrist and his cure via overmedicating, I must have tried to kill myself.
How did I ever let myself get to that point? I didn’t really want to die, didn’t want to end this unpredictable life of mine. I let things get out of control. I stopped taking the medication my psychiatrist prescribed me and spiraled down until suicide was the only answer.
I close my eyes and pull in a deep breath. The air fills my lungs and I let it escape through my parted lips. My heart beats in my ears, and a smile overcomes my mouth. Life feels good. Damn good. I’m glad I did not succeed in killing myself.
My eyelids lift at the sound of my hospital room door creaking open. A nurse comes through, a large smile showing off the whitest, straightest teeth I’ve ever seen. Long, blonde hair ripples down her back with each step of her perfect figure toward the bed. The super-skinny specimen wears a tight nursing dress, reminiscent of the 1960s with a hint of a sleazy Halloween costume. The vision would normally annoy me and make me count all my flaws, but I’m so happy for life that I show all my imperfect teeth in my return smile.
“You’re awake,” the nurse says, her silky voice just as impeccable as the rest of her. “I wondered when you’d come around.” She rests her arm on top of the bedrail.
“How long have I been here?” I ask.
“Don’t concern yourself with time, dear, not now. There are so many more important things to worry about.”
“Am I in the psych ward?”
Her hand touches my arm in a loving gesture. “We call it the Special Care Unit. ‘Psych ward’ has too many negative connotations for someone who is healing.”
My smile widens. With the nicest nurse in the world at my bedside, my stay here will be much easier. “You’re right. Special Care Unit sounds much better. It doesn’t make me feel quite as crazy.”
“Believe me, dear, you’re not crazy. Let me see if I can flag down your doctor and tell him the good news. I just saw him with our guest in room 731.”
Room 731. The information helps me gather my wits. I must be on the seventh floor. I wrack my brain for which area hospital has seven floors: Saint Joseph, Saint Mark’s, the big one over on Main Street – there are so many hospitals in the metro area.
The nurse interrupts my train of thought. “Maybe when the doctor comes by, he will let me unfasten you from the bed.” She whirls around and swishes her hips toward the door.
“Our guest,” I repeat in a whisper. Between the term used for patients and the avoidance of calling the unit a psych ward, my nurse’s pleasantries erase any lingering fears about being in a hospital.
As a young girl, my dad received a sudden diagnosis of prostate cancer, a brutal and fatal form of the disease. I spent many days in the hospital at his side, watching chemo drip into his port, poisoning his body with hopes of killing the disease that riddled him. Many long nights of vomiting and illness followed each round, and his boisterous personality soon dissolved into a sickly creature I barely recognized. Then, with my sister and mother by my side, I watched him wither away into nothing in a generic hospital room, dismissively treated by nurses and doctors who waited for his bed to open up so they could replace him with another paying customer.
After that experience, the idea of being a patient in a hospital frightened me so much that my body would shake whenever I passed by one. I long ago decided if my father passed his diseased genes on to me, and the cancer diagnosis came calling, I would not suffer through chemo, radiation
, or any other life-extending measures. I would die with grace, dignity, and a full head of hair. I may fade into nothing, like my father did in the end, but at least I would do it at home and not in front of an audience.
My phobia of hospitals and doctors extended far beyond seeing my father die. My own experiences with psychiatrists over the years have been less than favorable. After spending countless hours across from psychiatrists in uninviting, starchy offices, with each one analyzing every word, every movement, and every breath, I think the care I will receive here will far outweigh all rest I’ve had in the past. I have already made the decision to live. Now, I just need to reinforce that belief so I don’t fall back into the same depression as before.
A question pops into my head, one I thought of right before my welcoming nurse interrupted my train of thought. How did I get here? I remember taking the pills and drifting off toward sleep. Did I wake up and change my mind, race out of bed and dial 9-1-1? Or, did someone find me? But, who?
Teresa. Of course, it had to be my closest friend, Teresa. We had a standing lunch date, the third Tuesday of every month. We meet at the Cocina Bar and Grill for Taco Tuesday. Nothing beats a dollar per taco and two dollars for a bottle of ice cold Corona with a lime. We have sat in the same booth for the past few years. She must have come to my house when I didn’t show for lunch. She has an extra key to my place; she has since I bought the house several years ago. My depression had me tangled up in its web of lies so deep that I didn’t think Teresa would find me and save my life. I didn’t even remember it was the third Tuesday of the month.
But, where is she?
The door opens to my hospital room again. This time, the blonde nurse follows on the heels of a handsome young doctor. A long, white coat covers his cotton black shirt and jeans. He smiles at me, with the same perfect teeth belonging to my nurse. The pearly whites offset his recently trimmed black hair and his soulful blue eyes. I am in no frame of mind to find a man attractive, but my body doesn’t care that my brain tried to off itself not long ago. It wants to kick Nursey out so I can be alone with this beautiful specimen who also happens to be a doctor.