Click

A stranger sat at her table, claiming to be her soulmate. He whispered, “I love you”, the phrase, one that little girls imagine hearing their entire lives, and dream about in the wee hours of the morning…the knight in shining armor coming to rescue the distressed princess.

But the words were not what she expected, not in her wildest dreams. Her?! How? Why? What was happening?!

Her pulse quickened. Her throat went dry. A trembling shot through her entire body as she stared without blinking at her hands, ever so careful not to show them quivering as she held onto the glass filled with water that could not quench her thirst.

The man stared at her, eyes penetrating her to the core. He seemed to peer into her very being. And she knew from this moment on that nothing in her life would ever be the same. That thought created a terror in her she had never known could be possible. She stayed steady.

He waited for her response. Looking. Gazing. Watching.

She drew a breath. Long and purposeful. She was careful not to reveal her innermost thoughts to the stranger as he continued to stare.

With calculated intent she raised her gaze to him. His eyes were dark brown, pleading. He was desperately searching her face to see a glimpse of the love he professed in reciprocity of what he shared.

She carefully studied his face. In any other circumstance she might have found him attractive. Chiseled features, muscular body, eyes of pure love. Any woman’s dream. But in this instance, attraction was the farthest thing from her mind. As her thoughts raced, she knew it was now or never.

Ideas of escape filled her head. How to get out. How to distract. How to survive. But nothing came in the way of a plausible scenario. She was trapped.

He had appeared earlier in an unassuming manner. A stranger at her door. He could have been a delivery man, a door to door sales type, a new neighbor. But he was not. He was…him.

For months she had suspected. For weeks she had known. She was being followed, watched. Stalked. It had begun with a sense that she was not alone. Not when out, not at home. A sense of being watched and studied plagued her every moment of her days.

Once recently she had seen him despite his stealth. When you feel you are being followed, you become hyper-sensitive to your surroundings. Shadows become people. Shapes become terror. People become demons. And out of the far corner of her eyes, deep in the fading light of sunset, the shadow she witnessed moved with the intent of deliberate evasion. An obscurity in the setting of night.

And then tonight, he appeared…out of the shadows, and into the light. Wearing a gray three piece suit, clean, crisp, shaven. Expecting the woman of his dreams to finally become his. Tonight. As soon as he expressed his love. But she knew deep down he had some semblance of reality despite his living this delusion. For if he believed without a doubt they were in fact soulmates, there would be no need for the glint of the sizable silver knife he grasped in his right hand, pointing at her from the second she opened the door.

Her thoughts were snapped back to the moment at hand. He had cleared his throat, anxious for her to avow she loved him too. To say that indeed they were soulmates and would begin their lives together as one. From this day forwarded. Forever.

She knew this affirmation might buy her time. She could lure him into a false sense of security while plotting her liberation from the captivity she now felt within her home own. But the words she knew could save her stuck at the back of her throat. If nothing else, she had her pride. She could not reduce herself to verbalize the pitiful utterance he longed for her to say.

She could not, and would not, bow to that level of groveling.

She raised her head. Looked back into his soulless eyes. The time had come for her to decide. She could fawn all over him and buy herself time, or she could put her egress into action.

Rage overcame her body. This was her house. Her home. Her safe place. She couldn’t let him continue to violate it in this way.

She stretched her hands out onto the table at which they sat. She pushed up, erecting herself into a standing position, her eyes never leaving his.

He did not expect this and carefully studied her with curiosity. Hoping she would come to him for an embrace, a loving kiss.

Instead, she said nothing. She moved not an inch. She stood with every ounce of her five foot six inch stature, and continued to look him square in the face.

She could offer an explanation. She could try to appease him. She could empathize and try to reason. Instead she found herself uttering one word and one word only in sheer absolute defiance.

“No.”

She didn’t’ yell or shriek. She didn’t cry or cower. She held firm and precise. And said it again.

“No”.

And as suddenly and directly as she expressed her disdain, she acted.

She found an inner strength she didn’t know she had. And as if things were happening outside of her control, the table flipped with the push of her hands and onto him. She turned and began to run, throwing the chair in which she had sat as an obstacle to deter him from following.

It was a very temporary solution, but startled him in the only way she could use to her advantage.

And she ran. She ran for her life. She ran without thinking of what might happen if she failed.

It felt like her legs were weighted down, her movements slowed as if by deep water. But she pressed onward. Past the kitchen, through the living room, and to the front door she never used that offered her the only hope of surviving.

She grasped the lock and twisted. It clicked. Her hands fumbled on the doorknob. The shaking she had put off earlier now taking hold.

She twisted and pulled. Nothing happened. She pulled again. Nothing.

The door she never used was stuck. Swollen shut by the Georgia summer heat and wedged into place, unyielding.

She pulled and twisted repeatedly and threw her body into leveraging the engorged wood.

Then she felt it. It was giving.

As the door finally swung open, the hot sticky air of the August day blowing onto her face, there it was.

A hand. A tug. A blade held gingerly to her throat.

He had come. He had caught her.

As he directed her backwards from the door, slowly, cautiously, deliberately, in cold blooded calculation, he shut the door behind them, careful to push it back into its place.

And as he looked at her he turned the lock.

Click.