Chapter 1:5 Why Not, Xoxo Nyxnce

With the black clad stranger between me and my stalker, I can imagine when I break away that it looks like he’s sucking my neck. At least from Jonathan’s point of view.

I’ve already come this far, why not?

“Renfield tricked me,” I pant, pointing my shaking finger at the obnoxious blonde man, literally crying, this is all so hysterical to him.

Every intake of breath brushing my sensitized body against the iron arms of a man I haven’t even looked at in all my hysterics…. Well, let’s just say it’s not all fake when I practically swoon like the well-to-do British lady I’m impersonating.

Liking the first living object rubbing between my legs in months waaayy too much for the rest of my skit not to come out breathless.

“Dracula’s spell is too powerful. I can’t fight it, go! Go find Van Helsing!” This development does not deter the businessman I spat at for his indecency.

No, my labeling the lithe blonde man a bug eating weasel only worsens his laughing fit.

If I weren’t red enough already, the attempt at not half cumming when I’m slid down on every hard inch of my play actor has me the shade of cinnamon gum I stole from his lips.

And wouldn’t you know it. When I blink up to the face attached to my savior, I find a long smooth shaven jaw. Wider shaped lips, angled cheeks, a perfect long nose, and eyes as dark and deep as obsidian.

The man’s previously pushed back raven hair falls perfectly over his thick brows. Bringing out the flawless cream of his skin, and adding attention to the fact that every part of his ensemble is different textiles of black.

Not one single colored accent.

Making the handsome stranger look a little too much like a vampire from a steamy romance. The feeling that his arms are like an inescapable cage that snatches victims and heroines alike doubles down on my ideations.

When I wiggle to get out of the hold, ‘Dracula’s’ devilishly delicious features harden a bit. He does not move, simply licks his pillowed lips as if he’s going to go back in.

Reclaim the stolen gum that’s mirroring the tingles of my body with the cinnamon crystals bursting over my tongue.

There is no give, no flicker of amusement in our continued stare. I have no doubt this man could give any supernatural drama actor a run for their money with how darkly gorgeous he is.

The weight of the embarrassment. The consequences or due process of sexually assaulting a noble by the looks of him, clamps my throat. I can’t help the wince, I make under the new pressure of my inexcusable actions.

With that, Dracula does move aside and lets me out of the corner he’d pinned me to. Just not in enough time to get out of the situation before the doors ding closed and the elevator continues its ascent.

With my every nerve ending buzzing, I do not look before I leap when the AI lady says, eighty-second floor. All I see is the opening, unable to question when the number was selected or how we got there from forty so fast.

As soon as I visualize the needed escape, I all but bunny hop the narrow slit between the box of doom and the hall of terror. Attempting to avoid further mortification of my heel getting stuck in it.

Side stepping, or side hopping one disaster I can plan for, I quite literally knock into the next.

Another one who has a run for fun feel in the fattless, chizzled brick wall kind of physique. It’s not until two clamps that feel like ice hooks sink into my hips that I’m able to pull my focus from the stranger who kissed me to the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen.

And here I thought the Vampire was ungiving. This auburn hair model, straight out of a supernatural Armani ad, is even less pliable than the cage I just broke out of.

My sweat seems to clam, almost freeze over my skin under the red-headed wall’s stare. I can’t process the absolute silence. That Renfield’s laughing fit is at a complete end until a new lashing whip cracks through the terror in a hiss.

“Garret,” I don’t know which of the two behind me bites the word in an inhuman snarl. Even so, the grip that makes my hips feel like they are bleeding and has frozen my bones over in a wave of dread, is released.

I’m utterly still when the threat in Armani passes. Feeling goose flesh break out over every hair follicle from the severe hot and cold.

All I manage is a long blink, stumbling further into the hallway, searching for reprieve.

As if it’s a sign from above or a neon lit marker in the dark of night, the ladies room plaque catches my eye. I race to the sanctuary no matter how my trembling legs protest.

Managing to get the door closed and locked behind me before I give into the wave of dizziness. Time and sense are lost as I slide down, barring the light oak entrance to the posh bathroom.

I become aware of my lips, my jaw, my everything chattering when my bum hits the cool tile floor.

It’s one of those moments I can’t really explain.

One of those ghostly triggers that sends me into a state of full panic. The crackling bursts of Dracula’s gum are suddenly flavorless.

Even without the tremors, I’d know I was mid panic attack for the numb tongue feeling alone. Sucking in the air I forget to manage in the upset is more than I’ve accomplished in other episodes.

Though the burn of my oxygen starved lungs hardly seems like a reward for that step up from this attack to my last.

I’m not spared phantom voices and sensations that flash like horror reels through my body and subconscious though.

If I didn’t have enough going against me in my quest for a new life, the latest addition of PTSD from horrors I can’t remember is definitely the worst of it.

Everything else..... Well, I can put it together; research and understand.

Even if I don’t know why, I was put together backwards and wired just as oppositionally…. I can still understand.

Read and navigate the process. The science. The needs. Even ways to overcome being a level one autistic whose parents threw her away.

I just can’t stop these damned panic attacks, having no true memory of what triggers them.

With autism, I get the things that make me hit a wall. How and why I revert to a child-like state when I’m too stressed or don’t understand.

With this.....

The tingles in my head, the shaking of my body due to some ghost snatching the ankles of my conscious mind into a black hole of my past, I’m helpless.

I have no reason.

No answer.

No system to find the source and stop it.

Just sit for anywhere from five to forty-five minutes in a fit of sheer panic. Locked in a fetal position, hyperventilating, with no ability to move or speak.

Tumbling through the hurricane of paranoid thoughts and feeling that I’m dying.

Moments like this, I wonder how I never knew my heart was on the wrong side of my chest. I hold the rampant thing like it will stop the sensation that one of those alien thingies is about to burst out of my ribs.

Like I said, most things I can laugh at. Most things I do my damnedest to roll with the punches on, but in these moments...... It hurts.

Hurts so much with the phantom pains ringing in my skeleton, the things no person should ever see or imagine behind my eyes......

It’s the one thing that stops me from accomplishing whatever I set out to do like the Witch. The rock bottom helplessness I feel, when I can’t operate or function like a normal human being.

When I finally pull myself out of the trance and look at my phone, I see that a full hour has passed.

A whole sixty minutes trapped inside the worst parts of my head. I’m utterly exhausted, and so raw that I’m numb and can’t feel anything.

Taking out the liquid shot of nastiness that is supposed to help my short-circuiting system reset, I know that as many times as I say I will, I’ll probably never be able to divorce Alex.

I also don’t know why Nicky insists on my career being in medicine.

It is stable and something I’m decent at, but it more than anything triggers those flashbacks.

Takes me back to a time I can actually remember, and never want to experience again. That’s on top of the of time I can’t. Those obscure memories like the redacted lines of my file.

Just like vipers slithering in their pits. Ready to strike and suck you into their dens, the first chance they get.

Any time I even think about a medical facility, my whole body clams, freezes.

Sinking back down, I know that I’m going to miss my start time with Courtney. Yet another position that will actually cover my rent is off the table for me.

In full defeat, I kick out of my hooker heels, and just sit.

Sit until some spark of who I want to be leaps back into my chest, and gets me out of this bathroom.