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12“Holy shit,” Wes exclaimed as they pushed out of the crowded theater and into the crisp mountain night. “Did you see that decapitation?”“Of course I saw that decapitation,” Sidney said, taking long strides to match his excited pace.“It was so slow,” Wes continued. “So visceral. That’s why horror still needs practical effects. CGI couldn’t capture all the textures of flesh and bone and veins that way.”“I agree completely.”“And the way the eyes just sort of twitched and went dead. Amazing. Just amazing!”“So, you liked that one then?” Sidney joked.“Strong start. It was a very strong start.” Wes finally caught up to himself and slowed his steps. “So, now what?”“Oh shit!” Sidney threw her hands up.“What?”“Adam,” she exclaimed. “I haven’t checked my phone.”“You haven’t what? Are you sure you’re OK, Sid?”Sidney playfully shoved at Wes’s shoulder as she extracted her phone from her back pocket. It had snuggled against her so long it left a dent in her flesh. Her anxio
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Followers 13
13Sidney peeled herdehydrated eyes open as the early morning sun pierced into her room. As her consciousness surfaced, she felt the thin, uncomfortable wake of all her drinks from the previous night. The high-altitude air she heaved during her run through the dark exacerbated the hangover spreading through her. Her head ached along the back of her forehead, the painful pressure begging her to close her eyes again. When she allowed her eyes to drape shut again, her subconscious swelled over her like a dark flood. Adam emerged first. The feeling of his arms around her through her hoodie, the sweet abrasion of his rough cheek. She dissolved back into that moment as sleep rolled on top of her. The night replayed through her mind until she was back alone on the trail, hearing something large step through the water. She snapped back awake when that something shoved through the branches to get to her.Sidney groaned and dug her fists into her eyes, her heart pulsing through her ear
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Followers 14
14Sidney’s hands trembledas she cupped the steaming coffee mug on the breakfast bar in her condo. She gently touched her palms to the mug then retracted as the heat singed the scabs that had hardened there. Exhaustion lay heavily on her muscles, the painful drain of all her flight response adrenaline, yet her mind sprinted in several concurrent and colliding circles. Her thoughts whirled as she stared blankly into the dark liquid in front of her.Her eyes drifted out of focus, her memory assaulting her in staccato bursts. The weight of her attacker climbing up her. Her heartbeat banging so desperately in her ears. The gravel grating against her and digging into her palms as she clawed. The lights of the condo parking lot so far away. She was back in that moment when Wes opened the door, and her arms flinched so hard she nearly spilled the coffee on herself.“Just me,” Wes said, gently.“Was there anything out there?” Sidney said in a shaky voice.Wes answered by holding up
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Followers 15
15“Mommy!” Cameron squealed, bounding down the hallway as Aiden opened his front door. Cameron’s smile stretched so wide and so bright that Sidney did not even acknowledge Aiden. He was a doorstop, nothing more.“Mom, you’re back,” Cameron said as he reached her. Sidney let Cameron plow into her midsection and truly felt the tightness in his hug. She didn’t even care to see if Aiden watched. “I missed you,” Cameron said.Sidney could see that he really had. Maybe he had talked to Aiden about how he missed his mom. Maybe he had made Aiden listen to how great she was, for once. Sidney smiled openly in front of her ex-husband for the first time since their marriage had ended. Aiden was mumbling something as Sidney turned, her arm still around Cameron’s shoulders, and walked down the driveway. But she didn’t hear it. She happily shut Cameron’s door behind him and dropped into the driver seat.“How was your trip, Mom?” Cameron said from the backseat. His voice surprised her. The infl
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Followers 16
16Adam: Good morning, beautiful.I miss you.Sidney smiled to herself, reading the messages through bleary eyes. She felt relieved to hear from him, to read the affirming words, like an addict getting a fix.She lay on her back in bed as the dawn painted along her ceiling. No alarm waited on her phone since it was the weekend, but she had been watching the light creep into her window, developing the room out of the darkness. The hours had dragged out above her. She had counted the seconds tick off as her mind refused to plunge into sleep, as her brain flexed hyperaware of every noise and creak inside and outside her room.Sidney let a heavy, frustrated breath dribble out of her lips and lifted the phone to her face to read Adam’s messages again. She typed I miss you toointo the field then tapped the delete button until it disappeared again. The cursor blinked, mocking her.Sidney ran her fingertips along the vacant sheet beside her. She turned her head to look at the empty
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Followers 17
17“Tell me againwhere the other residents are,” the officer spoke in a dreadful monotone, her eyes reflecting the flatness of her tone. “Kendra, my roommate. She and her daughter are with Kendra’s aunt,” Sidney repeated. “My son is with his father.”“And you were coming from work and dropping off your son.” The officer looked at her pad as she spoke.“Right. I opened the door and walked in like usual. When I turned on the light, I realized the window was open and the screen was gone. Then I ran out here and called.”The officer stopped talking and tapped her pen on her pad. She did not make eye contact with Sidney, did not acknowledge her. Her curly hair was wrangled into a bun at the base of her skull. She wore no makeup and no jewelry and towered above Sidney with an intimidatingly calm presence. Her partner, a pale and slight man who appeared to be drowning in his uniform, moved up behind her. She nodded at him then stepped aside so he could face Sidney in parallel.“W
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Followers 18
18The house lookedrestored with the new screen, locked window, and cleaned mess. The house even felt normal with Kendra and the kids back within its walls. Their energy filled the looming vacancy Sidney had felt the night she interrupted the break-in and the morning that followed when Jordan escorted her back to her ransacked room. Yet below Sidney’s casual smile, as she sat on the couch beside Kendra and listened to their children play through the hallway, her heart and mind were at odds. Her brain reasoned that the danger had passed and life was back to normal, yet her heart could not relax in her chest. Her anxiety, warranted or not, nibbled at the edge of her brain in the quiet moments between her and Kendra’s words. Donning fluffy pajama pants, Kendra folded her legs beneath her as she piled her curls on the top of her head. She loosely gathered the tresses before winding a rubber band around them. When she released her hands, the strands fanned out like the pointed leav
Last Updated : 2022-07-20Followers 19
19The days bledinto weeks, gradually eroding Sidney’s anxiety. Each uneventful day that passed lulled that nagging, chewing sensation at the back of her brain. Every time the morning broke and nothing happened, it became easier to inhale against the weight crushing down on her chest. Complacency unraveled over her like a familiar blanket. The sound of her attacker’s steps ripping across the gravel trail faded back into her memory to be replaced by the chorus of promotion videos on the screens at work. The footprint on her couch cushion was replaced by the curve of her constant seat as she jammed away at her laptop. She stopped dreaming of finding tiny, blue baby booties on her pillow and started dosing off as she composed new articles in her mind until the darkness swallowed her into sleep.Adam: Good morning, beautiful.The same message greeted her every morning. She fixated on the idea of meeting up with Adam again.“Divorced Wives Club tonight?” Kendra asked her as she
Last Updated : 2022-07-20
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32Nine Months Later“Hey Mom, you know what I decided?” Cameron said, walking into the kitchen. “What’s that, buddy?” Sidney replied, digging popcorn out of the pantry.“Next time, I want a Black Panther room.”“Didn’t you just get a Spider-Man room? Don’t you still love Spider-Man?” Sidney planted a hand on her hip as she turned to him.“Black Panther is pretty awesome,” Adam said, following Cameron into the kitchen. “But it is hard to choose between him and Spider-Man. If you did an Avengers room, you could augment the Spider-Man you already have with Black Panther. And Captain America. And the Hulk.”“Yeah!” Cameron jumped.“Don’t encourage him,” Sidney laughed. “You’re new here. You don’t get a say.”“He’s here until Sunday,” Cameron countered. “I think he can have a say.”“Only because he’s saying what you want.”“Can we watch a horror movie tonight, Mom?”Sidney hesitated for a moment. Her hand hovering with the folded popcorn bag between her fingertips. Adam looked
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31Two months later, on the other side of the new year, Carla and Amy laughed together from Sidney’s freshly-shampooed couch, perched atop her freshly shampooed carpet. Sidney sat in the chair beside them, clutching her wine glass, trying not to see the ghosts of Oliver and herself beside them. Her brain cells were not nearly as clean as the floor and furniture in front of her. Carla leaned forward, swirling the remaining crimson liquid in the bell of her glass. The red in her glass matched the red on her lips matched the red of her snug and low-cut top. Her giggles lingered in a smile on her lips. She looked to Amy then across to Sidney before raising her glass.“Last drink of the night, ladies,” she said, the wine curling at the end of her words. “And it’s to Kendra.”Tears rushed to Sidney’s eyes at hearing Kendra’s name, at seeing three glasses converge when it should have been four, but she smiled through it as she brought her hand forward.“To Kendra,” Sidney echoed.“And
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30“Holy shit, my girl nearly beat her stalker to death!” Brady exclaimed. He bounced excitedly across the pavement, escorting Sidney down the street from the police station. Sidney chuckled to herself and picked at the clothes that were not hers, a strange folded stack the officer provided when collecting her clothing as evidence. The cloth rubbed against her skin in unfamiliar patterns, draped from her shoulders in foreign angles.“Brady, stop,” Jordan scolded from Sidney’s other side. “This is not something to celebrate.”“Fuck you, it’s not! Some asshole from the internet stalks our girl, attacks our girl, takes her kid, kills Kendra, then comes for our girl. Then our girl almost kills this fucker!” Brady refused to contain his vibrating blend of glee and pride.“Almost,” Sidney echoed, not sure if she was smiling or grimacing.“I can’t believe you managed to stop yourself, Sid,” Brady continued, breathless. “I don’t think I could have after Kendra.”“I didn’t,” Sidney said
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29Sidney took adeep breath as she sank into the couch cushion in her basement. The house around her remained unfamiliar and hollow, yet she felt different in it now. Her mind clung to its reinvention, and she finally inhabited her new space. The nervous flinch threatened at the base of her spine, coiling then relenting enough for her to breathe, for her to simply be. She closed her eyes and took yogic breaths then opened them gently, looking around the room to remind herself how normal it was. The customary popcorn and beer perched on the table between her and the television. Her laptop glowed from the cushion beside her, cursor blinking anticipant of her words. She held the remote as her thumb traced the Play button, watching the sweat trickle down the side of the beer bottle. It all looked the same, but something felt off.“You’re being ridiculous,” she said to herself. “It’s just a movie. Movies didn’t get you into this. It is for the 12 Slays of Christmas; you are watchi
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28“Don’t say it,” Sidney mumbled as she approached Brady. She could already see the sympathetic, assessing look in his eye as he tipped his thin-rimmed sunglasses. He leaned his yoga mat against the glass windows of the studio and snatched her into a hug. She clutched him tightly for a moment then stepped back.“Say what?” he asked, innocently.“That I look like hell.”“Oh honey, you already know.” He smiled playfully. “And it doesn’t matter. It only matters if you’re OK, and I’m glad you came out this morning. Have you left the house since it happened?”Sidney shook her head. “I haven’t been able to. The store is still closed. Cameron is still with Aiden. I’m not really eating. So there hasn’t been a reason to.”“Well, you have a reason today.” Brady stooped to gather his yoga mat onto his hip. “We are going to breathe through all this bullshit and find your center.”“What if there is nothing good at my center?” Sidney said before catching the words on her tongue.Brady tur
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27Sidney staggered downthe concrete steps, clutching the metal railing. The interior of the police station had become too familiar, haunting her dreams after all these successive visits. It felt like she had never left after Kendra’s death, and even as she stumbled out now, part of her lingered back in the drab room where she was questioned. Her face hurt. Her cheeks stretched taut over the swelling. Her eyelids were puffy, cumbersome when she blinked. Her eyeballs themselves felt raw and exhausted, the same as every cell in her body. Her skeleton was heavy to move, like it would be better placed somewhere dark and final.Her mind did not form thoughts. It could not. The echoes of the police inquiries orbited around Seth’s slumped body in the backroom of the store. The lines of questions reached back and arched into concentric circles, running laps around all the terrible things that had happened. All the events at which she had been the center. Why had she been in the middl
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26The trail grewdarker as Sidney ran across the dirt in a panic. She craned her neck to glare at the creek behind her. When she turned back, the night blotted out the light to consume her. The nightmare became only the sound of her crunching footfalls. She sprinted blindly into the black. Then the streetlight appeared. She leaped toward the light, and when her foot landed in the circle of illumination, the ground went liquid beneath her. Her shoe vanished beneath the gravel like quicksand. Before she could stop it, her other foot followed. The ground swallowed her feet, slurping greedily to her waist. She could not move her legs or fight against the pressure crushing her beneath the surface. She screamed and howled into the empty night, clawing desperately at the dirt as it climbed her body. As the edge reached her chest, something crashed down on top of her, pushing her deeper into her struggle.Kendra’s limp and lifeless corpse landed on her head, blocking out the streetli
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25“Mommy!”Cameron hollered as Sidney opened the front door. “Cam, baby.” Sidney dropped to one knee so that she could swallow her son in a hug.With Cameron pressed into her chest, Sidney closed her eyes and took the first real breath she had in days. When she exhaled, her shoulders finally lowered. She melted into him, and when he went to release her, she clung to him an extra second longer. The house around them instantly felt smaller, less cavernous and vacant.“Hey, Sidney,” Aiden said as he stepped in behind Cameron.“Hi, Aiden.” Sidney finally released Cameron, her fingertips still lingering on his shoulders. “Thanks for bringing Cam over.”Aiden awkwardly stuffed his hands in his pockets and moved his eyes around the living room. “It looks good in here,” he said. “You’ve already unpacked a lot.”“I couldn’t really sleep.”Aiden nodded but did not step further into the house.“Cam, buddy, I’m going to put your bag right here,” Aiden leaned the backpack against th
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24The new housewas too quiet, as if the boxes lining the room absorbed the sound and sucked up the air around Sidney. She felt like she could not breathe so alone, in such oppressive silence. Sidney stood uneasy inside the front door, shoes squeaking on the tile under her, fingers fidgeting in her keys. She did not know how to be alone in this new place, herplace. She could not stand how loud it all seemed in silence. Cameron and Savannah not giggling as they ran through the hallways chasing each other.Kendra not in the kitchen pouring a glass of wine and talking about her ex-husband.No one. Nothing. Just unfamiliar rooms filled with Sidney’s possessions hastily crammed into wilted boxes.When Brady and Jordan ran out of enthusiasm for moving furniture and even free pizza could not rekindle them, Sidney had told them she would be fine. When she kissed Adam goodbye in the departure drop-off lane at the airport, she had told him she would be fine. She was not fine. N
