I slide down and do something I have done since I was old enough to bathe myself. I keep going until I
fully submerge under the water, hold my breath, close my eyes and blot everything of the world away to
hear only the high-pressure thrum of being underwater.
I can ignore my knees getting cold as they stick out to accommodate my laid down position as the
respite from the world is always worth it. Even in an uncomfortable half sized tub that scrapes my bum
with its cracked enamel.
I taught myself to hold my breath for up to two minutes as a child, even though I have never learned to
swim. I used to count the seconds out and make myself do it for longer and longer. It was my escape,
my secret underworld which cleansed my soul of all the sins put upon me while hiding me from the
reality of my life. I used to wonder if it would be as peaceful to drown and finally be free of all that
tormented me.
I can manage half that time now, seeing as I no longer do it ritually or often enough anymore. Only
when I feel highly stressed and need escapism.
I relent after a minute and push myself up, wiping the water away as I inhale the cold musty air, and
come back to focus on what is real. The disgusting grimy surroundings. I have to just accept this is my
life now.
Tomorrow is another gruelling long shift, another monotonous Thursday when we stay open late.
Fridays are no better as I work six days a week and have no respite until Monday, my one day off. I
work weekends, not that I have a life to have other plans that require the odd break to use in my own
time. I am carrying on that age-old tradition of no friends, no one getting close and therefore … no need
for weekends.
I also feel wretched. This damn cold has been building for a few days and it’s wiping me out. My eyes
are puffy; I’m constantly sniffing, feeling thirsty and have an itchy sore throat. These past months I just
keep catching one thing after another as though I never fully recover before I am floored again. I seem
to be sick all the time.
I know it’s because my immune system is shot, and I am hardly living in healthy surroundings; it all
adds up to just being constantly under the weather. Just another layer to drag me down and make me
feel like maybe it’s time I upped and left and found somewhere better to step up to.
This place is a prison that I have chosen to dwell inside of and I no longer know why anymore. Why I
am doing this to myself when I have a few grand under the floor to just start someplace else.
I sit up in panic as a coughing fit hits me suddenly and almost drown myself in the process as I slide
about helplessly, grabbing for a towel and wiping my face free of water. It wracks through me, burning
my lungs painfully, and I end up with a runny nose and watery eyes cursing myself that I don’t even get
to enjoy a soak in the tub anymore. Not that this tub is worthy. It’s well matched to my shithole
surroundings. Tiny, chipped and flaky and has temperamental water flow when I manage to get it to
work at all. Water that even on a good day, is always a weird shade of yellow or brown.
I get out quickly and clumsily, feeling frustrated and just not in the frame of mind to wrestle with my own
patience and stay in the bath. Not even spending time washing myself or my hair, but the mood is gone
and I dry myself fast.
This place is too cold and dusty to walk around naked, so I throw on the pyjamas I keep hanging in
here, only place to use as a wardrobe seeing as the one in my room has rat shit and roaches inside it,
crawling about and making my skin crawl. My clothes are kept in bags on the couch for more than just
my need to leave, it’s also for fear that I may get critters in them and I’ve been bitten by many strange
bugs here already.
I really need to up my living conditions.
I really need to sort my shit out.
I grab a handful of toilet paper as I walk to bed, knowing I’m going to need it if my nose keeps running,
and climb into it. Not that it’s much of a welcoming place with a hard mattress and rough bedding that I
got on sale in a hurry when I moved here.
I am ready to just blank out the world and read a book. It’s not like I use my couch nor have anything to
do when I get home from work. I spend my time here on this bed just sleeping my life away, or reading.
I don’t even own a TV or anything which makes a noise and might attract people to investigate the new
tenant’s belongings. Nothing of comfort that would just waste my money either and I only have books
because people leave them in the diner constantly. Joe throws them out if I don’t take them home.
This one’s a western with a pretty sexy man on the cover, not my cup of tea, but better than staring
outside my dirty windows until sunset and wishing myself to sleep.
It’s my only source of escape – reading a book.
I’m not hungry either. I eat at work before I leave and that does me till breakfast most days, so that
means hitting a gym or doing any sort of workouts isn’t needed as I am not eating enough to really gain
weight. I know I am not taking care of myself in the way I should. I know maybe I am depressed in
some way because of the turnout of events and I should kick my own arse. I just cannot muster that fire
for anything.
I down the bottle of cough medicine I picked up before heading home in a bid to shift this bug, knowing
it’s dumb but I want it to knock me out for the night. It should work like a sedative, and maybe I won’t
wake tonight with nightmares and terrors if my body is drugged into nothingness.
They have come back with a vengeance since leaving Club Carrero, and now there are more sinister
men scaring me shitless in my dreams than ever before.
I wake up with my book over my face haphazardly, where it’s obviously fallen when I drifted off, jumping
in alarm at god knows what and blinking in the darkness of my room as I open my eyes to pitch black.
My heart’s pounding crazily and the sweats hit me fast as I come to, in disorientation. Groggy from the
effects of the meds I took hours ago as I slide it off and try to get my bearings.
I am unsure why I woke, as I was not even dreaming, and I feel completely odd in a sort of
disconnected almost drunk way; which I presume is cough med related rather than sickness. Pushing it
on to my bedside table as I feel around with shaking hands. I roll to my side to try and drift back off, but
a little noise in the next room pricks up my attention. Like a tiny warning bell sending me into immediate
high alert, it brings me to my senses in a breath pausing way.
I pause, holding painfully still and listen, not moving. Heartbeat rising as I try to focus on what I thought
I just heard and strain so very hard to listen over the sound of my shallow breathing and erratic
pounding rhythm as fear takes a low grip of my insides.
I hear something. Closing my eyes to cut off my attempts to focus on sights I cannot see and just listen
very hard. So much so I can hear the blood rushing inside my head as adrenaline courses through my
body. I know I am not imagining things; I am sensitive to things like this, ever since I came out to live
alone again. I catch it again, so very faint, almost surreal but definitely in my apartment.
A scrape, as though something is being shifted or moved around on my threadbare floor through the
door, and I sit up to strain towards it as stealthily as I can muster. My bedroom door is closed, which it
makes it hard to hear anything at all but it’s unmistakable as it comes a little clearer and closer. I push
my bedclothes back and sit very still, poised in a sitting position; completely petrified with a million
things racing through my mind that I try to silence and just pull myself together.
Footsteps!
They sound as though they are trying to be light on their feet, but every time they venture nearer my
room, the floorboards make a dull aching thud underfoot, where they are loose and I know for sure;
There are people inside my space!
No one knows who I am here!
I slide out of bed as quickly and silently as I can as trembles take hold in the cold air. Holding my
breath, nerves on an all-time high as I vibrate inside, I try to hold my shit in while simultaneously
waking myself fully.
Someone is in my apartment and I have no clue if this is a random robbery or something worse
completely. The woman on the third floor was raped by an intruder last month, he took nothing of value
and the attack seemed to be purely sexual. I am not about to go down without a fight if that is what this
is. I am not some mere girl who will take being raped again so easily.
I may not be a stranger to it, but it’s still something I never want to experience again.
I keep a baseball bat under my bed and I reach for it quietly, crouching down as low as I can to slide it
out slowly without making a single sound. My entire body is internally shaking yet my hands seem still
as I grasp it tightly; knowing full well that I am my only saviour in this.
There’s a creak outside my door and I pause, heart hammering through my chest, body turning cold
with tingles and clammy with fear. I have been in situations like this before and I know I need to keep
my wits about me until I get out the other side. Women are murdered every day in this city, and I am no
one special that will ever be missed.
I have no hero to intervene this time and for the first time, I wish Alexi was here, a pining so strong it
almost rips my chest in two. I push him out of my head, hating that in moments of weakness I still need
him, and grit my teeth in an effort to focus.
I move towards it and flatten my back against the wall beside the scraped wooden surface, as much as
I can without disturbance or noise, ready to fight should they come in here, and praying they don’t. I’m
ready to take someone’s head off, to get through this.
I close my eyes tight and open them fast to make them adjust to the dark faster, twice more until I can
see shapes of furniture and outlines and can navigate a little more effectively. A trick I discovered as a
child when I was trying to make the shadows turn into what they really were and not the monsters I
imagined. Things begin to take shape as my night vision kicks in excruciatingly slowly and I can make
out my room.
I start visibly shaking with the passing time, even though it’s only been seconds, terrified but poised,
and waiting for the worst.
There’s a thud and a scrape, and I can hear mumbling as though there’s more than one voice just on
the other side of our separator, and I know it’s only a matter of time. They will come in here if they are
looking for things to steal, as there is not much out there to take. What they will find is me, and I don’t
know what that outcome will entail.
I strain to listen again but jump when my door is clicked open slowly. Whoever turns the handle does so
with such slight and careful movement it tells me they know someone is in here and it’s no deterrent.
Shit, shit, shit!
A huge figure in dark, looming taller and wider than me, slides inside the room quickly, looking towards
my bed apprehensively and softly edges in with the grace of a cat. It’s clear they are unable to see if
someone is in the bed in the darkness in here.
I see my chance.
It’s male for sure and the all black outfit, rubber gloves and Halloween mask tell me that this is no warm
and friendly night-time visit. This is a planned break-in.
Aiming hard and high, putting all I have in me behind my very practised swing, I smack that fucker right
in the face with a bone breaking crunch and knock him out cold to the world with a lucky whack. The
reverberation as my bat collides and vibrates through the wood and then me, is followed by a satisfied
crumpling and thudding of a human body collapsing on impact. I probably broke his face severely and
his lack of reaction is a sure sign I did a great job of disabling him and I literally exhale in relief.
Internally my heart is pounding with a mix of fear and adrenaline, rushing of blood as I take a huge
deep breath and gather my wits and what I need to do. There may be a second one out there who
surely had to have heard this. I need to get to him first or by him before he sees me.
Jumping over my silent victim on the floor in a flash, panic-stricken in my pyjamas still, I high tail it
towards the front door, which is sitting wide open, eyes on my escape.
I don’t see it coming at all, stupidly focused on safety and not my dark surroundings. The elbow to the
face that gets me square in the middle of my nose, until my head bangs the floor viciously and it’s the
last thing I remember.
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