Anxiety spreads like a stain in the dark. My skin pinpricked with the
cold caress of fear. All bravery gone.
It was him. The phone
ringing in the small hours. I wake half in a dream, drowning in light, to
find myself trapped in the claws of night.
“Yes? Hello?”
Nothing at first, my own breathing,
an unnatural stillness, like a presence in the room. I was aware of grit under
my fingernails.
“Hello? Who is this?”
The air around me seemed thick,
littered with threat. It is my own fault. I had tried to beat him at his own
game. I should have known better.
“I know it’s you. What do you want?”
As soon as I utter the words I know it’s a mistake. Don’t
ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer. Put the phone down. Now. Intuition instructs and yet somehow I don’t
act. I have turned to stone.
When it comes, the answer is calculated, cold with menace, and my throat
constricts.
“Revenge always leaves a stain.”
The line goes dead. I am left in
the dark with my own ragged breath and a cold sweat in the small of my back. Thunder
peels through the sky and I shudder. I try to replace the handset on the cradle
and it clatters to the floor. I cannot be here where he has been. I feel unsafe
between the sheets.
I scramble to the door, across the landing and flick the bathroom
switch, blinking in the sudden glare. My fingers grasp the basin needing
something solid to hold, something grounded, more real than the threat of him.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror, facing reality. What I thought to be a
path of love has turned to poison. I am a victim of my own actions. Who could
have told me that one dinner could have led to this denouement.
