Intensity

I couldn’t remember anything. Nothing what so ever. Well, I do remember a person. A tall person coming outside right when I was about to enter the old house.

Odd… No one was supposed to live there. Or is it here. Where am I?

I sighed as I leaned forward, only to be pushed back down again. Snapping my eyes open, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light. The pressure of the hands still there on my shoulders. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. Only realizing that a sticky substance was across my mouth. Panic started to shoot through me, making my body start to act on its own accord.

My mind was a haze. Drowning in a deep blue substance. I tried opening my mouth to speak again only to scream into the tape.

“Shush,” a velvet voice whispered. I shivered, feeling his hot breath against my ear. “If you keep doing this I'm going to have to knock you out. And I’m not as nice as my father.”

My body stilled, as he spoke. His voice becoming familiar and familiar. I knew who he was. Panic started to flood into my body all over again, and my body started to act on its own again.

“Fuck, stop that,” he growled. I started to move my body like wild as I felt a pressure settle down onto my stomach. Only stopping when I felt a pair of hands intertwine with mine and move them above my head. My breathing suddenly quickened, He was so close.

If only I could see…

“As much as I would like to hear you scream. It would be great if you don’t. So when I take this off your mouth. Please don’t scream. Talking is fine, screaming isn’t. I've heard enough screaming for the night. No screaming would be a nice vacation.”

I nodded my head vigorously, and I felt his hands move away from my hands leaving a cold breeze in his wake. His semi-warm fingers grazed against my cheek as he slowly peeled the tape away from my lips, trying hard to not just rip it away and hurt me.

I inhaled sharply once the tape was off. And opened my eyes once again. The room was still pitch black.

“Do I have a blind fold on too?” I asked.

A few minutes ticked by and no answer…

“Are you there? I think you are… I still feel your body.” My voice held an edge of fear, and I shuddered as I heard it bounce off the walls. Stone walls?

“Yeah I'm here… I just haven’t heard you talk in a long time.”

“Cullen let me go,” I whispered hoarsely, his body heat wasn’t like everyone else’s. It wasn’t entirely human. Let alone not near as hot as it should have been. His was more of an eerie chill that made goose bumps pop up on your skin.

But once I spoke his name, instantly his eerie warmth slipped away. And his soft flesh had disappeared.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I rolled my eyes and sat up moving my hands so that they settled on my face. Feeling around for a blind fold but finding none. It was then when the sudden realization had set in. Cullen. The nasty boy that had spit gum into my hair was in the same room as me. Breathing the very air that I breathed. Instantly, I started to reach my hands out and started to feel around. I could still hear him pacing the room, mumbling the same curse word to himself over and over. I slid my fingers against the bedding until I felt the edge.

When I did, I slid off the bed and slowly walked forward until I found a wall. Listening intently to Cullen still pacing the room. His steady thumps against the wood floor were somehow comforting as I felt the wall for any source of a get away.

“How did you know it was me?” he asked his voice quiet. His steady thumps stopped, and along with that, my breathing stopped too. It was only a matter of time before he realized that I was no longer on the bed. But against a wall across the room.

“Emmbla?” he murmured, as I heard him walk across the room from where he had been. I fumbled with my hands as I patted them against the walls, until I found a light switch. The door was just a distant memory in my head. I needed light to see.

Within seconds, my hand found the light switch and I flicked it on only to see an angry Cullen across the room. And the door a mere foot away from me.

It all seemed to happen so fast. First, he was across the room and then the next he had pinned me against the wall. His hand clasped around my throat. His long fingers wrapped vengefully around my small neck. His eyes glowing red, mine widened as I stared.

“How did you know it was me?” he growled, tightening his grip. I opened my mouth to speak, but I could only gasp for air. Suddenly I dropped to the floor. My hands flew up to my throat as I coughed lying on the floor.

“What the fuck is wrong with you!” I yelled my voice hoarse. He just looked at me, his eyes furrowed in thought. Slowly - watching him - I crawled toward the door, and reached my hand up to grab the brass handle.

Turning it, I slowly stood up, my back against the wall. His eyes now eying me with suspicion.

“Nothing is wrong with me,” he said, taking a step forward, his hand reaching out. My eyes scanned the room, and noticed a wooden box lying on the dresser to my right. Three things happened all at once. Well they happened so quickly, it felt like it happened at once. Within seconds, I reached for the box, and threw it at him. Then swinging open the bedroom door, the hall lights blinding me as I took off down the hallway and turned.

Up ahead, straight in front of me I could make out the stair banister, without stopping to admire the features of what I was guessing to be the grand hall. I took off down the staircase and out the front door.

I didn’t stop until I ran out of breath. Then again, I ran out of breath when I had been dangling a foot up off the ground with Cullen’s hand wrapped surely around my neck. I shook my head as I stumbled forward. Thoughts of the feeling of his skin wrapped like ribbon around my brain. They way his body pressed against mine.

There was no way that I could even dare go to school the next day. No one would believe me. And thoughts of what he was going to do with me with his friends was frightening enough to make me shudder.

I dragged my feet in front of one another until I made it back to the small house that my mom and I lived in. It was small, but still it was my home. The outside was painted a pasty yellow, with the paint chipping around the windows. How they started to do this was always beyond me, but our house had never been in tiptop shape. I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair, picking out all the leaves that had blown into my hair.

“Em? Are you out there?”

I sighed as I made my way up our walk way and to the house.

I didn’t say anything as I neared the porch hugging my jacket closer to my body. I looked up from the ground as I heard hurried footsteps approaching.

“Oh my Jesus, I thought you were never coming back,” my mom wailed as she latched onto my middle. Hugging me until I couldn’t breathe. “Don’t you ever ever do that again to me! I was up all night worrying.”

I shrugged, pried myself out of her grip, and walked up the front stepped and swung open the bent in screen door.

“Young lady!”

I inwardly groaned, as I heard her footsteps following closely behind me.

“Where did you go?”

I shook my head in response and opened my cracking door.

“Young lady I’m talking to you! Don’t you ignore me. You owe me an explanation!”

Swiftly I turned on my heel and looked down at my mother’s small frame of 5’1. My father had been a very tall man, reaching the insane height of 6’4. So naturally, I was in the middle of both my mother and father. Making me tall enough to look down on her.

My mother was a thin older woman in her mid fifties. She had been older than the average mother was when she got pregnant. My father, had been fresh out of his career as a teacher, he had entered early retirement when my mother first conceived me. She never really talked about him. But I knew that if she hadn’t of been so opposed to abortion and adoption, she would of got rid of me somehow. Instead, my father left her, and she was left to fend for herself with a baby girl.

If you would look in a photo album and look at when my mother was my age she would look exactly like me. I could only hope that whenever I was her age I wouldn’t be so broken.

The thought of what happened to my mother and father, always lingered in my head. I always wondered if I would end up like her. Old and with a teenage daughter, with the love of my life gone.

“Emmbla!”

I snapped out of my thoughts as I looked down at her, her wrinkled eyes wide, tears glistening in the depth. I shook my head, shut my door and locked it. I turned around and leaned against the door, my breathing ridged. I slid down the door as I heard her silently cry and walk away.