Galatea

Chapter 5

The bathroom was the closest place I could hide. I sat down on the cold floor, pulling my knees to my chest and hugging them. Fear overcame me completely, I could feel the tension with every millimetre of my skin. My heart was beating wildly, pounding against my chest, making my breath hitch. The light bulb on the ceiling shone brightly, which made my eyes water. It was impossible to force myself to calm down. There was a man in my house, I had no idea who it could be, Derek was now on his way home while calling the police at the address of our house. I couldn't stop the tremor in my hands, my hands and feet were cold. I was alone in a house where I didn't feel safe.

I didn't hear any noise after I locked myself in the bathroom, the door handle didn't twitch, and there were no footsteps. The feeling of time completely disappeared into the air, I could not even roughly calculate how many minutes I sat on the cold floor. I've heard stories in the past about homeless or sick people taking up residence in attics, going downstairs at night to eat and then returning to their hiding place again. Sometimes they even killed the owners of these houses. But it was impossible to believe. This house was never left unattended: there were builders, workers, and even me, who spent days on end reading and drawing, without thinking about finding a job.

The door handle suddenly twitched, causing me to flinch. Then again and again, until a male voice said:

"Felicity, it's me, Derek."

Rising quickly from the floor, so that some muscles ached, I opened the door, immediately falling into my husband's arms. From his warm touch, tears flowed down my cheeks in hot streams, and my heart began to beat against his chest. I felt his strong arms wrapped around my waist and pressing against the male body. My mind was clouded, I did not immediately understand how I ended up on the street. A cold wind began to blow over my body, which was already cold with fear and tiles on the bathroom floor; the nightgown began to fly up until a heavy plaid fell on my shoulders.

Red and blue lights flickered all around, people in police uniforms ran and shouted, and men approached me a couple of times and tried to ask questions that I did not hear because of the squeak in my ears. All the time I felt Derek's warmth, he was there, did not leave, even when the officers persistently tried to find out what happened.

I felt like I was disconnected from this world. Looking at one point somewhere on the ground, I felt a detachment from what was happening around me, as if it were a theatrical performance, surrounded by a fog of intoxicating gas. It just wasn't fun or interesting for me. I was so scared that I stopped feeling anything. Through the squeaking in my ears, I was able to extract some words from the dialogue between the two policemen:

"The house...is empty," came the sound. I wanted to close my eyes and fall to the ground, but I was also afraid that when I saw darkness, I would again find myself in an empty bedroom, where only the creaking of wood could be heard.

There was no one in the house. I didn't believe it. The strange events taking place around me over the past few days make me convinced that there is always a stranger nearby.

"Felicity," Derek said quietly, as if afraid of my reaction. His fingers slowly wrapped around my forearm, squeezing lightly, "there's no one in the house."

I already figured it out. It seemed to me that the conversations of the people around, the whisperings of the neighbours who went out into the street in the middle of the night in the hope of finding out the reason for the appearance of the police, were getting louder and louder, that the headlights of the cars were shining directly into my eyes. Terrifying figures of ghosts and vampires, garlands around houses and pumpkins with bright lights seemed to laugh at me. Everyone around me thinks I'm crazy. I led the police to an empty house.