❂ 1st Place in the Realist Awards 2017
❂ Knight of the Dreamers Awards 2017
!Warning!
Contains:
❂ Violence
❂ Sexual Content
❂ Mild Use of Adult Language
🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤
"Sometimes being crazy isn't such a ba...
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I run to the window and listen, beyond the buzzing coming from the fluorescent bulb, for the sound his car driving off. When I'm sure he's gone, I look around the room for something to escape. I look on the nightstands on either side of our bed. Nothing. I tumble through the drawers of the dresser and find a hairpin. Rushing over to the door, I try my best to pick the lock. After a few moments of changing angles, the lock clicks. I shove the door open and run out into the hallway.
Today, I'll break all of the rules.
"Whooooo!" I shout as I run down the hallway, decorated with purple walls and a cream carpet. Abstract paintings and pictures of James and his family hang on the walls. His mother and father's faces look so familiar, but I just can't remember where I know them from.
I run downstairs and into the dining room, which is a bright yellow room with a brown shag carpet that blankets your feet, and chandeliers that hang so dangerously low you might hit your head bowing to pray. The long dinner table has a golden tablecloth covering it, and ornaments and flowers line it from one end to the other.
The walls in this room also have pictures of my darling husband. The only picture with me in it is our wedding photo. I stare at it, then remember that just after this perfect picture was taken, the photographer was killed...by James.
Passing through the dining room, I enter into a long, creepy, grey-walled hallway and head to the forbidden room at the far end. When I get there, I can't open the door because it's locked. I try using the same hairpin to unlock the door, but it's a struggle.
Just as I came this close to unlocking it, I hear a familiar voice coming towards the dining room. "I can't believe I forgot my phone in there," James says.
I immediately stop what I'm doing and look for a place to hide. There are a few boxes stacked in a corner to my left, and I hide there since there's no light to illuminate the area.
James' footsteps start to echo as he proceeds to the door I've been trying to unlock, which brings my attention back to the door. The hairpin is still inside the lock. My heart starts to race, especially when James steps into view, in front of the door.
He's about to unlock it with a key from the bunch but halts when he sees the hairpin stuck inside the lock. His brows furrow for a slight moment, and then he yanks the makeshift lock pick out of the keyhole. He growls in anger and looks around. I try to inch my way back against the wall some more, into the darkness; however, my clumsiness causes some boxes to fall. I sigh as James glares in my direction.
He stalks toward the corner I'm in, and he looks even angrier, to the point where he could be a steam train.
"Erica, I know you're back there. Come on out," he says. Breathing becomes a bit hard as he closes in on me. Panic floods my body. I scramble up from the floor and run past him, hoping to make it back to the bedroom before he catches me.
"Erica!" He shouts, running closely behind. He grips my hand as I burst through the door leading back into the dining room and pulls me back into his body, glowering at me. I exchange his glare with a look of fear before he drags me off to the bedroom.
He shuts the door when we get into the room, and lets go of my hand. "So, you wanted to be naughty and go into the forbidden room?"
I don't answer but stare at him with tears welling in my eyes.
"You know what punishment this deserves?" he asks rhetorically. "You'll stay in this room..." As if that's not what I already do. "...and you'll eat nothing."
