CREEPS

T H R E E

    I've always loved the quiet. The silence that comes with it provides me great comfort. No matter what I was going through, I could always find sanity in hearing nothing. One of the few perks of growing up in a household where it was just my mother and I for years was that there was rarely any noise traveling down the halls. It had always been just us. It'd never get too loud, it never needed too and we never wanted it too.

    But as I walk down the narrow hallway that's always separated my doorway from hers, I can't help but yearn for noise. Any sound that can serve as a sign that she's here and that she's okay.

    It's just too quiet in the house. It might have always been this way, due to our always silent neighborhood and neither of us ever having guests over for too long, but there's something different about right now. There's something off about the silence in our home.

    I turn around without continuing to her room to check if she's in there. The sick feeling in my stomach tells me that she's not. It screams at me that she's downstairs, and that I shouldn't go looking for her.

    I don't listen to the feeling. I instead take off down the small hallway, running down the stairs. No matter how fast I feel my legs pushing me down each step, the stairway seems never ending. As if I'm not really going anywhere. As if I'm never going to get to her in time.

    "Zaylee!"

    All I hear is a voice screaming for me, and that voice somehow pushes me to go faster. I'm down the rest of the stairs in an instant, ending up in the kitchen, never stepping foot into the living room that the stairway should have led me too. It's as if something's taken over me—something that knows where I need to be right now is in this kitchen.

    "Oh, Zaylee. How I have missed you."

    It's the same voice speaking, and now that I'm closer, I know right away that it's not my mother's. Now that I think back, it was never my mother.

    It wasn't her voice I heard screaming my name. It wasn't her that I had been looking for.

    My fists clench with the realization that it had always been him. Anger courses through my body because everything always relates back to this monster.

    I turn to the source of the voice, immediately looking into dark, forest green eyes. And when I see the look in his eyes, the look of pure determination, my fists unclench.

    It's as if someone's dumped cold water over my entire body. The anger that was consuming me and the willpower I had to come down the stairs vanishes completely.

    All I'm left feeling is fear. Absolute terror.

    Because I am terrified of the monster with dark green eyes. I'd be stupid and naive to not fear him.

    As the fear completely takes over my body, I decide that running away is my best option. Turning away from the monster and heading for the front door seems like the logical option... but my body doesn't agree with me.

    The moment I turn and take all of three steps, I stop moving. My mind yells at me to keep going, telling me over and over again that if I don't move, it's all over. But no matter how desperately my mind wants me to go, my body won't allow it.

    It then dawns on my mind why my body won't move. I realize why I completely skipped the living room once I came down the stairs.

    Subconsciously, I knew where they'd each be. He would be here, and she would be there. And I chose to feel this fear over the other thousands of emotions I would feel if I saw her.