Murder She Wrote

37. Locked In

My back slid down the door with my heart still beating against my chest. I couldn't help but make myself even more anxious and nervous than I was already feeling. What if she saw my car parked outside? Even though, I didn't park that close to her house, she still would recognize my car, wouldn't she? Or perhaps I'm talking nonsense, she was in a rush to come back home and she couldn't have saw it. Yet. So there's a likely chance she doesn't know I'm in the house.

I kept quiet, making sure I didn't make a signal movement. I listened to any possible movements from her downstairs. I couldn't pick up nothing just a few footsteps going back and forth on the hardwood floor. I'm assuming she's in the same bathroom she placed the body. My stomach still turned when remembering the vivid image of her her own brother crammed inside a box, completely frozen and pale faced. I've heard and seen incidents like this in horror movies but I've never thought I would witness it in reality. It just blew my mind how someone can pretend to be someone completely different from their actual character. How they can hide their insanity behind a fake appearance. How they can kill someone and wake up the next day like nothing happened.

I need to get out of here. I don't even know if I can make it down past the front door at this point. I still have the gun I've brought with me in my pocket, I could make a run for it and if she ends up attacking me, I could try and make my first shot. I hardly knew how to pull a trigger and aim right. The worst case scenario is I miss my shot and she ends up brutally killing me in her own home.

My eyes trailed around the room, trying to figure out where I forcefully hid myself. The room looked like some sort of bedroom. It was neatly placed together like the rest of the house. There was queen sized bed with a huge head frame plotted in the middle of the room, a huge closet that displayed many colorful dresses, blouses, shoes, pants and accessories. There was also a bathroom just across from the bed. It must've been Veronica's room. The thing that caught my eye the most was the large desk by the bed that had numerous of computers set up. The computer screens were big and each of them were aligned with one another, four columns across, three rows down. I couldn't see what the screens were showing from afar but it looked like it was switching from different videos or images every ten seconds. I slowly got up, drawing myself to the computer station. I took slow steps around the bed and sat down on the rolling chair in front of the desk.

I looked up at one screen that displayed an empty driveway. It looked familiar. The garden around the cement sidewalk, the front of the house...then I saw the small address number in the corner of the screen. I'm staring at my own driveway. Confused and bewildered, I went on to look at the next screen. The inside of my living room was displayed on the screen. I could see all of my belongings and exactly the way I left the house earlier. Then my bedroom, then the kitchen, the garage, bathrooms...every screen had a clear vision of the whole house, inside and out. I knew I wasn't overreacting the first time I've seen those hidden cameras in my house, it was very clear she was watching all along. What I can't wrap my head around is how well she hid those cameras. I nearly tore down every inch of my house looking for any hidden cameras and found none. But here I am staring at a whole surveillance system on my house.

My hand went over the computer mouse and tried to look for a disable option that would stop this whole thing. I didn't understand a thing about controlling it but I did manage to find a tab that allowed me to completely exit out of the footages. Once done so, a new screen popped up on the center screen only. There were folders on the right hand side of the screen. The files were labeled with names and dates. Each folder started off with my name and a different date afterwards. The dates went as far back as two months ago. While my curiosity grew bigger, I clicked on the oldest folder which was months before she met me.

Numerous of pictures and videos popped up. It was just observations of my everyday life. Me going to work, me going to sleep, the time I eat, and who I hung out with. She even had an address of my work down along with my office number. I thought back at the time she first called me at my job and how easily she got a hold of that office number even though we barely knew anything about each other then because it was a day after the night I picked her up and offered her a ride and place to stay. She even had information about my date of birth, food I was allergic to, my favorite list of songs and places I enjoyed going to. I felt both scared and speechless that someone is this invested about me personally. I've never had someone be this obsessed with me. She spent a month hunting me down before approaching me. She then lied and deceived her way into my life, I was even more frustrated that I didn't see the red flags sooner enough. I should've known the night she stood by that shop near our house that something was up with her. She trapped and locked me in. And now I have to deal with all of this.