Prologue

April 7

Samantha Martin is a typical American girl with rich brown hair and brilliant green eyes. She is eighteen, graduated high school, and just started her part-time job working six evening shifts a week at the local marina café.

Chez Vinnie's Dockside Café was your typical fish and chips kind of place on the North side of River Stream, WI. The local college crowd hangs around on Fridays for their $4.75 draft beer pitchers. The money is great but the boss, Vinnie himself, is a pompous wind-bag, smoking three packs of Pall Malls a day.

Samantha has a small one bedroom apartment on the South West side of town. The dilapidated building is a sixteen unit project with peeling beige paint, dead brown and yellowed grass, and absolutely no amenities other than air conditioning, refrigerator, and stove. The interior condition of the units, however, is in excellent condition giving the phrase "Don't judge a book by its cover" a true ring.

Inside of her unit, there is a miniscule living room with a blue corduroy love seat, a small microwave stand serving as an entertainment center and a thirteen inch color television with a built in DVD player. A five foot wall divides the kitchen from the living room and a series of hastily-built wooden shelves sits above the stainless steel sink and stove as make-shift cabinets.

The bedroom is just beyond the kitchen and is rather large for a one bedroom with a door separating the kitchen and living room from the bedroom and bathroom. She has a double size bed with a lavender bed-spread over white sheets. Cherry oak nightstands sit on either side of the bed and a five drawer dresser, also in cherry oak, sits in the corner of the room. There is a small window on the east side of the room the gives off beautiful early-morning light.

The bathroom is on the North East side of the room with a wooden door to enclose it. It's a small, barely-room-to-shower beige bathroom with a floral butterfly pattern shower curtain and green accent rugs. Above the shell-shaped sink is a small mirror/medicine cabinet where all of her anxiety and sleeping medications are concealed. A pink toothbrush and Crest toothpaste sit on the soap holder above the hot and cold sink nozzles.

The flooring among the apartment is beautiful dark wood stick-down linoleum, giving it a country side, warm feeling to it. Every night she is grateful to come home to her small palace.

Samantha has always thought of this place as charming and cozy. Until tonight, that is. After a long night at Chez Vinnie's, she came home expecting a hot shower, a little news time, a small bowl of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, and a comfortable sleep.

As she was sitting in her love seat she noticed something was different. She couldn't put her finger on it but something was out of the norm. You're just tired, you silly goof! How can anything be different? No one has been here. But as she starts to look around her small one-bedroom apartment on Filament Street, the feeling only grows stronger. Why does something feel so wrong?

She puts it out of her mind as she turns off the news and gets ready to go to bed for the evening. She rolls the entertainment stand into the corner of the room, turns the wall-unit a/c on medium, and makes her way to the bathroom adjoining her bedroom. As she goes to brush her teeth she notices she didn't have to turn the bathroom light on. I know I turned the bathroom light off before I went to work. I always turn the lights off before going out always.

She hurries to the bedroom to inspect for something, anything to be out of place. Conspicuously, her bed side nightstand drawer is slightly ajar. She stands there staring, afraid to move any closer as if something will reach out from the drawer and grab her wrist. Trembling, she slowly makes her way over to the drawer and pulls it open.

Everything is still in its place, nice and neat. Socks all accounted for, journal and pen buried under the socks, and small metal "Daddy Box" filled with her special Mary Jane cigarettes, matches, and a lighter. What is going on around here? I know I didn't leave that open, I couldn't have. But she knows there is no one else here but her. Or does she?

AUTHOR'S NOTE: It may be a while in-between chapters. Thanks!