The slumber I submitted myself to was not as light as I'd hoped to be, proving to in fact pull me under the surface of consciousness for much too long and too deep. A loud crash had awoken me but startling noises normally didn't just come out of nowhere, there'd probably been a lead up which I'd missed whilst sleeping. Great, exactly what I needed, to give my dad the chance to break some furniture and then barge in here and snap my neck in half just because he felt like it, all during my peaceful sleep. That would make this day perfect, wouldn't it just? I supposed what most petrified me about the whole idea was that I'd be gone puff and that would be it for Kim Conweller the girl who tried too hard, and died without even realising.
"Kim! Kim!" Wait, that didn't sound like my dad. It didn't sound like him at all. Actually it sounded like Jared but there was absolutely no way- Or was there? Could he have come save me like the Prince Charming I'd always made him out to be? I approached the door silently in hopes that if he hadn't come and that was just my dad's voice distorted through the floorboards he wouldn't catch me trying to escape. I imagine that wouldn't end well. "Kim! Kim Oh my God Kim!" It didn't make sense for him to be da- no, I refused to give him the honour of being called that. It didn't make sense for that man to be my kidnapper, their voice wouldn't be calling out to me in a frenzy, my kidnapper would just unclick the lock and yell in a booming voice that my life was over. So I took my chances and whispered as silently as I could.
"Jared?" Now, I knew that in the case that he were here the whole murmuring his name thing would not help him to find me at all but what was I supposed to do? Maybe… Oh I didn't know, I was scared. I was scared so badly my heart hurt every time I breathed, thus causing there to be a lack of oxygen in my brain. How was I supposed to function properly on that? I couldn't, there could be people out there who found it easy to make sense of things while under stressful circumstances, but at that point even shadows gave me a fright.
"Oh God Kim!" That's when the door burst open, hitting my nose and throwing me back against the floor I'd found myself in when I came to for the first time. The feeling when I opened my eyes had such a strong deja vu that I jumped backwards and away from the blurry face in front of me which then came back to being a HD image again more once my eyes were able to focus. Except I didn't have my glasses so, you know, not so much. "You're Ok! I can't believe I almost lost you!" He proceeded to hug me as close as humanly possible, crushing my lungs. It wasn't what I imagined my first hug with a guy to be like considering the fact that my lungs were struggling enough to get air in them as it was, without having someone strangling me.
"And you're about to lose me again if you don't loosen your grip." The words were forced out of my mouth but he managed to hear them just like he heard my soft whisper, somehow he'd developed super hearing in the past two minutes. Yet then an even stranger thing happened as he swooped me up and started carrying me to the door. "What the hell are you doing?!" I was so confused at this point that it wasn't even funny. He'd said "I almost lost you" as if my life mattered to him and now he was taking me to the door as if I were a princess? This was so strange. I wasn't exactly content with my fairytale ending though considering my nose was bleeding and it just generally didn't feel right. This wasn't how it's supposed to happen, well, I mean, it is but didn't love take time to get a hold of someone's heart. Wait, what was I even saying? The idea that Jared could like me, let alone love me was preposterous, like literally the stupidest fantasy my mind had ever invented to keep my mind happy during a time of stress. This was probably just a dream anyway, Jared wouldn't be able to carry me, he could try, doesn't mean it would end well.
"I'm taking you to the hospital. Then to the police station." But he wasn't headed to the hospital. Was this another evil scheme my kidnapper had planned out to play with my heartstrings in unimaginably twisted and hurtful ways. Surely he wouldn't, couldn't, be that cruel, right? When he locked me up I bet he was filled with, I don't know, testosterone? Just general rage? It was an act of violence, he wasn't a cold hearted murderer.
"Jared?" Flinching at how weak my voice wounded I tried again. "Jared the hospital is that way." My shaking hand gestured in the direction opposite to the one we were headed as Jared turned slowly to me without taking his eyes off the road.
"The hospital people might not treat you nicely enough, so I'm taking you somewhere else where they can see if you're Ok." I wasn't sure that was a valid excuse but Jared's tense posture on the steering wheel told me that telling him a hospital would be fine was not, under any circumstances an option. He's only doing this because of the stress of the moment, he's probably going to go back to ignore you at school, like always. Shut up inner voice. He might actually care. Well he wouldn't but as I'd said the whole Jared delusion was just to get me cheered up, nothing else, so I wasn't getting my hopes up or anything much less attached to the idea of him caring for me. I knew the evil voice at the back of my head was more than right.
"I don't think this is such a great-" Because I was 100% aware that if he took me to this private place he'd be forced to stick with me, whether he wanted to or not. I didn't like the idea of holding him hostage like my father had done for me. Yet I was interrupted by Jared and the finality his words had.
"We're here."
Oh God. This was happening. No getting out of it now. I didn't even know why the prospect of going into that house was so terrifying, hadn't I faced worse demons than that today? Nope, my mind had gone haywire, not able to judge what was scary and what was very much not.
Bloody perfect. I was stuck in a house with strangers, almost got kidnapped, and was now freaking insane.
