Please Note I do not own Criminal Minds, any of the characters, or any other copyrighted content that appears in this story. This is just based off my own personal musings after a vivid dream after watching the show. Rated T for Language and Intense Content.

Months passed and I was slowly making progress. The phone calls from every local and major news outlet across the nation eventually died down to an inconvenient trickle and I had gotten brave enough to attend the local community college again. My captor was still on the loose and the FBI was long gone, but both local and state officials had assured me and my family that they would find him. I knew it wasn't true, but I pretended to believe them and acted like it gave me some kind of solace. No need to have my parents fret over me more than they already had.

It was worse around my friends. The few of them who could stand to spend time with me without being weirded out by what had happened treated me like I was made of plate glass, ready to just break apart. No guy would dare to even look at me. I think they were afraid they would be accused of being the one who had taken me, as stupid as that sounds. I stopped worrying about it because I knew I wasn't ready for anything like that. Not for a long time.

Life continued at a mundane pace and my schedule became maddeningly redundant. Go to school, go to counseling, go to work, go to church on the weekends. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It wasn't like I needed some excitement in my life – Lord knows I had already had enough of that – but I was sick of being the porcelain doll trapped inside her plastic box. At that point, even breaking would have been a welcomed change.

I should have listened when my parents to be careful what I wished for as a child.

It wasn't but three weeks later when the Inland Empire was rocked by a new crime. One of the guys in my Literature class, Tim, had been disemboweled and dismembered across the campus soccer field. He was a nice boy; athletic, blonde, not too bright but certainly not dumb. He had lost a baseball scholarship to USC after tearing his rotator cuff in a high school alumni game, but he wasn't bitter.

Tim was one of the few people in my class who would talk to me and even wanted to be my partner on our group projects. I didn't care that it was likely out of pity, I just enjoyed the company.

My overactive paranoia tried to convince me that this wasn't random, that is was the one guy who would talk to me for a reason. It took a week of mental turmoil for me to convince myself it wasn't him and to stop jumping at every shadow. Security was increased at the school and life moved on.

Four months later not much had changed. Tim's case file was lumped into the same stack as my own: unsolved. As people fixated on his case, they started to forget about mine and making friends became easier. Jessice, a sophomore at the college who was from Nebraska, hadn't heard much about my story despite its national attention. She didn't ask me what happened, didn't guard her words to keep from triggering something, and she certainly didn't treat me like I was made of porcelain.

For the first time in almost a year I felt like an actual human being, but again, it wasn't meant to last.

I remember how my ringtone, Last Resort by Papa Roach, cut through my slumber and jerked me awake. To this day I haven't been able to listen to that song.

Her voice was slurred so badly I could almost smell the whiskey through the phone. Thankfully she hadn't been drunk enough to forget that she could always call me for a ride home.

Then again, driving home drunk would have been a welcomed alternative to what happened.

Jessica, always wanting to do something new, had agreed to go to a house party up in the mountains behind the valley we lived in. It wasn't that big of a deal other than the fact that there were no street lights to illuminate the winding roads in the dead of night. However, the eerie glow of the full moon allowed me to see a few extra feet past my headlights.

It took me about forty-five minutes to get to the address which turned out to belong to an unfinished house with no tenants and no electricity. I should have known there wouldn't be a legitimate party in these lavish homes, but I simply rolled my eyes and pulled my black Nissan Versa into the driveway. By the time I had gotten there, it seemed everyone else had already left. I quickly realized that Jessica was probably inside, passed out, so I decided to be lazy and call her. However, as usual, there was no cell service up in the mountains, so I was forced to get out of my car and search for her.

The cool night at bit at my skin raising goose bumps as I wrapped my arms around myself and walked into the house. The few embers left from the fire fizzled out as thin clouds of smoke clung to me. The smell managed to mask the strong stench of liquor, so it was welcomed.

"Jessica! Come on! I'm tired and I want to go home!" My voice echoed through the house but went unanswered, so I continued to wander.

As I made my way through the house I heard a sloshing sound from the backyard. "You're not getting into my care if you're thro-"

My entire body froze as I turned the corner to the backyard. There, glowing under that ghostly moon light, was Jessica's disemboweled and dismembered body. Her attacker stood next to her, hands dripping with blood.

The smell of his warm, beer laced breath carried on a breeze towards my face. He turned towards me in a lazy and slow fashion. I could see the rough texture of his skin across the yard, the moonlight creating shadows in the ridges.

"You…"

The word slipped out on an involuntary gasp as my body began to tremble. I tried to convince myself this was still a coincidence; that it wasn't about me, until he spoke those damned words.

"Hello, Annie. I've missed you."