He
had stalked me for days. His lips were rubbery, too large, too wide open, hot-wet
and slimy. Gross didn’t begin to
describe it. He was taking his time too,
as if he was wooing some swooning heroine in some crazy version of a Brontë romance. The worst kiss ever. And his limbs were like
bloody suckers, I pushed at him hard but he hung on like one of those
tree-huggers. How could this be happening?
Why had I allowed it in the first place? I groped for the knife, found it
and slashed upwards. He broke away with a repulsive sucking sound that made even
my toenails curl.
I
sat up, my chest heaving, my heart beating a frantic tattoo against my ribs. My head swam with a potent mix of emotions – disbelief.
disgust, outrage, abject terror. I shut
my eyes and tried to get a grip. When I
opened them again, everything was quiet.
Moonlight came in through the blinds and lay in deep slices on the floor.
I could see vague dark stains on the bedclothes, they were twisted around my
torso in a python-coil. The rest of the
room was strangely and chillingly untouched by the upheavals I had just
experienced - my clothes were still on the pegs, my books as I had left them on
my desk. Only Toddy had fallen out of
the cubbyhole and lay spread-eagled on the papers.
I
untangled myself slowly from the snarled sheets. Piled the pillows behind my back and half-lounged
against them. Not to sleep for the rest
of the night felt like a sensible decision.
