Submission

CHAPTER : 31

Claustrophobic.

A morbid fear of being confined in a closed space.

Your breath gets stuck in the throat and the crazy spinning of your head doesn't stop. You feel that the walls are closing upon you and there is no air to breathe no matter how much you try to breathe in. The puffing of your chest increases as an invisible hand chokes your neck. The heavyweight all over your body crumbles you down. The pain in your head which was initially like a small needle pierces your head into two splits. The gruesome nauseous feeling in your stomach buries itself there, six inches deep. The endless screams which come out of the lips don't stop but keep on ringing in your ears and you wonder why no one can hear you. The black spots in your vision make you blind and the only thing you feel is pain and panic.

You are not dead.

You wish you were.

Maybe that was what exactly I was feeling when I closed myself in my room, trying to run away from the wrath between the two mysteriously dangerous men downstairs. The crashing of the furniture and the sick sound of fists punching into a body was heard with repulsed clarity. I tried to shut my ears and concentrate on the numbers in my phone as my attempts to remember the hotline number for emergencies failed again and again.

My hands trembled and shook with tears falling on them as I typed numbers, erased them, and retyped them again. The phone crashed and shattered on the far wall as I couldn't take the pressure any more and threw it with great frustration.

I clutched my head, trying to leash my mind back to its place. The distressed scream that escaped my lips took away the last ray of energy out of my body as I collapsed on the floor and gave up all my courage through my tears.

It's just so wrong. Every time I try to rise up and fight back my cruel fate comes back at me with a harder blow, pushing me down on the floor, forcing me to give up, forcing me to submit and every time I do give up because you reach a certain point where you can't take any more. I am tired of defeat and submitting to the failures in my life.

Not this time.

I won't give up now. If fate has something planned for me, so be it. I will fight till the last breath escapes my lips, and I am no more a part of this world. Getting up and fighting back is easier than giving up and feeling the reign of defeat flowing through the veins. I need to do something. Something fast.

The dresser in the corner of the room never felt so welcoming before, neither did the riddled letters. I took out each one of them and placed them on my bed. I ran to the other side of the room, towards the small walk-in closet, and took out my first piece of evidence.

The shirt, I found myself in after the party at Max's house, had lost its crispiness but the faint smell of the cologne was still there. I took an unwilling whiff, trying to remember anything familiar to it but came up with nothing. My mind tried to remember anything that could help me recollect the events that happened at the night during Max's party but a huge wall of blackout blocked me to get to the other side and know what might happen.

The last person I saw at the party was Ivan. So does that mean that he drugged me? I agree that we had played a silly drinking game but was that enough for me to become unconscious? It was very much clear in my head that he was the one who pushed me into that stupidity and it was possible that he had a motive behind it but I can't be completely sure that he is my stalker.

Besides, he never made a move on me before until today. What might have gotten into him that made him do such terrible things?

If there was someone who always tried to manhandle me, then it's Mr. Dimitri. I can't say that I caught his attention from the very beginning but something must have happened as everything changed after Max's party. That one time I decided not to be myself, everything changes.

He kissed me, forcefully, on several occasions, and he even went to the heights of putting me into detention several times just so that he could take advantage of me. It is not at all common for the teachers in college to give detention to a student unless one of them is very notorious or needs special attention in studies. It's like a punishment in their eyes and torture in ours.

Each and every letter I received had a rhyme to it with the same threatening message. Firstly, they would claim their love for me. Secondly, they would threaten me so that I don't disclose these letters to anyone. Thirdly, they always end with the note saying that they are coming for me, to "steal" me away. I didn't know who wrote them because I didn't know whose handwriting it belonged to. One of these letters also mentioned that I knew who the stalker was yet at the same time I didn't. If that didn't make things harder for me then I don't know what did. The person threatened Liza's life, well not specifically but it was mentioned that he would harm my "loved ones". I don't think I love anyone more than Liza and even the thought of Liza getting hurt brings tears to my eyes.

I opened each of the letters and placed them in front of me. Something was definitely amiss. The first few letters I received were written on white, creamy paper but the last one I received had a black background with red tinting the edges of it. So what was special about the last one? Was it written by someone else?

The train of my thoughts was halted when I realized something.

Quietly, I crept towards the door and tried to listen carefully. The deathly silence that held the atmosphere in a limbo slowly crawled up my spine as a shiver ran down my body. Something was definitely not right. I took a step back from the door as the stairs on the other side squeaked painfully.

Slowly I backed away to the other side of the room when suddenly the lights went off, driving my mind into a frenzy.

Some sort of thin papery thing got caught under my feet, so I bent down to pick it up.

It was a withered rose petal.