What Grows Dies Here

Sleep eluded me.

Even after two more martinis and a session with my vibrator.

At the best of times, I wasn’t a good sleeper. It had been like that for as long as I could remember. I’d be roaming around the house I grew up in at three in the morning, switching lights on and off to make sure there wasn’t an intruder lurking in the darkness. We lived in the wealthiest area of the city, in a gated neighborhood with a top-notch security system, the possibility of someone breaking into our home was slim.

But not zero.

My parents didn’t have rules when it came to the movies or shows I watched, the books I read. I had a TV in my bedroom, my own ‘living room’—my parents rarely used the formal living room as they weren’t often home to sit and watch something as common as television. They were out almost every night and not home until late. We had one family dinner together a week, on no set day because their schedules were important, filled with charity dinners, parties, new restaurant openings. Sometimes I went with them, but mostly I stayed at home. Though I had a busy social calendar of my own with horseback riding lessons, karate, sleepovers and whatever extracurricular activity I’d selected for that semester. But when I was home, my parents were rarely there.

Our maid who doubled as my nanny, Victoria, who had emigrated from Russia before I was born, would eat dinner with me and sometimes watch a movie or two. She was my best friend. She was not warm or motherly. She was severe, almost cold but with a dry wit. She taught me Russian until I was fluent. She had always spoken to me like an adult, and I loved that.

She loved me too, in her own way, but she had a family, a life of her own. So she’d leave to go home, to resume her duties around the house, and I would channel surf until I found a horror movie or sitcom about crime and serial killers.

I was never scared. Not until after my parents got home, came in to kiss me goodnight smelling of perfume, aftershave and expensive liquor. After they’d retired to their own wing of the house, and everything went quiet. It was then my imagination ran wild… I started to hear the noises that houses made only in the dead of night, convincing myself that it was an intruder.

I never woke my parents. No. At eight years old, I’d find the source of the noise, walk toward it, switch on the lights expecting to see someone clothed in black, wearing a balaclava. There was never anyone there, thankfully. But it was a routine, a compulsion that followed me into adulthood.

Of course, I rarely, if ever, was home alone watching TV shows. There was always a party, a dinner, a date, a flight to Tel Aviv. But eventually, I’d have to come home to the obnoxious mansion my father gave me as a twenty-first birthday gift.

Not a house I would buy myself, but I wouldn’t dare insult my father by selling it. Poor little rich girl, complaining about the mansion her father bought her.

I slept very little in this house. Four hours a night was my absolute maximum. Doctors around the world would likely swear it was impossible for a human to survive on such little sleep and still be healthy, functioning. But my body had been surviving on that for as long as I could remember, and I was as healthy as a horse. Though I could afford holistic health coaches, personal doctors, massage therapists, chakra aligners and all the organic groceries and superfoods money could buy.

That was neither here nor there.

I knew tonight was going to be different. I knew that even my regular four hours would evade me. So I’d thrown back the covers and exited my bed. I lived by the philosophy that if I knew I wasn’t going to sleep, I was to leave my bedroom immediately. I already had enough trouble sleeping in my bed without inviting all that chaotic insomniac energy into a room that needed to be calming and invite restfulness.

After turning on every light in my home, I was standing in my living room, trying to decide if I was going to do yoga, read a book or make some popcorn and have a Scream movie marathon.

Then I heard the sound.

As someone who had spent her entire life hearing and familiarizing herself with every sound houses made throughout the night, I knew instinctively that the house had nothing to do with it.

Someone was here.

In my home.

My alarm hadn’t gone off. It was top of the line. Installed by the best security company in the city, Greenstone Security. Politicians used them. Celebrities. Their client list was a verifiable who’s who of Hollywood and beyond.

It was not your average burglar who could disable their security system.

It wasn’t even your above average burglar who could do such a thing.

Only a very serious, very fucking dangerous person could do that.

I didn’t panic. There was no place for panic in life-or-death situations. I’d been in plenty, and I had learned mostly by trial and error what to do and what not to do. The rest I’d learned from Charles Davidson, which I doubted was his real name since he was ex-CIA.

My phone was still in my bedroom. A terrible, horror movie heroine type mistake. A woman living alone cannot afford to make such seemingly innocuous mistakes as leaving her phone across the house from her in the middle of the night. We needed to be able to call for help at any moment, because we’d been trained to understand that our lives could be ruined in mere seconds.

Not to worry.

I had a gun in a hidden compartment of the side table right beside me. At this stage, calling for help was not an option. Helping myself, saving myself was on the agenda.

No sooner than I’d outstretched my hand did a man speak.

“Going to shoot me, are you?”

I froze.