Remember Me (Broken Heroes 6)

I navigate into the parking lot of my apartment complex and park in the closet spot I can find. I try and calm myself, inhaling and exhaling a few times before I put the car in park. Grabbing my purse, I run to the front door, nearly tripping over my own feet in the process. I land against the heavy door, fumbling with my keys to unlock it. Sweat beads on my forehead as I struggle to unlock the door.

I sprint up the stairs to my apartment, fear pushing me forward.

My hands are still shaking so much I can barely get the key into the lock. When I finally get in I’m so consumed with fear and exhaustion that I slam the door shut behind me, locking the deadbolt into place before slumping to the floor. It feels like I’m seconds away from cardiac arrest and my lungs can’t suck in enough air.

It feels like I’m being strangled, but there is nothing around my neck. I pull on my shirt, almost ripping the top part. My whole body is trembling and on edge. I can’t believe I just witnessed a murder…again.

Everything from my past was finally fading, becoming nothing more than a distant memory and now this. What I saw today opened the floodgates. Everything I’ve done in the past two years was to forget, to start a new life and leave everything I ever knew behind. I don’t want to remember my old life. But after tonight it’s all I can think about.

I don’t have much here, just my car, and the tiny apartment I call home. But that’s all I really need and more than expected after the way I grew up. The small religious community of Safe Harbor—safe, hah!— in North Woods, was my home for the first eighteen years of my life.

My parents were strict and not the overly loving kind, but I still didn’t expect them to do the horrendous things they did to me.

Like selling me, as if I was a product on the shelf at the grocery store. They sold me. My own parents! I was supposed to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, but luck had been on my side that day and in a twisted turn of fate I ended up being set free. Even better, I was given a new identity and enough cash to start a life…a real life. I was thankful beyond measure I just wish I could make my heart forget about him.

My chest hurts just thinking about Luke. My parents’ betrayal hit me hard, but it was nothing compared to the soul crushing pain of Luke’s deceit. He told me he loved me, promised me forever. I knew he did some bad things, but nothing prepared me for the truth, the darkness he covered up with a boyish grin and sweet whispers. I thought he was different, thought he was a good man, but he was merely the devil in disguise, lying in wait to show me his true colors.

Groaning I tell myself that I need to stop thinking about him, stop thinking about what could’ve or should’ve been. There is just no point in hoping for something that I lost so long ago, something that I don’t want or need. I want stability, safety, a simple life without death, without danger.

I hold a hand to my chest, and squeeze my eyes shut as I focus on my breathing and nothing more. It takes me forever to get my erratic breathing under control and when I do, I’m far too exhausted to move, my muscles so tense it hurts to even breathe.

My mind and my body aren’t even on this plain, and it feels like I’ll never escape this life. All I can do is curl up into a ball right where I am. As my eyes drift closed, I hope that tomorrow will be a better day, that when I wake up, today will have been nothing but a dream.

My neck and back are stiff from staying on the floor in front of the door and my stomach is nothing but a knot of anxiousness. I only slept for about two hours, spending the rest of the time between shaking like a leaf in fear and crying my eyes out from being overwhelmed with emotion.

The reality of what happened settles harshly on me, so harshly that I spend all day cooped up in my apartment and for the first time in two year I actually call into work sick. It’s not going to look good for the promotion, but I don’t care. I considered going to the police all day. Telling them about what I saw, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I might be hours away from North Woods but how do I know that the police here are any different from the ones back home?