Chapter 5 - Revelations.

I suggest you listen to this while reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yvGCAvOAfM
(My apologies for the lack of pictures, my game hasn't been cooperating lately.)
(Credit to Cindy, my friend, for the poses in the first picture)

As much fun as sitting in the police station's lobby for a few hours was, time ticked on way too slowly. The cheap light bulbs flickered frequently, nearly giving me a heart attack every time. The sound of coffee being poured into a mug by the Keurig machine in the corner made me feel anxious. The sound of a door slamming against the wall makes me jump and I look up, startled. A knot ties in my stomach when police officer Allen Kent storms out of his office. He catches sight of me, his anger vanishes, and I'm left with him checking me out, and an awful silence. He sets down the files he has in his hands next to the coffee machine and walks over to stand in front of my chair. I start pressing my finger nail in my palm. Shit, shit, shit. What was I doing here anyways? Was I in trouble? No, I couldn't be. I didn't do anything wrong. He holds out his hand and I hesitantly shake it. 

     "Hello miss, I'm officer Allen, head of criminal justice. May I help you?" he introduces. His sentence confused me. 

    "Actually, I was hoping you could tell me why I was here," I answer quietly. I release pressure on my palm and look at my feet. I feel him look around for something or something. Suddenly, a blonde, bodacious woman, roughly around my age, is at his side with a clipboard in hand. 

   "This is Miss Summers, and she was the latest victim of a breaking and entering. Her case is an interesting one," the blonde purrs, sliding her glasses further up her nose. She's dressed in a tight blouse, her bra peaking through the fabric, and a pencil skirt. She hands Allen the clipboard with a sly smile on her face, and walks to Keurig machine, picking up the mug of coffee. You think that after being here for at least two hours, I would have noticed her before, but I hadn't. 

    "So, you've had a history with this stuff?" Allen asks. He flips through the three pages on the clipboard and then holds it as his side. I nod solemnly and keep my head down. He walks to his office door and waves me over. I shakily stand up and wander over to his office. He closes the door behind me and takes a seat at his desk. The room is small and dark, blinds covering the two small on opposite sides of the room. He settles into his chair, casually putting his hands on his neck and putting his feet on his desk. 

   "So, Effenie, was it? Why don't we start from the start? Tell me what happened..."

    Someone I didn’t know, had shot off the lock, and barged in. Whatever he wanted, he decided to come into my apartment, and make me scared. Not to mention I already had bad memories with situations like these, even murders that threaten to bring me back to my past of drinking. 

  “Do you have like, a shotgun or something?” Grace asks worriedly, snapping me out of my train of thought. I look over at her in disbelief. She creases her forehead in confusion.

 “Me? With a shotgun? Are you ins-“ Grace’s hand clamps over my mouth to keep me from raising my voice. I glare at her and bite her as gently as I can so she doesn’t squeal. Her hand releases and I wipe my mouth with the back of my own hand. A gun against a gun. I would love to see how I fair in a Mexican standoff, with the blowing tumble weed and the mus- Effenie! Focus! You’ll have time to think of Mexican standoffs later. I was losing it. I shift my weight onto my other foot and look at the counters’ cupboards for any ideas of what to do. I remember that in one drawer, there’s a steak knife. I press a finger to my lips, communicating to Grace that we need to be silent, and I start crawling over to the counter. I pull the drawer open and blindly let my hand search for the knife. I feel a few blades graze against my skin, but successfully draw out what I’d been looking for. I hear a crash come from the bathroom. I look at Grace alarmingly.

    “We’re going to go all Tangled style on this bitch,” I whisper.

    “I never saw that movie,” she whispers back. My jaw drops.

    “We’re going to have to have a talk about this,” I say, reaching over for another cupboard and opening the tiny door. I reach in and pull out a black pan. I close the cupboard lightly and face her. “Over the head,” I instruct. I even do hand motions of what to do. I stand up and silently walk around the island, Grace following behind me. Once out in the open, she ducks behind the couch. I plant my feet in the ground, grip the knife tightly and take a deep breath. I hear something fall to the ground, and then the intruder walks out of the bathroom, looking directly at me. He looks familiar, which makes my hands tighten into a death grip around the steak knife. He spots the knife and shows no emotion on his face. 

“Where’s the picture?” he speaks finally, his voice smooth. I can tell he isn’t nervous at all. What picture? The only picture I had in the whole apartment was the one with Emilie that had our faces scratched out. I had let it set in that I had probably done that when drunk. Still, there was an uneasy feeling in my stomach about that theory. I protectively look over at the picture, and quickly look away. I don’t want him taking it.

     “What picture?” I say, my voice cracking a bit. I clear my throat and keep my head held high. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Grace sneaking around the couch and behind him. Now that I look at him, he seemed incredibly familiar. He had sandy brown hair that stuck out of his hat, freckles and a strong jaw. He wasn’t very muscular, to what I could see, but his layers of clothing didn’t help with that thought.

    “Of you and Emilie, where is it?” he growls and my mind searches for an answer.

   “Why do you want it?” I snap at him.

    “I need it.”

    “HIIYYYYAH!” Grace shrieks, lifting the pan above her head and bringing it down onto his skull. His eyes go cross-eyed before his knees fall out from underneath him and he lies unconscious on the floor. We stand there silently for a minute, just processing what had just happened.

    “Oh my god, what the fuck did I just do? Did I really do that? Oh my god, oh my god,” Grace babbles, hyperventilating. I carefully step over his limp body and put my arms around her shoulders. She starts to calm down immediately.

     “Let’s just call the police,” I say.

     Officer Allen taps his pen against his chin in thought. I start pressing my fingernail in my palm again as the tension in the room rises. I feel my breath catching slightly in my throat. It’s suddenly very claustrophobic in here. He sits up, takes his feet off his desk and puts his arms on there instead, leaning closer. He takes a look at the clipboard again.

   "Now, I see here that, you've had a past experience with this stuff, even murder," he starts. He crosses his arms and looks me dead in the eye. "Tell me something Effenie... Who'd you kill?"

Chapter 4 - I miss you too.

I suggest you listen to this while reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IakDItZ7f7Q

  “Effenie, I’m so sorry, is it really that hard on you?” Grace comforts as I rest my head on her shoulder and sob. It was the next day, he was a one-night stand and I was still mourning over Bren. I was probably in shock, or crying over the way he died, but tears continuously spill from my eyes and onto my cousin’s shirt. I’m hugging her way too hard when there’s a knock at the front door. Grace walks me over to the couch and sits me down, squeezing my shoulder gently. She leaves to get the door, when I hear it open, then close just as fast. Grace comes around the couch and into view with a big, toothy grin on her face. I wipe my eyes with my hand, only to see that my mascara has already started running.

    “Who’s at the door?” I sniffle as Grace sits beside me on the couch.

     Her smile stays, “Oh, no one.”

    “Effenie? It’s me,” a voice calls from the door, muffled, but recognizable. It’s not just any voice, it’s Erik’s. I glare at Grace and stand up, walking to the door and opening it with blurry eyes. He looked the same as he did yesterday, just… Clothed. He sees my mascara and tear stained face and pulls me into a big, warm hug. I cry on his shoulder for a while and tell myself I’d never felt more comforted or safe in another one’s arms. Soon enough, I have no more tears to spill, but I stay next to Erik, with his arm draped around my shoulders. When Grace turns towards the kitchen and away from us, he kisses my cheek softly and my mood shifts slowly. I become more relaxed.

     “So, uh, Erik… I thought you two weren’t really… Friends anymore,” Grace states, prepping the coffee machine. I tense up again. Oh shit, I didn’t have an explanation as to why Erik and I were still friends. Hell, I didn’t even know why I’d given in so easily to him. Maybe I’d felt insecure. Maybe sex was the only solution. I highly doubted that last thought. I mean, sure, I’d gotten “it” on with Bren, a total stranger and a few guys throughout university (including Erik), but in this generation, who didn’t? I wasn’t sex-obsessed; I would like to think myself as being a romantic. Only thing I would ever have to watch would be my alcohol consumption. Maybe I let him in so quickly because thinking of Emilie made me feel vulnerable. I could never reveal what happened to anyone but myself, I couldn’t even accept what happened was real. I couldn’t accept that I stood by stupidly while Emilie… I can’t think of it anymore. My head spins crazily and I grab onto Erik’s shoulder for support.

“We uh, have gotten over our differences and we’ve decided on being friends,” he answers coolly. Friends? More like friends with benefits. I smirk at my thoughts and get shot confused looks from both of them.

   “Well, a friend of Eff’s is a friend of mine,” Grace says bitterly, grimacing. She pours three mugs of steaming coffee and hands one to me. She picks up the last two mugs and shoves one into Erik’s hand. A small dark wave of coffee spills over the rim of the porcelain mug and onto his wrist. A smile spreads on Grace’s face and she takes a sip of her own mug.

 

     “Oops, sorry,” she says, pulling herself onto the island and letting her legs dangle. I scowl at her and grab a cloth, to wipe the coffee from his skin, which has already burned and turned red. I rub the cloth gently along his wrist, and then quickly squeeze his hand. Why had we broken up? Differences… Differences in opinion? Probably. I remember instantly. It’s like that saying, ‘It’s not you, it’s me’, except in my case, it was actually true. I was angry one night, not at him, but at myself. I was angry at my frustration for an assignment in university. I remember I was screaming, and he was trying to calm me down. Then, without thinking straight, I broke it off, locked myself in without him. In tears, I told him I had to concentrate on myself, no distractions. Then, he simply walked out of the apartment, speechless. 

Ever since then, I’d felt empty, and I had been meaning to call and talk to him, but I could never build the courage to talk to him without feeling guilty. Even though it wasn’t the longest relationship in the world, I had been falling for him pretty hard. I guess I didn’t even know what I was thinking, but all actions have consequences, and I wasn’t prepared to face what I had caused. That led to drinking and depressing poetry. The four following years, leading up to now, had been horrid, I hadn’t really thought that if I was in a relationship, I would have someone to keep me grounded, I always looked on the negative side of things. It’s no surprise I took it hard, and alcohol helped the pain go away for a day or two, but it just kept coming back. Seeing me like that caused Grace to develop a certain hate for a certain person, and I’ve always felt bad that she’s never been able to see the good side of him, before I introduced her to my mistake. I didn’t expect him that night he came over. We hadn’t talked in forever, and when he said he missed me, I guess I just melted. That, and the ever-haunting memory of Emilie. Our relationship wasn’t just sex, I actually still had feelings for him, and he was really good in bed, but that wasn’t the point. I look at Erik, who has put his mug on the island and is looking down at me.

      “You okay?” he asks. I nod quickly and just look at him. I missed him too. I really did. “Good, well, I could only stay for a couple of minutes, so I best be on my way out. Nice seeing you again Grace.” She mumbles something neither of us can comprehend, and he gives a small wave before leaving.

“Really Grace, really?” I say, locking the door and turning around to face her. I was aware about robbers in our part of the city. She shrugs and takes another long sip of coffee, but I can tell that behind the mug, her smile has never been bigger.  “You shouldn’t have been so ru-“ I’m cut off by the sound of the front door’s knob turning. We both turn to look at it. The door shakes, as if someone was trying to open it. Correction, someone was trying to open it.

    

     “Hello?” Grace calls out.  She sets her coffee down and gets off the island to stand next to me. We both stare at the door, which has gone completely still, until it shakes again and spooks both of us.

    “Open up,” a strange voice responds. I step cautiously towards the door to look through the peephole. The last thing I expected to see was a gun pointed to little glass circle. I step backwards, scared.

     “He’s got a gun,” I whisper to my cousin. She grabs my arm and pulls me around the island, then yanks me down to hide behind it with her.

     Then, the door lock is shot off, and the intruder comes into my home.