Down the Drain

Down the Drain

1.

Slam the door, engage both deadbolts, lean against the heavy, metal, soundproofed billet of a front door I paid four thousand for. Installed yesterday.

I'm back in Swinton, terrified, crouched behind a reeking dumpster. I track the telltale blub-blub-blub of his car’s engine, its muffler rusted off, as he idles ever so slowly right to left. Minutes later, the engine’s grumble recedes into the distance, gets lost in a rush of wind through trees...

This has been the worst year of my life – restraining orders, calls to the police (too many to count). All to extricate myself from the relationship from hell. After the cross-country move, new job, new condo, I saw light at the end of the tunnel. But my stress level went nuts, like a snake was coiled around my neck, cutting off my air. Normal emotions, said my therapist – permanent security felt so close, so in reach, but what if he found some way to trip me up just before I crossed the finish line?

I watch him through high powered binoculars. He paces back and forth on the sand and shows a photo – mine, I’m sure – to dozens of beach goers. “Have you seen this girl?” his mouth mimes, over and over, as heads shake...

The past six hours have been my coup de grace, and it wasn’t easy – giving two strange men free reign of my home, especially after what I’ve been through. I wonder if I can ever wear my own clothes again after they handled them, scanned them.

The two top-rated electronic security and surveillance specialists in the city pried open and scanned every square inch of my new condo. Not just the floor, but the walls, ceilings, closets, doors. Upholstered furniture, too, and lamp shades, drapes, drape rods. Then the intimate places – my clothing, shoes, dresser drawers, closet shelves, every nook and cranny in the bathroom, including the toilet tank. Everything electric, too, including battery devices, had to be switched on and scanned for recorders, transmitters, GPS units, the works. Laptop, phone, router – analyzed to the FBI forensics level – and now equipped with the security firm’s own electronic protection systems. Finally, kitchen cabinets, appliance interiors, even the ducts of my forced-air heat pump system. They spent the entire next day on my car.

And everything scanned clean.

2.

What a gorgeous sunset. Fiery yellows, oranges, reds glow above the roofs and chimneys of rank upon rank of brownstones marching off into the distance. I sip on a glass of shiraz, legs folded beneath myself on the new love seat. I pause, stop breathing.

Silence...

My cell phone lights up, and its ring pierces my newfound peace. I use a specially secured phone, one immune to caller ID spoofing. So I can finally trust that it’s my best friend Darcy, not him pulling his latest high-tech terror tactics.

I put her on speaker.

“Em, are you okay?” Her voice sounds urgent, breathy, as if she’s afraid of being overheard. I feel tension in her voice – so taut that her last word trembles, nearly snaps in two. My heart seizes, adrenaline pours through me.

“I’m fine. What’s wrong? What’s going on?” My last words come out too loud as I teeter on the edge of crisis mode.

“Then you haven’t heard? About Jake?”

Reality compresses, swirls around me. Dizziness, nausea. I grip my hair with both hands, like I'm preventing my head from just falling off.

“Darce, you’re scarin’ the shit outta me!”

He has me trapped against the wall, his breath sour, laced with garlic, onions, cigarettes, booze. Inches from mine, ice blue eyes, larger than life, tremble, pulsate. Like his rage is fighting to burst free and stab me. Then he screams enraged, demands to know who I’ve talked to, who I’ve seen in the past few hours...

“Don't worry. You’re safe. Perfectly safe.”

“What? Why?” My fear becomes anger. “Just fucking tell me!”

“Em – Jake is dead.”

And my whole world implodes.

3.

That was three months ago.

Police detectives ruled Jake’s death a suicide. Gunshot to the head – a lonely, late-night flash and bang in the woods behind the house we shared. The place where I first realized something wasn’t quite right with us, with him.

Investigators interviewed me, my friends, my family. I readily agreed to a polygraph, and it came back clean. In the end, they assiduously overturned every rock, every stone, just to make sure.

All that fear, all that stress drained away over the days, weeks, and months. Yet nothing has flowed back in to fill the newly emptied space in my head. I live inside a cocoon filled with nothing but a cold, silent void. The condo around me, with all of its whiz-bang safety features, reminds me every minute of every day that the threat is gone. Gone forever. All that energy, time, money, emotion – wasted. Unnecessary. Pointless.

I hardly know anyone at my new job. My condo neighbors are strangers. My family, my lifelong friends live two thousand miles away.

So I’ve finally given in to my therapist. She’s been harassing me for months to get out and socialize, meet people – not romantically. For connection. Companionship. As luck would have it, there’s a picnic/pool party at the condo community house tomorrow evening, and I’m going.

Meanwhile, I’m busy on a marketing plan for work – perfect material for a Friday afternoon. In the middle of entering text into the project spreadsheet, the tea kettle whistles, so I hurry out to the kitchen.

I switch off the burner, pour steaming water while musing over what to wear to the party. It’s forecast to be a hot day, so something light and airy. Back in my home office – a converted second bedroom – the air feels sharply chilled. Goosebumps rise on my arms, so I rub them with my hands and glance at the screen.

Where’s the spreadsheet? My monitor shows only a tropical beach windows background image. I hurriedly check for the Excel app, but it’s been shut down. Holy shit, did I save my work? After several minutes of fruitless searching, I realize the whole fucking spreadsheet file is missing. Like it never existed. Two days of work. Gone.

So I run the special security scanner recently installed on my system, and I learn the answer, my stomach twisting into knots as I read the scanner’s findings. Sometime, about fifteen minutes ago, there was a spreadsheet file, just where I remembered saving it. And then, thirteen minutes ago, it was deleted manually with the mouse. Then the recycle bin was emptied.

4.

I’m on my love seat, eyes focused on a meditation candle burning on the coffee table. I’ve already spoken with the security command center, and there’s no evidence that my door or any of my windows have been opened since the security specialists left my condo yesterday afternoon. Only after they assure me I’m alone here, that no one has broken in, do I finally lay down the Glock 9mm I’ve held for the past two hours.

How oddly incongruous – a calming meditation candle burning less than a foot from a fully loaded semi-automatic handgun. At last my cell phone lights up. It’s Doctor Cynthia Stewart – Cindy to me – my therapist and mental life raft, returning my call from an hour ago.

I describe the incident, my voice quickly morphing from normal to trembling, my own memories suddenly scrambling until I panic and burst into tears.

“Emma, it’s normal to feel confused and frightened at a time like this. Remember, how we’ve discussed the longevity of trauma’s effects.”

“I didn’t do it myself. I swear to you, I didn’t do it myself!”

“Do what yourself?”

“Delete that spreadsheet file. I know that’s what you’re thinking. That I’m insane! That I’m sabotaging my own life!”

“I am not thinking that! Emma, put that out of your mind immediately. I do not doubt your sanity, not in any way. And neither should you! Be honest with me, and with yourself – is that what you’re most afraid of – that you did delete that file, and now you don’t remember doing it?”

Sobbing uncontrollably, I nod, face in my hands. Then I remember she can’t see me, so I pause long enough to choke out a “yes”.

It takes me a while to calm, aided by Cindy’s continuing reassurances. I eventually realize I’m still in control of myself, my situation. After all, Cindy doesn’t know about the Glock, and I don’t plan on telling her. She’d have me committed and put on suicide watch. But I know Jake… There, I said his name. I know what he’s, I mean was capable of.

Besides myself, no one but the gun store owner and my security team know about my Glock, the high-voltage stun gun, and the ten cans of pepper spray I’ve stashed around my condo, including one in my purse, two in my car.

After ending my call with Cindy, I spend another few hours redoing the lost spreadsheet work on my PC. Every hour or so, I upload the file to the company’s network drive in town, just in case. I make a lot of progress, and by ten o’clock, realize I’m only an hour or two from being back where I’d left off, before the file was deleted.

5.

I finish up for the night and realize I’m too wired, too full of racing thoughts to sleep. Time for a nice, relaxing, however-long-I-want shower.

I chose the largest shower head the builder offered, and I’m so glad I did. Seated on the bench, surrounded on three sides by colorful ceramic tiles, I relish the pulsing, warm flow of water. My face is upturned, all remnants of my tears washed away. The shower creates a fog of moist steam. Tight muscles in my shoulders and back relax, and my mood quickly follows. I could sit here forever.

Reaching for my oversize natural bath sponge, I don’t feel it in its usual spot. It’s nowhere inside the shower, so I slide open the translucent glass door a few inches and see it near the sink. I gingerly step from the shower, grab the sponge, then glance into the vanity mirror, covered with steam except for an immense heart shape, drawn, as if by someone’s fingertip. And inside that heart, before my very eyes, an unseen finger draws out the letters J + E.

I retreat into the shower, cower in a corner. Screaming. Faucet off. Where’s the towel? The towel bars are empty.

“Yooooooo-hooooooooooooo,” sings a deep male voice. His voice is deafening, resonates in my skull, turns me dizzy. Something pokes my toes from the shower floor, and I jump backward. There, inside a groove in the drain grate, a fingertip drops out of view. In its place are two glittering blue eyes staring up at me, from just a few inches down. Above white teeth arrayed in a crazed grin.

“I seeeeee youuuuuuuuuuuu!” he sings.

I stumble naked, soaking wet from the bathroom. Into my bedroom, where I open my nightstand drawer for the Glock. Gone… I move to the dresser, rifle through the drawers, but I can’t find it. Atop my pillow – my cell phone, thank God! I drop to the bed and dial Darcy. It rings and rings, and eventually someone picks up.

“Hello?” Her voice sounds cold, distant.

“Darce, he’s in here! He’s after me! Jake is after me!”

“Emma, what are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“Even with all that security bullshit, he still found me! It must be his ghost, Darce! His ghost! Do you realize what this means? I can't stop him now, no matter what!”

Then Darcy’s long, exasperated sigh.

“Okay, hear me out. First, you don’t call me for months. Then you move away without telling me. I only learned about it after the fact from your brother – and now you’re calling about someone's ghost stalking you? Where are you - right now? You need to get a grip, Emma!”

My blood turns to ice, and I vomit across the bedspread. Her voice sounds tinny from the phone since it’s now lying a foot away, so I press the speaker button and catch her mid-sentence.

“ – where you are. Your full address. I’m going to send help. Just tell me where you are, Emma. You’re ill. You need professional help. I’ll stay on the line until they get there.”

I finish my third heave, lips dripping bitter bile and acid.

“Darce – listen to me! Jake just drew a heart on my bathroom mirror! Then he sang to me from inside the shower drain!”

“Emma, you keep saying that guy's name over and over! Who the hell is Jake?”