Prologue
The darkness surrounds my entire world. I see a man’s face hidden by a black ski mask flashing in and out of my vision, but it could have been just my imagination. I still can’t figure out if the pounding I hear is from my head or my heart threatening to break all medical laws and manage to shatter my rib cage and pound its way right out of my body. Looking back, it was probably the blow to my head that made all of this seem possible, but one does hear about the medical mysteries and miracles every now and then. Who am I to say that I couldn’t have been one of those people that doctors and scientists study for centuries just trying to decode what had happened. The human version of the Loch Ness Monster. They would probably have some special name to call me in the medical journals like Heart Banger or Heartbreaker, no that’s already taken. Definitely the blow to the head. Great, now I’m most definitely, probably, going to die and that song is now playing over and over again in my head. Like I didn’t have enough problems right now I needed a song stuck in my head to go with it. Oh well, at least my mind isn’t focused on the pain anymore; though I’m sure one of those fancy medical doctors would advise me that this wasn’t a good thing.
Not feeling any pain is great while it lasts, but it normally doesn’t last long if you catch my drift. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I can’t believe I have been stalked and harassed for this long and I am finally able to confront the man responsible for it. I finally get to solve the puzzle of who it is and he’s going to kill me while he wears a ski mask. Not fair. I’ll never know now who he is. I’m fairly certain the world is laughing at me.
Some sort of cosmic karma for something I don’t even know I did wrong to deserve this. Probably something stupid like how I used to pull Stephanie Carmichael’s hair in the third grade. It wasn’t my fault she thought she could cheat off me. I might be a bit of a nerd, but I’m not going to stand around and let someone cheat on a test. If she were smart she would have learnt after the first time I did it to stop trying to cheat off my paper and not the fifth time. Then again, if she were smart she wouldn’t have been cheating in the first place. I’m getting off track here, but people do say their life flashed before their eyes right before they died, maybe that’s what is happening now. Or maybe my mind is trying to distract me so I don’t know when Mr. Ski Mask comes back to kill me. Again not fair.
I’m trying to stay awake I really am. I’m not a weak person, but I’m not some heavy weight champion either. I’m a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, a typical long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I’m attractive, very attractive, I’ve known that my whole life. So to find out I have a stalker really wasn’t jaw dropping shocking. Annoying and terrifying yes, but shocking no, especially when you factor in I work as a Private Detective. Many wronged husbands who seek comfort after learning their wife has been sleeping with their best friend or brother. You’d be surprised how often that happens. After seven years working as a Private Detective, I can honestly say nothing really surprises me anymore. It’s sad, but true. I’ve seen it all from cheating lovers, to missing children, to murder, to the downright weird and certifiably insane. My point, having a stalker not shocking. Definitely terrifying.
I really should be trying to focus my mind on getting free, but my body feels like lead weight. I keep trying to get my mind to tell my body to move, but it’s like my head is no longer attached to my body. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe when I finally figure out how to turn my head I will look over and see my body lying there beside me. Well that was a morbid thought. Oh good the blackness is coming again and with it so is Mr. Ski Mask. My vision is too blurry though and this time instead of fighting back the darkness, I welcomed it and bathed in the sweet bliss of relief. The next thing I knew I was surrounded by warm light. I was no longer in the cold darkness. I couldn’t help but think about how I had gone for Hell to Heaven.
I would have been able to relax if it wasn’t for this annoying beeping sound in the background every few seconds. Maybe this was Hell after all, only one that drives you mad with annoying beeping sounds. An eternity of torture through beeping. You might think that’s crazy, but until you know how it feels to be able to do nothing but listen to the constant beeping sound as it echoes throughout your head, which by the way I’m fairly certain it is going to explode any minute now, you don’t really get to call me crazy. Even if crazy is what I am, because the second the darkness came back I welcomed it and let it drag me down into its depths with it.
After the third time that the darkness had faded I was able to open my eyes and realize that my Heaven was actually a hospital. I had survived my attack, but my attacker was nowhere to be seen. My best friend and boss, Derek Miller, was sitting down in one of those uncomfortable plastic hospital chairs. This one was orange; why anyone would buy orange plastic chairs I’ll never know. Turns out I can blame my scattered thinking on the head injury, fractured skull and all that. There were more injuries, a lot more. It doesn’t matter right now; at least that’s what Derek kept telling me. The injuries don’t matter, what happened doesn’t matter. Apparently all that matters is that I’m alive, but am I really alive? If I’m alive why do I feel nothing but empty inside?
Of course a person can’t ask a doctor that question. That question will only grant you a one-way ticket to the nut house for very close evaluation. So I try and act like I’m grateful that I get to live. That I get to live with the pain, the scars and the memories that eventually did come back to me once the pounding in my head had quieted down a bit. Ya I’m real grateful to be alive. I’m not suicidal or anything, but I’m not singing from the rooftops either, especially when my stalker is still out there and who knows when he will attack me again.
So here I am a month later standing outside of an old house that sits on ten acres of land. I can tell from the outside of it that it’s a serious fixer upper, but at least it was isolated enough to allow me some privacy and comfort of being alone. I don’t care for people much these days. A drastic change in my personality after what happened to me. I was a social butterfly and was happy when I had a hundred people around me. Now I just want to be left alone with my scars and memories. The thought of being around anyone makes my chest tighten and I feel like I can’t breathe. So isolation looks really good to me right now, even if it is in the form of an old house that would need a lot of work done to it. Work that I could figure out how to do myself with the Internet easily enough. Derek had taken care of that. He made sure I had furniture, cable and Internet so I could work from the house. It was his idea to begin with and at first I wasn’t too sure about it, but now I know he was right. I wasn’t safe in New York anymore. I can still remember perfectly what he had told me the day I was cleared to leave the hospital, all of three days ago.
“Amielia, it’s not safe for you to be here anymore. I know you’re hurt and scared, but you need to listen to me. You need to leave this life behind and start a new life somewhere else. Under a new name and a new look.” Derek said in a hurried voice. He always got that tone in his voice when he truly was worried about something or someone.
“And go where? Do what Der?” I asked with a tone that clearly showed I was too tired to even try and figure this out.
“I’ve already taken care of it. I’ve gotten you a new name and a place to live. It’s in a small little town on the outskirts so you won’t be directly in the town. I’ve had furniture put into the house as well as cable and Internet so we can communicate and you can do a home business of sorts if you want. I already have ID for you with a new look. All you have to do is change your hair and eye colour and no one will notice the difference.”
“The police.” I started, but Derek was not about to hear anything regarding the police. After the problems I’ve had in the past year I can’t say I blame him either.
“The police won’t help and you know that. How many times in the past year have you called them to tell them about an incident and they did nothing? They think you’re unstable and a waste of their resources. This is New York City and cops here they are too tired and too busy to deal with stalking issues. But no one will come looking for you in a small little no name town. I can make you disappear. I’ve done it before with other people you know that. This man will slip right through the cops’ fingers because they don’t care about you, but I do. Don’t fight me on this one Ami please I care about you too much I don’t want to lose you.”
It was more of the pleading sound in Derek’s voice that made me say screw it and agree to the move. He had already taken care of the details, all I needed to do was get in my new car, which Derek acquired for me under an alias, and start driving.
That’s how I ended up here standing in front of this old house with my hair now shoulder length and dark brown. My eyes are now green, thanks to my colour contacts that I’m still getting used to. I’ve lost some weight in the past month so I am now down to just shy of a hundred pounds. I’ll need to start gaining weight so I can be back to a healthy level. The problem was, it’s hard to eat or even think about food when your entire body is screaming out in pain when you do something as simple as blink. I’m no longer in New York City. I’m now in Jerome Arizona. I’ve never even heard of it and I knew I would have to Google it in order to be able to act like I chose this place on purpose. Though I doubt anyone would. I have no idea what I am going to do for a living; thankfully I have my inheritance from my grandparents’ death that Derek was able to transfer into my new name. How I don’t know and to be honest I didn’t even care to ask. I also have my savings account from working for Derek that was also transferred into my new name.
Derek had done this close to fifty times in his career and he was the best at it. Yet even knowing that, I don’t feel completely safe, but I knew that wasn’t on Derek. That was on the trauma I had suffered through. I couldn’t be Amielia Grant anymore. I had to be someone new, someone else. It seemed fitting, because I do feel like Amielia Grant is dead. She died by the hands of her stalker. It’s weird having to grieve for yourself, to grieve your own death and still have to live on. There wasn’t anything I could do about it now. All I could do was go inside and start what I was sure was going to be a lot of work. So with one last deep breath I headed up the front walk and opened the door to my whole new life.
That’s how I became Melissa Whitney.
