The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 2.

I wake to a pounding in my head.

Bang, bang, bang.

My eye lids are heavy and I can feel the sweat all over my body, my scarf now feeling like hands wrapped tightly around my throat.

My body is heavy, trying to move through the left over foggy effects of the Xanax in my system making waking up feel like the hardest struggle. My body wants me to give back into the warm comfort it provides.

Come back to sleep, back where it is safe. You don't want to be here. Come back with me...

It whispers to me, scratching at the edges of my consciousness. It begs me not to leave.

But the pounding in my head, and the hands around my throat, they beg me to wake up. They pull me back to the real world. The one I hate.

I grip lazily at the scarf at first, then as it begins to feel even tighter with my efforts, panic starts in.

I jolt upright, my head screaming from the quick movements, everything hurts. I can still feel and hear the banging inside my skull.

Bang, bang, bang.

I open my eyes and am stunned for a short second, realizing where I am. Seeing that fireplace in front of me again. The fire crackling softly in the firebox.

I don't remember lighting a fire.

The stiffness in my body suggests I haven't moved since I sat here on this loveseat last night, but sometimes that's how the drug works too. I always wake up feeling like a corpse being reanimated, cracking the rigor mortis as my stiff joints begin to once again bend and flex. 

I must have gotten cold last night.

Outside the window I can see the snow is still falling, heavy even for this time of year. The window fogged over. The light hurts my eyes and I lean forward, holding my aching head in my hands.

The banging happens again, only now I realize it isn't in my head at all. It's someone at the front door.

Shit.

I pull myself off of the couch, finally releasing myself from the scarf and my parka, throwing them both down onto the scuffed hardwoods floors. My threadbare sweatshirt sticks to my clammy skin, sending goose flesh across my chest and down my arms.

I stumble towards the door, my legs not quite ready to support my weight.

The heavy wooden front door rattles in front of me as the person on the other side continues to knock incessantly.

I press my face to the small peep hole, having to creep onto my toes to see.

A man stands there, his arms wrapped tightly around himself as he looks around, shaking in the cold wind I can feel coming in from the crack bellow the door. 

"What do you want?" I yell through the door and he quirks his head to the side.

"Hello?" He shouts back at the door. "Miss Jacobs?"

"What do you want?" I repeat the question through the door. Leaning my weight into it to keep from falling back flat footed to where I cannot see him.

He steps in closer to the door, using his arm to push his wet glasses back up onto his nose.

"Miss Jacobs, I'm Elroy Jinks, I work for the-." I already know what he's going to say. I drop down, no longer needing to see him.

"No comment." I shout back, cutting him off. I wish I could just tattoo that statement onto my forehead to just save us all the trouble. I've been repeating that phrase over and over since I was seventeen years old.