Absolute Dark  - One (UPDATE#1)

Absolute Dark

By Nyx

Chapter One — Down A Dark Highway…

I can tell I'm dreaming because Andrew is looking into my eyes & calling my name gently, "…Sabrina…" while we make love. It's a truer method for telling if I'm asleep than pinching myself.

I love my boyfriend, but he's not perfect, and clearly my subconscious wants to remind me of this as much as possible.

Something he actually can do, most of the time, is make me cum.

Thankfully my dreams give in to my wants here and his blue eyes never leave mine as we finish, sweating and breathing heavily I can barely feel any part of my body, it's all tingles. 

He pulls out of me and flops over on his side, I find my balled up panties on the far edge of our bed and put them between my legs to at least try and protect the sheets.

It's then that I realize I can still hear moaning, I look over to Andrew again, he's fast asleep.

My eyes shoot open and I inhale deeply, as if I were holding a breath. My beautiful king size memory foam mattress and weighted blanket is suddenly cold hard ground and a high-end sleeping bag, which still doesn't compare.

I hate sleeping bags and he knows this.

I'm staring at the roof of our tent, through its tiny mosquito screens into the dark, lost in the barely visible tree branches swaying gently overhead when everything starts coming back to me, we're out in the forest.

Andrew is beside me fast asleep, and we're camping, obviously his idea.

"Babe, it's not even far from the nearest town, there's beautiful hiking, we can even rent canoes. It's gonna be amazing, I promise you."

I remember that I really don't want to be here despite his best efforts to talk up the idea.

All day yesterday we hiked, it was a beautiful hike but it was tainted, I couldn't get her out of my mind and we fought over it again. He swam & I read, we ended the evening too tired to make love.

At least that's what I told myself.

So I look over to Andrew, hoping to seduce him, and I see he's gone, I suppose I had just assumed he was there when I woke up.

I wait a few minutes, checking my phone, which of course gets no service. He's taking too long to piss.

Then I remember the moaning, and I realize I still hear it faintly, and the sound of woodland friction. 

There are other girls on this campsite, I get dressed and shoot out of the tent, ready to find Andrew fucking around again.

It's very dark, aside from a tent which looks to be about two minutes walking distance from our tent, the brisk morning air feels wet and a light fog begins on the edges of the campsite clearing.

Knowing this time I can't forgive him, I'll need to find a way back into the city.

As I stroll towards the only lit up tent, my mind flashes to when I caught Andrew with my cousin last year. He called her name, I bet he looked into her eyes too. I might kill him.

I'm getting close enough now to see that there is a very male figure moving around in that tent, backlit by what's likely some small, shitty, cheap lantern.

He does have a thing for poor girls after all, I'm getting angrier and angrier as I near the tent.

Then… I realize I can't moaning anymore, just movement and wet sounds. Instead of continuing to the side of the tent and screaming for him to get out, I start to walk around to the front of the tent, which is open for some reason. 

"Andrew..?" I croak out.

Andrews' head rolls out of the tent. His beautiful blue eyes looked directly into mine.

His lips are gone. He blinks.

I ran into the woods directly behind me. I know I screamed at some point, but all I know now is how out of breath I am, how hurt I feel and how hopeless my situation actually is.

I hear a man screaming behind me as I run, threatening to do just about every painful thing under the sun to me.

And then, god bless, I hit the road, tripping and falling face first into it as a car hit its brakes right in my face. How ironic, to get run over while running from a killer. 

I jump up looking towards the car, trying like hell to ignore the pain in my knees and hands, the fire in my lungs and the shivers I'm now suffering from.

The silhouette of a plump, mountain of a man exits the car, rocking it as he does.

I can't make out his eyes, aviator sunglasses lock them away like a character from a garbage dime store novel.

My eyes adjust and I can just make out his uniform, and that the car is a fancy police cruiser.

"God damn kiddo, are you okay? I'm sorry about that." The cop asks me. 

 I croak out, "No, someone is trying to kill me."

He waves me over to the car urgently as I start to lose feeling in my fingers to the morning air, I jump into the passenger side. 

He gets back in with his pistol pulled, looking ready for a gunfight, he radios 

for help while I stare into the woods, I can't make sense of the radio call signs they use.

"Okay, what is actually happening sweetheart, who is trying to kill you?" 

 "I don't know, I have no idea, he's big and he killed my boyfriend…" I can't stop the tears pouring down my face now.

"Can we go now Officer, we need to go now he's right behind me." 

 "Now you listen here little miss, I'm the Chief of Police around here, ain't no one even gonna touch this cruiser without my say so, you're safe, here."

He clicks the doors closed, and my heartbeat instantly gets a bit more manageable.

"So, what exactly is happening here?" He asks, I start walking the Chief through what happened after I woke up.

He listened intently and I started to forget that it just happened, it all starts to feel like a dream or a distant memory as my body relaxes.

"That's it, we need to go, did you radio for back up?" 

 "No, sweetheart, that's not really an option for someone like you, on a highway like this…"

The Chief looks straight through me with a very straight face, the portrait of a miserable, pitiful, dirty girl stares back at me from his sunglasses.

I hate her. 

 He unlocks my door, I snap my head to the door, as if on autopilot, in the fog at the edge of the tree line I see someone waiting.

I look back to the Chief, he's not alert anymore, he's smiling, he hits me. "I shouldn't have stopped running" is the only thought in my head.

Everything is fuzzy, my door opens.

I'm dragged out, I scream in the wind while a warm liquid drips down my face into my eyes, I kick in the dirt as I'm dragged back through the woods, but I know the last thing I'll see is that god damned camp site, glazed in crimson.

- — — -

I tighten my hand around Jane's ponytail, determined to pull her wet lips up to mine by her pretty golden hair.

A wave of warmth swims up my arms, accompanied by tender breathing along my stomach and breasts. I let go of her hair as she embraced me.

Our tongues intertwine and I taste us, I can't help but moan. My legs feel at home with her between them, her thighs radiating heat into my core.

Even with my eyes closed and my mind given over to her, I see my pale hands run across her suntanned skin clear as day. 

 A very annoying jingle starts emanating through our open doors, from Jane's room, "Shit!, sorry that's the conference."

She blurts out, kissing me before running into her room, wiping her mouth and pulling her skirt down as she waddles her sexy valley girl ass across the hallway into her room.

I guess I'm awake now.

Her door closes & I gradually make my way out of my bed.

I pull on a giant sweater and some tight sweatpants, shimmy into my faded pink slippers and head to the bathroom, nearly tripping on the mountains of clothes I really need to pick up today.

I flip the ridiculous flower pedal light switch & the fairly sun lit bathroom flashes to bright white.

I try to blink the fluorescent bathroom light burn out of my eyes, as I make my way to the sink slowly but surely. 

 Groggily washing my face, wiping away the black eyeliner & lipstick leftover from last night, I force myself to look in the mirror.

I have mixed feelings about my shaved head, but the convenience can't be understated. I give myself a wink and hop in the shower.

Twenty minutes later and my confidence is a bit higher, I've got my face on, minimal as it is, I can't stop loving black, it's the little dead goth girl in me. 

 I can't lie, my style has been a great buffer for myself and the man-children at Ryerson, at the cost of some decent people making it through I'm sure. 

A fairly muscular, tall, perpetually bitch-faced white girl, usually clad in black isn't the ideal match for most people I suppose. 

I'm pulling on clean, well, cleaner pants when I get lost in thought, I haven't wanted to fuck a man in at least five years, maybe I should expand my social circle? 

 I really can't stand listening to most people unless it's for work though, and for now, Jane is my own little Barbie until she gets bored, or infatuated with someone else. 

 So why bother? I think as I slip on my socks & pull back on my sweater. Snatching my reading glasses from my corner desk, I catch a glimpse of Coraline.

My baby sister.

Our foster parents, and even other kids always said we looked so similar, even though I'm 6 years older than her.

I framed this picture with a 'Power Puff Girls' frame, a show we used to watch as kids. 

We have the same porcelain skin, but she's shorter. I think she's much prettier than I am, I'd say she's beautiful.

Her facial features are sharper, she's plump in all the right places, and she's as sweet as pie. Just looking at her makes me feel better about my looks whenever I'm down on myself.

If we looked similar like people told us, I was happy.

My phone alarm goes off and a reminder to complete my only real work for the day stares me in the face.

I swipe away the notification, and sit down at my desk to look over then send my first article in for review for my new internship.

Before you ask, growing up in the system and getting out without a baby and/or addiction was all the inspiration I needed to kick the shit out of my journalism classes. 

Four years later I'm about to get the only Bachelor's degree in my family & my internship would give my foster parents heart attacks, if they weren't already dead. 

 It was always the more social stuff that threw a wrench into the works for me, and the framework this profession provides, has been akin to therapy in terms of getting me to be comfortable with people again.

At least that's what I assume, I've never been one for traditional therapy myself. I was more of a Jim Beam girl, then a whole lot of cannabis kind of gal, now I mostly exercise and read.

I finished final editing and hit send. The fear hits me fast and hard.

My spine chills and I'm on my feet before I realize it. I haven't felt this in so long. So I do what I did back then, I call Coraline & pace.

"Abi.." She answers on the first ring. My heart calms down by at least five beats per minute. 

"Hey, sorry, I know it's kind of early for you." She sighs at these words. 

"I've been up for a few hours actually." Coraline retorts. 

"Oh, well, you've got a lead on me then." I laugh. 

"Abigail, you've got better things to be doing, I'm sure. I really appreciate it, but you don't need to check up on me constantly."

"You're right, I'm sorry, I just got a weird feeling.." 

"You sure that wasn't Jane grabbing your ass?" We laugh. 

 "I do have to go though.." She lets out. 

"Sure, yeah, sorry. Love you." 

"Love you too." I replied.

The dial tone greets me, she's rarely that short over the phone, even if she is busy.

But she's not wrong, I can't let guilt about leaving her back home hold me back when she doesn't. 

I need to focus on my life. Cora is 18, and at least a bit smarter than I was at her age, she'll be fine.

Speaking of my own life, the scent of bacon wafts its way into my senses, a quick glance out my bedroom door shows that Jane's is wide open.

A quick jaunt brings me to the cozy kitchen I share with Jane, I honestly can't believe she's done this…