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she would stay over at Tracy’s tomorrow
night. Maybe then she would feel better and not be so paranoid.
After a brief struggle with her own mind, she fell into a light
sleep.
     

Part 5:
February 14th, Valentine’s Day
     
    Amber twitched
and sighed heavily. Something felt very wrong to her but she could
not place why. She slowly opened her eyes and noted that she was
lying on one side, facing the en suite bathroom with the window at
her back. She squinted wearily and knew something looked wrong.
    It came to her
in a mere instant of clarity: there was not enough light in the
room. Only sunlight streamed through the window and the overhead
light she had left on had been turned off. Mixed feelings shot
through her then and she struggled with them.
    Her first
feeling was happiness. With the overhead light off, Greg must have
returned home and turned off the light before waking her. The
second feeling was of deep foreboding. She had no reason to suspect
the one who turned the light off was anyone but Greg and yet her
intestines were tying themselves in knots.
    She noticed the
shadow spilling over her covers and it dawned on her that it was
the shadow of a man. This should have made her joyful because it
should have kicked the feeling of foreboding to the preverbal curb.
Unfortunately the shape of the shadow was all wrong. The man was
too tall and too slim to be Greg.
    Greg was only
five feet and ten inches tall, average sized. They were actually
the same height and she remarked to him all the time that the
numbers for her meant she was above average while for him he would
forever be average. He took this with a smile or a laugh.
    Despite his
average height, Greg had broad shoulders and a thick back. His
waist tapered to his hips and he did have a bit of a pouch
beginning now but the rest of his body was built more muscular than
what the shadow spilling across her form was revealing to her.
    Amber heard the
breathing then. It was light and fast, Amber could tell that the
stranger standing next to her bed behind her was excited. Amber
knew she could not reach the baseball bat if it was still against
the dresser. The stranger had probably moved it and even if he had
not, there would be no time for her to turn, throw off the covers
and grab the handle before he grabbed her.
    Or worse:
before he grabbed the baseball
bat and beat her with it. Amber swallowed thickly and wished she
had hidden the baseball bat underneath the covers. At least then
she would have a bit better chance of fending off the unknown man
behind her.
    A smell
permeated her nostrils finally and she blinked at it. It smelled
like old copper pennies and if she had not been a nurse, she was
certain she would have smelled it quicker. Being a nurse made her
used to this particular smell and she almost cursed her own lack of
attention. The figure behind her was either bleeding or covered in
blood. If Amber strained to listen, she could hear the blood
pattering on the area rug that the man was standing on behind
her.
    She wondered
briefly what would cause that amount of blood to be on a person and
knew that the man either had to be bleeding from the throat or
would have had to cut someone across the throat. Bleeding from the
throat would mean she could just wait him out as he would die in
less than five minutes. If he had cut someone across the throat
then he could stand there forever. Eventually he would get bored of
watching her and attack.
    A thought
dawned on Amber and she suddenly realized that the stranger behind
her was not bleeding from the throat. His breath was not coming out
raspy or wet enough. So he had cut through the flesh of someone
else’s throat and been covered in the spray in the process. He had
probably watched the spray until it died down and he knew for sure
the victim was dead from loss of blood.
    Amber almost
jolted upright in bed at that thought. The only person who could be
dying in her house would be Greg. Tears came unbidden to her eyes
and