Stalked by my Professor Novel

Chapter 35 I float through blood-stained darkness, barely aware that I exist. No body. No pain. Just blessed, wonderful nothingness. It's nice here. What I'd imagine heaven is like. ...you get to heaven yet...? Not yet, Kai, but soon. Soon. ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ find(ɴ)ovel.net A loud bang makes me jerk awake, sending a ripple of sensation through the back of my body. Not heaven. The sorority house. My bloodstained bed. College. Fuuuck. A voice billows through the fog of my mind. "Haven. Haven!

Oh my god, you're still in bed?" I want to retreat back into blissful sleep, but someone shakes my shoulder. "Haveeennn! Wake uuup!" Melissa croons, louder now. Slurring. "Wanna tell you some'in." My eyelids might as well be sealed shut with cement. But my roommate doesn't stop shaking me, and it's making me queasy. Everything hurts when I force my eyes open, like the light hitting my retinas switches on my brain's command center. Head, throat, lower belly... between my legs. Alarm bells start sounding. Why? Why does it hurt there?

"God, what?" I mumble, trying to bat her hand off my shoulder. Failing. "You missed, like, the best dInnEr EvEr," Melissa half-sings, swaying next to my bed. The room spins as I struggle into a sit. Gross. My mouth tastes like I've been sucking on pennies, and my lower lip is stinging. Was I biting it in my sleep? Melissa plops herself down on the edge of my mattress, trying to brush hair out of her face with a flick of her hand, but missing. Her mascara is smeared, her lipstick long gone, and her eyes rove my face like she's struggling to focus. God, she's drunk as fuck.

"You okay?" She gives me a lopsided shake of her head that might also have been a nod. "Ssso much liquor. So. Many. Hillary kept ordering shots, the bitch." I glance at the window. It's nighttime, which meant I've slept through the whole day. And I don't remember a single⁠- ...cry for me, sweet girl... A flicker of a dream assaults my memory. Bastian, his face near mine, his weight crushing me. Just a dream. Or a nightmare. I grimace as an ache swells between my legs. It doesn't quite feel like period pain, but what the fuck else could it be? "What time is it?" I rasp.

Melissa closes one eyes, giving me a critical stare through the other one. "Those pills're strong, huh? Came back this afternoon, you were asleep. Left, you were still asleep." Right. The pills. I vaguely remember swallowing them, crawling toward Melissa's nightstand for water. Everything after that is blank. Melissa huffs out a breath, finally succeeding in brushing hair out of her face. "Mom gets them from her doctor friend." She points at me. "Y'know, if you fight 'em hard enough, things can get pre-tty loopy." Loopy, like having a sex dream about my professor, loopy? Would explain it.

Melissa stands to go to her closet, throwing open the doors and staring inside for a long beat. "God, I'm drunk," she mutters, then drags out a pair of pajamas and tosses them onto the foot of her bed. I slowly swing my legs over the side of the bed, wincing at the sharp ache between my thighs. My skin feels like it's stretched too tight over my flesh. "D'y'know, I almost called Man-Child tonight?" She turns back to me, fingers a quarter inch apart. "This close, Haven. This fucking close. Then I remembered he's in hospital." I push myself up, legs wobbling beneath me.

The room tilts dangerously. I need to pee, need to change my tampon, need to...get my head straight. Melissa squints at me. "You okay? You look weird." "Fine." The lie tastes even worse than my mouth. "Just groggy from those fucking horse tranquilizers you gave me." She laughs and drops her cropped Chanel jacket to the floor like it doesn't cost a few thousand dollars. A glass on my nightstand catches my eye. My stomach drops through the floor. There's a used tampon inside. Why the fuck would I have put that in there? Because I didn't. ...I'm going to eat this sweet, bloody pussy...

Bastian's voice. His hands pushing my legs apart. His mouth⁠- "Jesus," I choke out, swallowing back bile as I aim for the door. "Hurry back!" Melissa calls after me, oblivious to my mental breakdown. I stumble into the hallway, lock myself in the bathroom, and slide down against the door. My fingers tremble as I pull down my underwear. Blood. But not just period blood. This is different. Darker in places. And there's something else-a sticky residue that makes me gag when I realize what it is. It wasn't a dream. Bastian was here. He fucked me when I was drugged out of my mind.

And I think...I think I liked it. The bathroom walls close in. I can't breathe. Can't think. I just need to get out. Away from here. Away from everyone. I splash cold water on my face, clean myself up quickly. When I return to our room, Melissa's snoring on her bed, still wearing most of the outfit she came home in. Moving like a zombie, I pull on leggings, a tank top, my only hoodie. My gaze sticks on the gaping black hole of Melissa's partly closed closet. I stare at it like she had, my brain ticking over like it's trying to tell me something.

Then I spot the liquor bottles peeking out behind one of her shoe boxes. You're right, Brain. I'm gonna need that. I grab the half-full tequila without thinking twice, ripping it out so fast that it clatters against the closet door. "Where're you going?" Melissa mumbles, lifting her head slightly. "I need fucking air." "But i's raining," she slurs, dropping her head back onto her pillow. "I'll survive." I hesitate, then grab her pastel blue poncho and matching rain boots out of the closet.

She's already snoring again when I close the bedroom behind me, a disgusted grimace on my face as I juggle the tequila and the tampon glass. I know where I want to go. Lookout Point. More specifically, the cliff edge that's been calling to me like a fucking siren since I came back to this cursed town. One step. One step, and it would all be over. No more nightmares. No more flashbacks. No more Bastian. No more anything. Which means no more Kai, either. My hand tightens around the tequila bottle as I hurry downstairs, tampon disposed of, glass left to dry in the bathroom.

Every step makes my thighs rub together, reminds me that Bastian had them wrenched open only a few hours ago. I slide behind the Land Rover's steering wheel, shivering in Melissa's poncho as the sheen of rain on my face cools. Air whooshes through the vents when I turn the ignition, and I grimace impatiently as I wait for it to warm up. Taking a few swigs of the tequila, I watch the drizzle collect on the windshield and run down in little rivulets. My hand is on the key, ready to turn the ignition all the way so I can start up the car, and head for the hills...literally and figuratively.

Another swig of tequila, another wince as it burns the lining of my throat. Heat invades me from the inside. Heat buffets me from the outside. My cheeks grow warm, evaporating the dampness from my skin. No more Kai. I turn the ignition off with a flick of my wrist. "Fuck that," I mutter, taking another swig of tequila. Ezra put a fucking collar around my neck, and I survived. Kai and Bastian tied me to a fucking bed, and I survived. I'm not giving in now. Not yet. Not tonight. "Fuck all of you." The woods have always been my refuge.

Even when I was little and Mom was gone and Dad was...being Dad. I'd play with Kai among the trees, pretending I was safe. Pretending my life didn't suck. All I need is a big ass hit of make believe. Worked in the past, didn't it? The bottle clinks against my keys as I slip out of the car. Now the cold drizzle feels good on my skin, waking me up from the dreary depths of my memories and nightmares. Just got to get to the trees. Then I can decide what comes next.

It takes me fifteen minutes to reach the woods beside the campus, mostly because I keep pausing to swig at the tequila, and once because I heard a group of college kids pass and I had to take cover behind a tree in case they spotted me. After that, my paranoia goes haywire. I keep hearing sounds behind me. Footsteps splashing through the puddles. The crunch of shoes on the gritty sidewalk. But every time I turn to look, the path behind me is deserted. It happens again, just before I slip between the trees.

I turn to study the strip of grass I cut through, the sidewalk on the other side, the section of car park barely visible through the drizzle past that. "You want a piece of me?" I yell, waving my bottle of tequila like a weapon. "Then come get me, motherfucker!" I let out a half-giggle, half-scream as I dash between the trees, mud and rain water splashing up to soak my leggings. Fuck everyone. Haven Lee isn't going to heaven yet. The snap of a twig behind me cuts my giggles short. This time, I don't turn around.

I plow forward, my drunken steps staggering left to right, my hands barely coming up in time to push me away from the trees I keep veering into. My heart begins to pound. Then to race. Someone's behind me. Following me. Driving me deeper into the woods. A smile flickers onto my lips. Let them.