Not Quite Gone

It wasn’t a crime. No policemen were going to knock on the front door at 4 o’ clock in the morning and fasten cold metal handcuffs around her wrists and haul her into the back of the cruiser. But that didn’t stop her from sending jerky glaces over her shoulder when she was walking alone at night. Everytime a siren blared was enough to make her drop her coffee and hide in the nearest alleyway she could find.

She wasn’t some convict on the run. There was no need to be edgy or paranoid, but there some something unsettling her stomach every morning she woke up, something that made her skip breakfast and lunch and eat a bowl of cereal for dinner.

It’s not like she killed him. She wasn’t a murderer by any means but there was this voice sometimes that made it feel like she could have done something to change the outcome and washing her hands of his life was the one thing she could do to seal a fate in hell.

One night, before she turned in, her phone rang from the kitchen. She navigated her way through the dark and answered reluctantly.

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” the voice breath, low, sinister, warning.

She dropped the phone and it shattered against the tile.

He should have been dead. She didn’t kill him, but she knew, she saw.

His breathing filtered through the speaker even though the screen had gone black.

“I’ll see you soon,” she heard and her knees buckled. He would come find her.

It didn’t matter if she wasn’t his murderer. She knew, she saw, and she kept it to herself. Fear caught hold of her tongue and she was more his killer than wasn’t.

Maybe it wasn’t a crime but he would make her pay for her silence.