“I wanted to check the rooms upstairs for heat. I remember the room I was in had a fireplace, but I’m not sure about the other ones.” She followed me along like a puppy and I didn’t stop her. It was pretty cute and I didn’t mind the company. I checked the rooms one by one, there were four of them but just as I guessed, the room that I had picked, which turned out to be the master bedroom was the only one with a fireplace in it.
“What now?” she asked.
“The other rooms are going to be stone cold. I should go back downstairs.”
“Go back downstairs? For what?”
“It’s either I take the couch downstairs or we share the bedroom.” I didn’t mean for it to sound like a threat. The truth of the matter was, of course, I would’ve loved to share the bedroom, the bed with her. Sleep would have been the last thing on my mind if I did, but I’d do my best to control myself. I wasn’t coming on to her, we had made a deal. I was just laying out the options we had that offered the most comfort to both of us. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable by suggesting that we share a room but I needed her to know that we had only two options.
“Is that it?” she asked. “I can go downstairs. It’s not a problem.”
“I’m not letting you do that.” I didn’t wait for her to argue with me. Instead, I walked into the bedroom and put the lantern on the ground close to the bed. After that, I went past the bedroom and set a couple of candles next to the sink, lighting them. The light coming from there wouldn’t be very strong, but she seemed freaked out by the dark and the scary movie that we just watched, so it was something. Besides that, in the bathroom, nothing was flammable just in case the candles got knocked over. We didn’t need another disaster on top of the one we were trying to survive already.
The thought that she was so scared from the movie and the lights going out that she wouldn’t want to be alone tonight crossed my mind, but I quickly pushed it away. This was not the right time to play knight in shining armor. It was like the circumstances just wanted us to fuck. We were stuck together in the middle of nowhere with no idea when we would be able to get out. She was scared, and the lights had just gone out. The thought of keeping her warm tonight was driving me to distraction. I was glad that the lights were so low.
I walked back out into the bedroom. She was standing awkwardly next to the bed.
“I meant what I said about sleeping downstairs. You are a lot taller than me and the couch might be uncomfortable.”
“That’s okay. I’ll live. Do you need anything before I leave?”
She shook her head. The way my mind was racing with thoughts about her, it was good that I was going to be putting some distance between us tonight. I didn’t need to make it harder for me to act like a gentleman. I could have asked to share the bed and it sound like a legitimate claim but my motives would be lustful more than practical.
“Okay then, go to sleep
. Hopefully tomorrow, a lot of the snow will be gone.” I walked out and closed the door behind me. Deep breath. You did it.
On my way downstairs, I grabbed the comforter and pillow off one of the beds in one of the other bedrooms. I tried to remember the last time I voluntarily slept on a couch and came up blank. The couch was pretty roomy, but of course, I would’ve picked sleeping in a bed over this. Even better than sleeping in a bed was sleeping in the bed that Maggie was also sleeping in.
I didn’t bother with any lights in the living room beside the fireplace. I set up my bed and took off a couple of layers to get comfortable. Hopefully, tonight wouldn’t be a long one. I lay back on the pillow and got comfortable. Looking up at the ceiling, I wondered which of the upper rooms was directly above me.
She was right upstairs and she felt so fucking far away. The other way the night could have gone if we hadn’t decided we were just friends of friends ran through my mind and I thought about rubbing one out. It almost felt dirty to think about that while she was so close.
I closed my eyes. Soon enough it would be morning, and this would be over.
8
Maggie
It was so quiet. It was the kind of quiet that sounded loud after a while. Even though I knew I was alone, it was hard not to feel like there was something or somebody in the room with me. This was technically a cabin in the woods no matter how nice it was on the inside and nothing good ever happened at a cabin in the woods. We were in the middle of nowhere with nobody around for miles but who knew how many other people right outside also thought there was no one around for miles.
If I was a homicidal maniac who snuck up on unsuspecting victims who had come to the woods seeking solitude, I’d pick myself as a victim. I wasn’t particularly fast, I didn’t know how to fight and it was dark so even if I survived, I wouldn’t be able to identify the assailant.
I blamed the stupid horror movie.
I stared up at the ceiling, at the shadows that the multiple light sources cast. The room was fairly big, big enough to fit the king-sized bed as well as storage but because of the fireplace, it was nice and warm. I thought I’d would be out like a light after the day that we had had, but I couldn’t go to sleep for the life of me.
I hated horror movies. First of all, I had never come across one that was well done, but that was beside the point. I avoided them completely, as a rule. The thing was, my ex, Paul, loved them. He watched them almost exclusively. While we were together, he wanted to watch a lot of them with me. I could only say no so many times before I had to finally concede. In the beginning, it wasn’t that bad and relationships were about compromise or whatever, but then he got weird about them.
Upon reflection, I should’ve stuck to my guns in some way, drawn a firm boundary because I knew now that he used them to mess with me. He would find the absolute worst of the worst and make me sit through them with him. Everything from Hollywood movies, to little independent films, and foreign films, to what was most accurately described as snuff movies. It bothered me to this day whether any of the violence I watched was real and not simulated.
He loved gore which should have been a red flag at the time. People threw the word psychopath around too much but I would use it earnestly with him. Some people liked horror movies, it wasn’t that deep, but he really liked horror movies. When he managed to break me down enough to watch one with him, he would grab me and hold me close, so close it was uncomfortable. He would run his hands over my tits or stick one down my panties as we watched. He would whisper to me, talk about what was happening on the screen, and worse. It made me sick. I’d try to get free but he’d make me beg. Turn it into a gross game where he finally let me go when he got bored of playing.
It was incredible what distance and a little bit of knowledge did for you. He was not normal. I said that, but of course, there were tons of people like him. He was a sadist at the least and a narcissistic abuser at the worst.
I learned that was a thing because someone left a magazine on the subway that had a feature story about a relationship that was eerily similar to mine. It was about a low-level female celebrity who was coming clean about a relationship she was in that left her broke, desperate, and in search of justice. The guy played the part of an international playboy but was really a conman who got into relationships with women and abused them, all while stealing their money and ruining their self-esteem.
Paul hadn’t taken money from me, not in any significant amount but he had taken time, my confidence, and my ability to trust in myself before I finally got the guts to leave. The man in the article did all the things Paul did to me.