Everything about him is indistinguishable from another man, except for his size and the actions he displayed not ten minutes ago.
When my personal safety took a turn for the worst, and I started devouring all the literature I could about protecting myself, I recall a deep dive into safe houses, as they’re called, and how many safe houses were located in Tangier, Morocco back in the day.
Tangier, a city just across the Straight of Gibraltar from Spain, is reachable in under an hour by commercial ferry.
My mind, likely grasping for straws as it’s still filled with dopamine from my flight or fight response, is wondering how the man from the ‘safe house’ next to mine, got to me in such a short time as well.
Is there more to him than meets the eye? Is he…working for someone?
Nothing in this seedy neighborhood would surprise me except for an actual good guy coming to my defenses.
Well, make that two things.
The fact that this good guy, who looks a whole lot more like a bad man, has caused the flames inside me that I thought were extinguished to spark into a near immediate inferno.
I’m on the run from danger, so why is it that Mr. Dangerous Next Door has me feeling like I should run into his arms for safety?
Like he’s the one who was put on this earth to protect me, guide me in this cruel world, and keep me safe?
And if that feeling isn’t the safest one for someone like me to have.
Or is it?
3
Daniel
I sink into the couch I found on Craigslist and bought with a burner phone and a fake name.
My chest feels like there’s a piston inside it firing at full throttle, and it’s not from the fight. It’s from her.
Fighting is second nature to me, protection and survival at the root of everything I do.
But as an orphan it was always my own protection and survival, not anyone else’s.
r />
I lift myself from the couch and move into the spare bedroom I’ve been working on since she arrived. It sat empty this whole half a year, but this week something inside me told me I needed it fixed up so someone could play here.
Thoughts of mating with her, making a life of our own were on my mind, but I know this neighborhood isn’t the right place to do that. So why the interest in addressing the room in such a way?
As they say on the street or in the steel cage fighting matches, ‘game recognizes game.’
And as someone who never had a childhood I recognized the same in her. I want to shoot my fist into the sky, grab the childhood she never had, and bring it back down to earth for her. To hand deliver it on a silver platter, or in her case a Disney themed placemat.
If someone walked into my place right now they’d think I was crazy, but I don’t care, and nobody visits me anyway. Not ever, and it’s by my own choosing.
But that’s going to change soon. It’s time for a visitor all right, but the smartest way to go about that is for me to be her visitor, and not the other way around.
Meet her in a place she feels safe. She’s probably terrified at the moment and if I knocked on her door and offered her a place to spend the night so she’s not alone, it would only make things worse.
That can’t happen, but what will happen is tomorrow I’ll introduce myself like I should have when I first laid eyes on her, despite the risk to everything I’ve been doing the last six months.
And until tomorrow I’ve got another plan.
I take a quick shower and change into all black clothing, before sliding into the hallway in as stealth a manner as possible.
I sit down the hall a bit at an angle where she can’t see me, the light from underneath her door letting me know she’s still awake.