Night Terror
Title: Night Terror
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,000
Setting: Real life/non-fandom/modern
Genre: Horror
Warnings: Stalking, threats, allusions to domestic violence and emotional abuse
Author’s Notes: Many thanks to dancingdragon3 for beta.
I was so tired of being frightened. I felt run down and worn out far beyond the thirty-nine years of life I had to claim as my own. Would that I could trade some of them in for a do-over, but that wasn’t how life worked. As night approached, the ever-present seed of apprehension sprouted into genuine anxiety, sending harsh adrenaline to chase away the weariness of the day. Sharp fear made me long for something as productive as flight, yet held me frozen in a stranglehold of indecision. It was a pattern that had been going on for far too long and sometimes I wondered if it would break me where he hadn’t.
There was nothing else I could think to do but keep going on. I’d thought through my situation over and over until my mind collapsed from the strain of going in endless circles. I’d talked to my attorney. I’d spoken with my parents. My ex I’d hardly spoken with at all and that was the source of my cyclical panic. I was defying him on the advice of my attorney, with the support of my parents. Until he negotiated a custody arrangement, I kept the kids. My ex had never demonstrated much in the way of negotiation skills. Through our unfortunately long, frequently torturous marriage, what he had demonstrated were exceptional skills at terrorism and a willingness to escalate to violence when he didn’t get his way.
I was quaking inside as I went through the motions of trying to protect myself. I checked all the doors - they were locked. I should have changed the locks, but it seemed pointless. The habits he’d trained into me defeated me before I began. His intimidation, punishment, and terror-inducing rages had left behind a trail of evidence if anyone cared to look. I’d lost count over the years of the doors I’d had to fix or have repaired or simply lived with them unlockable and sometimes uncloseable.
He had taught me that I was not allowed to close a door between us when he was angry. Nor was I allowed to lock the door if he left the house and I was home alone. He’d smashed in our front door for that transgression on my part. It had only taken the one lesson. Locking them now made me uncomfortable and downright anxious, like the very act would summon him to my door to kick it down. The sound of the deadbolt slamming home made me jump and close my eyes, breathing speeding up as I felt my heart pounding in my chest. A chill ran through me as I stepped away from the front door. I told myself I was being silly even as I rubbed at my arms fitfully. He wasn’t out there. Not right now.
The windows had been locked a few days before. I’d lied to the kids and told them it was to keep the increasingly cold air out because locked windows had a better seal. My son had intelligently asked why I was locking all the first floor windows but not the second. I was embarrassed by his cleverness. I lied again and told him I just hadn’t gotten to the second floor windows yet. I didn’t like lying to them, but how was I to tell them I was afraid of their father?
They were safely in bed now, which was where I needed to be, instead of pacing the house checking and rechecking my paltry security. The ritual did nothing to dull my fear. Nothing would keep him out if he wanted in. He’d demonstrated that to me many times. Property damage, physical damage, emotional damage - none of it mattered to him and I’d never been brave enough to fight back.
I retired to the bedroom and dressed as normal for bed, even though the desire to stay in day clothes tugged at my thoughts. I pushed that desire away, trying to tell myself that it was ridiculous paranoia. Surely I was safe enough in my own home to wear a nightgown? I made the change as quickly as possible, almost furtive in my motions, feeling too vulnerable to be naked for long.
Then I stood in my own home (in a nightgown) and looked at the objects I’d laid out on my bed stand. There was a loaded gun, a keen knife, and my fully charged cell phone. I tried to tell myself I didn’t really need these things and they were only there to bring me comfort, because I was weak. I looked at my little collection and did not feel comforted. Instead, I felt a heavy sense of foreboding. It would be so easy to turn such weapons against me, or snatch them out of my hands. Would I have the guts to use them?
I turned off the lights and got in bed like it was any other night, because what else was there to do? I wanted to live on my own, to have my own life. Yet I felt trapped just by his very existence and by the threat that he conveyed. The threat didn’t have to be explicit. I’d seen him beat up enough other men to know what would happen should I raise a hand against him. I’d heard him clearly the many times that he’d said that any woman who raised a hand against a man should only do so with full knowledge of what was going to happen as a result. He’d confessed to me that while he was in college he’d shot and killed another man during a drug sale, then disposed of the body. I had lived with him long enough to believe it. He was a dangerous and violent man, of that I had no doubt.
He’d repeated his philosophy about fighting so often that I knew it by heart - that whole clichéd crap about if your opponent brings a knife, you bring a gun; if someone puts one of yours into the hospital, send one of theirs to the morgue. It was probably from the Godfather or something like that. I didn’t care about the source - I cared that this was his idea of how to settle grievances and right now, we had a grievance between us. Was it any wonder I was so afraid?
I waited in the darkness. I should have been trying to sleep, but instead I was waiting. Nighttime had always been his favorite and so I lay there tensely … waiting … and waiting. I was not surprised when he finally called, but I was surprised that my subconscious had been right. I hadn’t even realized, until then, what it was I was waiting for. It was a short conversation. His voice dripped with every bit of barely restrained fury and threat he could muster.
Me: "Hello?"
Him: "I want the kids back right this second."
Me: "Tonight?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "No. It's 11 at night."
Him: "Well, you wanted to talk about it and that's what I want."
Then he hung up.
I tried to find a ‘silent’ setting on the phone so it would not ring again. All I found was how to leave it on vibrate instead of ringing. That was frustrating, but it was a cheap phone. I could have put it in a different room entirely, but I guess I was too thoroughly conditioned to entirely shut him out. I climbed back into bed, closed my eyes, and tried my best not to think about it. He would either call again, or he would come to the house. It was one of those two and there was nothing I could do about either one. I tried to nap.
Time passed - long enough fall into a deep slumber, but not enough to be rested. The phone buzzed on the nightstand. I started, fighting to throw off sleep, fighting to orient myself, distressed that it was taking so long to do so when something was happening in my home. Was this it? Was he breaking in? What was that noise? What should I do? My kids were upstairs asleep - did I need to go to them? It seemed impossibly far away. I needed to wake as fast as possible and I did, but I was still slow and confused. Ah, the phone. I looked in its direction in the dark and listened to it buzz. Instead of calming, the noise agitated me more and more. If I didn’t answer … didn’t that mean he would move on to his other option? I stared in the direction of the sound like it was my enemy.
It was almost certain that he had timed his call carefully, knowing I had to go to work in the morning, knowing I would be asleep. Waking up to one of his tirades was nothing new. Living with him meant never getting a good night’s sleep if was angry about something. The disorientation of being so rudely taken from sleep to wakefulness was just another weapon he loved to exploit. So many times had I been woken by him yelling, bright lights in my eyes, and the covers yanked from me, that even now that we were separated, knowing he was out there, angry, left me capable of only the uneasiest rest.
The phone fell silent at last. I lay back down, now filled with even more dread. Always before, when he’d failed to get his opportunity to vent at me, it only got worse. He’d escalate. What would he do now? Should I stay awake? Should I take the kids to my parent’s place? Was that overreacting and letting him get to me? The confusing double-bind filled my body with tension and consumed my thoughts.
In the past, he’d threatened to call my boss if he called me at work and I didn’t answer the phone to allow him to rant at me; he’d come up to my place of work and had the lobby call me down to meet him; he’d done different things to keep me from going to work at all until he made his point, that he was not to be ignored. In stores, he’d yell across the store at me if I did not stay close at his side. I would hurry to him, face hot and red, and didn’t so much as raise my eyes, too ashamed to see the faces of strangers as he chastised me like I was a child. I let it happen instead of making an even bigger scene. As long as I was married to him, as long as I wasn’t willing to divorce him over it, I had to endure it. But that was over now, right? The phone was silent. What would he do, because I would not take his call? Even as I tried to calm my breathing, my mind continued to race.
Many times through our marriage he’d told me heroic tales of clever, persistent men who won out over their vindictive, evil wives who had invariably cheated on them or were a ceaseless harridan, or disapproved of the man, or some other crime worthy of the worst the man could dish out. The men were always quite justified in his eyes. Everything the men did was always justified, just like very abusive action my ex took against me was always oh-so-justified.
Over and over he drilled it into my head that I was insane, I was hysterical, I was psychotic, I was unstable; he was rational, he made sense; he was the one the courts would believe, he was calm, he was stable. My sense of reality had become so warped that I was never quite sure what was real and that scared me worse than he did. The idea that I could already be crazy and not know it (the idea that he was right!) was terribly frightening.
The phone buzzed one last time, registering that a voicemail had been left on it. I pulled the covers up even though I felt hot. I resisted the impulse to listen to the message. I refused to let myself get up and check all the doors again, or call anyone and disturb their rest with my baseless fears. I lay there very alone. This was the third night since I’d defied him, the third night of getting little and broken sleep. My days at work had been full and my health was complicated by a lingering head cold that drained what little energy I had. Despite the tension, despite the fear, sleep found me anyway.
I didn’t realize that, though. For me, awareness lasted only a moment, going from lying in bed restlessly awake to hearing him breaking into the house. My heart began to hammer in my chest and for a few moments, the nightmare was that he was breaking in, but I had fallen asleep and was sleeping through it. I couldn’t move, paralyzed with slumber even as fear beaded sweat on my body and my breath caught in my throat. Panting, I finally forced myself awake, but like with the ringing of the phone, I was disoriented and confused. The bed stand was too far away. I struggled to it finally, not sure now where he was. The house was silent. Was he going upstairs to get the kids? Or was he coming to the bedroom to find me?
My fingers found the phone, but in the dark I couldn’t work out how to flip it open. I was panicked all the way through. I was nearly crying over not being able to get the damn thing open. What false comfort was it to have the phone at my bedside but be unable to use it when the time came? I tried to be quiet, too terrified that he’d see the light to use the lamp on the bed stand. If I could just call someone and buy some time! Finally I got the phone open, but I heard my door open. He was creeping into the room, apparently thinking I must be asleep since I’d made no indication of waking. I knew I should have reached for the gun instead. I tried to punch 911, but the phone was upside down. I don’t know what I dialed, but the light from the screen of the phone gave me away.
He knew I was awake. He could see me, spotlighted by the glow from the screen of my phone. That realization was like a bolt of lightning through my body and I finally woke for real, sweating, tangled in the sheets. I trembled and covered my face with my hands until it passed.
I was angry at myself for having such a nightmare. Weak, again! I wished I was stronger. I usually had better control of myself, but that, too, had been broken by the recent strain. I put my hands down and lay there panting, trying and failing to think of anything but the dream. Every tiny sound I could hear throughout the house was magnified in my overly alert and apprehensive mind. Eventually I drifted off and the sounds merged seamlessly with the next nightmare.
He’d already broken into the house, so that was why I didn’t hear any great clamor when he came through the door. It was only the quiet, stealthy noises I heard now. He was somewhere in my home and I didn’t know where, what he was doing, or what he intended to do. I wondered if I was dreaming again. My thoughts were muddled; I couldn’t tell. There was a small sound, like the scuff of a foot on the tile of the hallway. Immediately, panic ran through me. I looked to the door of my bedroom and sat up, straining my eyes in the darkness. In the dim light, I could see the door was ajar. But I’d shut it. I knew I’d shut it before I came to bed. I remembered shutting it, locking it. I’d shut it, hadn’t I?
I sat up in my bed, staring at the door, gripped by mind-numbing terror and unable to tell if I could believe my own senses. All his poisonous words about my questionable grip on reality gathered close to haunt me. I couldn’t find the difference between nightmare and reality, memory and dream. Where did one leave off and the other begin? No matter what I did, no matter what precautions I took, in the end it was only me, horribly alone in the unforgiving night … and the door was ajar.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,000
Setting: Real life/non-fandom/modern
Genre: Horror
Warnings: Stalking, threats, allusions to domestic violence and emotional abuse
Author’s Notes: Many thanks to dancingdragon3 for beta.
I was so tired of being frightened. I felt run down and worn out far beyond the thirty-nine years of life I had to claim as my own. Would that I could trade some of them in for a do-over, but that wasn’t how life worked. As night approached, the ever-present seed of apprehension sprouted into genuine anxiety, sending harsh adrenaline to chase away the weariness of the day. Sharp fear made me long for something as productive as flight, yet held me frozen in a stranglehold of indecision. It was a pattern that had been going on for far too long and sometimes I wondered if it would break me where he hadn’t.
There was nothing else I could think to do but keep going on. I’d thought through my situation over and over until my mind collapsed from the strain of going in endless circles. I’d talked to my attorney. I’d spoken with my parents. My ex I’d hardly spoken with at all and that was the source of my cyclical panic. I was defying him on the advice of my attorney, with the support of my parents. Until he negotiated a custody arrangement, I kept the kids. My ex had never demonstrated much in the way of negotiation skills. Through our unfortunately long, frequently torturous marriage, what he had demonstrated were exceptional skills at terrorism and a willingness to escalate to violence when he didn’t get his way.
I was quaking inside as I went through the motions of trying to protect myself. I checked all the doors - they were locked. I should have changed the locks, but it seemed pointless. The habits he’d trained into me defeated me before I began. His intimidation, punishment, and terror-inducing rages had left behind a trail of evidence if anyone cared to look. I’d lost count over the years of the doors I’d had to fix or have repaired or simply lived with them unlockable and sometimes uncloseable.
He had taught me that I was not allowed to close a door between us when he was angry. Nor was I allowed to lock the door if he left the house and I was home alone. He’d smashed in our front door for that transgression on my part. It had only taken the one lesson. Locking them now made me uncomfortable and downright anxious, like the very act would summon him to my door to kick it down. The sound of the deadbolt slamming home made me jump and close my eyes, breathing speeding up as I felt my heart pounding in my chest. A chill ran through me as I stepped away from the front door. I told myself I was being silly even as I rubbed at my arms fitfully. He wasn’t out there. Not right now.
The windows had been locked a few days before. I’d lied to the kids and told them it was to keep the increasingly cold air out because locked windows had a better seal. My son had intelligently asked why I was locking all the first floor windows but not the second. I was embarrassed by his cleverness. I lied again and told him I just hadn’t gotten to the second floor windows yet. I didn’t like lying to them, but how was I to tell them I was afraid of their father?
They were safely in bed now, which was where I needed to be, instead of pacing the house checking and rechecking my paltry security. The ritual did nothing to dull my fear. Nothing would keep him out if he wanted in. He’d demonstrated that to me many times. Property damage, physical damage, emotional damage - none of it mattered to him and I’d never been brave enough to fight back.
I retired to the bedroom and dressed as normal for bed, even though the desire to stay in day clothes tugged at my thoughts. I pushed that desire away, trying to tell myself that it was ridiculous paranoia. Surely I was safe enough in my own home to wear a nightgown? I made the change as quickly as possible, almost furtive in my motions, feeling too vulnerable to be naked for long.
Then I stood in my own home (in a nightgown) and looked at the objects I’d laid out on my bed stand. There was a loaded gun, a keen knife, and my fully charged cell phone. I tried to tell myself I didn’t really need these things and they were only there to bring me comfort, because I was weak. I looked at my little collection and did not feel comforted. Instead, I felt a heavy sense of foreboding. It would be so easy to turn such weapons against me, or snatch them out of my hands. Would I have the guts to use them?
I turned off the lights and got in bed like it was any other night, because what else was there to do? I wanted to live on my own, to have my own life. Yet I felt trapped just by his very existence and by the threat that he conveyed. The threat didn’t have to be explicit. I’d seen him beat up enough other men to know what would happen should I raise a hand against him. I’d heard him clearly the many times that he’d said that any woman who raised a hand against a man should only do so with full knowledge of what was going to happen as a result. He’d confessed to me that while he was in college he’d shot and killed another man during a drug sale, then disposed of the body. I had lived with him long enough to believe it. He was a dangerous and violent man, of that I had no doubt.
He’d repeated his philosophy about fighting so often that I knew it by heart - that whole clichéd crap about if your opponent brings a knife, you bring a gun; if someone puts one of yours into the hospital, send one of theirs to the morgue. It was probably from the Godfather or something like that. I didn’t care about the source - I cared that this was his idea of how to settle grievances and right now, we had a grievance between us. Was it any wonder I was so afraid?
I waited in the darkness. I should have been trying to sleep, but instead I was waiting. Nighttime had always been his favorite and so I lay there tensely … waiting … and waiting. I was not surprised when he finally called, but I was surprised that my subconscious had been right. I hadn’t even realized, until then, what it was I was waiting for. It was a short conversation. His voice dripped with every bit of barely restrained fury and threat he could muster.
Me: "Hello?"
Him: "I want the kids back right this second."
Me: "Tonight?"
Him: "Yes."
Me: "No. It's 11 at night."
Him: "Well, you wanted to talk about it and that's what I want."
Then he hung up.
I tried to find a ‘silent’ setting on the phone so it would not ring again. All I found was how to leave it on vibrate instead of ringing. That was frustrating, but it was a cheap phone. I could have put it in a different room entirely, but I guess I was too thoroughly conditioned to entirely shut him out. I climbed back into bed, closed my eyes, and tried my best not to think about it. He would either call again, or he would come to the house. It was one of those two and there was nothing I could do about either one. I tried to nap.
Time passed - long enough fall into a deep slumber, but not enough to be rested. The phone buzzed on the nightstand. I started, fighting to throw off sleep, fighting to orient myself, distressed that it was taking so long to do so when something was happening in my home. Was this it? Was he breaking in? What was that noise? What should I do? My kids were upstairs asleep - did I need to go to them? It seemed impossibly far away. I needed to wake as fast as possible and I did, but I was still slow and confused. Ah, the phone. I looked in its direction in the dark and listened to it buzz. Instead of calming, the noise agitated me more and more. If I didn’t answer … didn’t that mean he would move on to his other option? I stared in the direction of the sound like it was my enemy.
It was almost certain that he had timed his call carefully, knowing I had to go to work in the morning, knowing I would be asleep. Waking up to one of his tirades was nothing new. Living with him meant never getting a good night’s sleep if was angry about something. The disorientation of being so rudely taken from sleep to wakefulness was just another weapon he loved to exploit. So many times had I been woken by him yelling, bright lights in my eyes, and the covers yanked from me, that even now that we were separated, knowing he was out there, angry, left me capable of only the uneasiest rest.
The phone fell silent at last. I lay back down, now filled with even more dread. Always before, when he’d failed to get his opportunity to vent at me, it only got worse. He’d escalate. What would he do now? Should I stay awake? Should I take the kids to my parent’s place? Was that overreacting and letting him get to me? The confusing double-bind filled my body with tension and consumed my thoughts.
In the past, he’d threatened to call my boss if he called me at work and I didn’t answer the phone to allow him to rant at me; he’d come up to my place of work and had the lobby call me down to meet him; he’d done different things to keep me from going to work at all until he made his point, that he was not to be ignored. In stores, he’d yell across the store at me if I did not stay close at his side. I would hurry to him, face hot and red, and didn’t so much as raise my eyes, too ashamed to see the faces of strangers as he chastised me like I was a child. I let it happen instead of making an even bigger scene. As long as I was married to him, as long as I wasn’t willing to divorce him over it, I had to endure it. But that was over now, right? The phone was silent. What would he do, because I would not take his call? Even as I tried to calm my breathing, my mind continued to race.
Many times through our marriage he’d told me heroic tales of clever, persistent men who won out over their vindictive, evil wives who had invariably cheated on them or were a ceaseless harridan, or disapproved of the man, or some other crime worthy of the worst the man could dish out. The men were always quite justified in his eyes. Everything the men did was always justified, just like very abusive action my ex took against me was always oh-so-justified.
Over and over he drilled it into my head that I was insane, I was hysterical, I was psychotic, I was unstable; he was rational, he made sense; he was the one the courts would believe, he was calm, he was stable. My sense of reality had become so warped that I was never quite sure what was real and that scared me worse than he did. The idea that I could already be crazy and not know it (the idea that he was right!) was terribly frightening.
The phone buzzed one last time, registering that a voicemail had been left on it. I pulled the covers up even though I felt hot. I resisted the impulse to listen to the message. I refused to let myself get up and check all the doors again, or call anyone and disturb their rest with my baseless fears. I lay there very alone. This was the third night since I’d defied him, the third night of getting little and broken sleep. My days at work had been full and my health was complicated by a lingering head cold that drained what little energy I had. Despite the tension, despite the fear, sleep found me anyway.
I didn’t realize that, though. For me, awareness lasted only a moment, going from lying in bed restlessly awake to hearing him breaking into the house. My heart began to hammer in my chest and for a few moments, the nightmare was that he was breaking in, but I had fallen asleep and was sleeping through it. I couldn’t move, paralyzed with slumber even as fear beaded sweat on my body and my breath caught in my throat. Panting, I finally forced myself awake, but like with the ringing of the phone, I was disoriented and confused. The bed stand was too far away. I struggled to it finally, not sure now where he was. The house was silent. Was he going upstairs to get the kids? Or was he coming to the bedroom to find me?
My fingers found the phone, but in the dark I couldn’t work out how to flip it open. I was panicked all the way through. I was nearly crying over not being able to get the damn thing open. What false comfort was it to have the phone at my bedside but be unable to use it when the time came? I tried to be quiet, too terrified that he’d see the light to use the lamp on the bed stand. If I could just call someone and buy some time! Finally I got the phone open, but I heard my door open. He was creeping into the room, apparently thinking I must be asleep since I’d made no indication of waking. I knew I should have reached for the gun instead. I tried to punch 911, but the phone was upside down. I don’t know what I dialed, but the light from the screen of the phone gave me away.
He knew I was awake. He could see me, spotlighted by the glow from the screen of my phone. That realization was like a bolt of lightning through my body and I finally woke for real, sweating, tangled in the sheets. I trembled and covered my face with my hands until it passed.
I was angry at myself for having such a nightmare. Weak, again! I wished I was stronger. I usually had better control of myself, but that, too, had been broken by the recent strain. I put my hands down and lay there panting, trying and failing to think of anything but the dream. Every tiny sound I could hear throughout the house was magnified in my overly alert and apprehensive mind. Eventually I drifted off and the sounds merged seamlessly with the next nightmare.
He’d already broken into the house, so that was why I didn’t hear any great clamor when he came through the door. It was only the quiet, stealthy noises I heard now. He was somewhere in my home and I didn’t know where, what he was doing, or what he intended to do. I wondered if I was dreaming again. My thoughts were muddled; I couldn’t tell. There was a small sound, like the scuff of a foot on the tile of the hallway. Immediately, panic ran through me. I looked to the door of my bedroom and sat up, straining my eyes in the darkness. In the dim light, I could see the door was ajar. But I’d shut it. I knew I’d shut it before I came to bed. I remembered shutting it, locking it. I’d shut it, hadn’t I?
I sat up in my bed, staring at the door, gripped by mind-numbing terror and unable to tell if I could believe my own senses. All his poisonous words about my questionable grip on reality gathered close to haunt me. I couldn’t find the difference between nightmare and reality, memory and dream. Where did one leave off and the other begin? No matter what I did, no matter what precautions I took, in the end it was only me, horribly alone in the unforgiving night … and the door was ajar.