"The Bathroom":
I only took the night shift at the convenience store because it fit around my college classes. The place was tiny—three aisles of snacks, a humming drink cooler, a fading lottery poster, and a single bathroom in the back that always smelled faintly of bleach and something older. Most nights dragged by in slow motion. Stock a few shelves. Wipe the counter. Pretend to study. Listen to the clock tick loud enough to feel like a heartbeat.
But that night didn’t drag. It shifted. It changed everything.
It started the same way as always. Around midnight, the bell above the door gave its tired little jingle. I looked up from my textbook. A man walked in—late thirties maybe, scruffy beard, clothes worn thin like he’d slept in them for days. He kept his head down, shoulders high, hands buried deep in his pockets. He moved through the aisles like he’d forgotten how to be a normal shopper. Picked up a candy bar. Put it back. Picked up another. Put that one back, too. Not browsing—calculating.
“Can I help you find something?” I called out, trying to sound casual. My voice echoed in the empty store, too loud in the stillness.
He glanced at me, eyes sharp and narrow. “Just looking,” he muttered, his voice like sandpaper. He grabbed a soda, brought it to the counter. When I rang it up, he paid with crumpled bills, never meeting my eyes. As he turned to leave, he paused.
“Hey… bathroom. You got one?”
“Yeah, in the back. Need the key.” I handed him the big plastic tag we used so people wouldn’t walk off with it. He nodded once and disappeared through the back hallway.
I tried to go back to my reading, but something about him stuck with me. The way he kept glancing at the windows. The way his jaw shifted like he was grinding his teeth. Like someone waiting for something—or someone—to catch up to him.
Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen.
No flush. No water. No noise. Just the hum of the lights and the buzz of the cooler.
I stood there, trying to convince myself I wasn’t being paranoid. Night shifts make you imagine things. Everyone says so. Still… I walked to the back.
“Everything okay in there?” I called through the door.
No answer.
I knocked harder. “Sir?”
Nothing.
The silence pressed in, thick and heavy. My stomach dropped. I grabbed the spare key from the office, my hands trembling without me realizing it.
When I unlocked the door and pushed it open, I expected to see him collapsed on the floor, maybe overdosed or passed out.
But the bathroom was empty.
Light on. Sink dry. Toilet untouched. And the key tag sat neatly on the counter.
He hadn’t walked past me.
He hadn’t slipped out the front door.
I would’ve heard it—the door had an old metal hinge that screamed when it moved.
My eyes moved to the window above the toilet. Too small for a person. Locked.
Then a soft thump above me.
I froze. The ceiling was one of those cheap drop-tile ones—thin white panels resting on metal rails. The kind anyone could push up with one hand.
My heart pounded. I stared up at the tiles, searching for any shift, any sign of movement. Nothing.
I backed out slowly, eyes on the ceiling, then returned to the front counter and opened the security monitor. I rewound the footage. There he was—entering the bathroom. The door closing behind him.
No one came out.
Another thump. Louder. Directly above me.
I jumped back so fast the chair toppled over. The panel above the counter… was it sagging slightly? Or was that my imagination?
I reached for the phone, thinking about calling my manager, but what would I even say? “A man disappeared and now my ceiling is making noises”? I sounded insane even in my own head.
I tried to distract myself by restocking chips, but every rustle reminded me of movement overhead. The store felt too bright, too empty, too exposed.
Then the bell above the door jingled again.
I spun around, heart in my throat—but this time it was a police officer. He stepped inside like he was just grabbing coffee on break, but his eyes scanned the store with purpose.
“Evening,” he said. “You seen a guy come through here? Scruffy beard, about six foot, driving a blue sedan?”
My mouth went dry. “Yeah. He was here. Bought a soda, went to the bathroom… and then he… disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” The cop frowned. “His car is still outside. Matches a BOLO from earlier tonight. He assaulted two people down the road—clerk and a customer. Badly.”
The fluorescent lights suddenly felt too loud. “He asked for the restroom key. I checked after he took too long, but he was just… gone.”
The cop’s expression hardened. “Show me.”
I brought him to the bathroom. He scanned the tiny space, then looked up.
“These panels lift?”
“I heard… noises. Up there.” My voice was barely a whisper.
He stepped onto the toilet and pushed a tile up with his flashlight.
“Police! If you’re up there, show yourself!”
At first, there was only silence.
Then—scrambling. Fast. Heavy.
The officer drew his gun, shouting again. I stumbled backward, nearly tripping over myself as I retreated to the hallway.
Then chaos erupted—thuds, grunts, dust falling like snow. The man was up there. Hiding. Crawling around above me the entire time.
Backup arrived just as a ceiling tile crashed down and the man fell through, hitting the floor in a twisted heap before scrambling to his feet. His eyes locked onto me—wild, frantic.
He lunged.
I screamed.
The cop slammed into him, tackling him just inches from where I stood. The struggle was brutal—shouts, curses, the scrape of boots on tile. “Stay down!” the officer yelled. “You’re done!”
When they cuffed him and dragged him out, he twisted his head toward me, eyes full of something cold and furious.
“You should’ve left me alone,” he hissed as they hauled him into the night.
They later found a knife in his pocket. One he hadn’t pulled yet. One he had definitely planned to.
Turns out his name was Robert Hayes. He’d been on the run for weeks, drifting from town to town, hiding in ceilings of stores to rob them after closing—sometimes worse. The assaults earlier that night were bad. The news later said the gas station clerk he attacked might not fully recover.
Police told me, flat-out, that he planned to wait me out. “She was alone,” he admitted. “Easy target.”
I quit a few days later without looking back.
But the thing that still gets me? After everything, when we cleaned up the mess, I saw it: a single dark footprint stamped in the dust above the bathroom, right above where I usually stood to restock. He’d been crawling around up there, watching through vents.
Maybe even watching me.
Now, whenever I’m in a quiet store, I look up. Because ceilings aren’t just ceilings anymore.
They’re hiding places. And sometimes, someone is already up there—waiting.
"The Gravel Pit":
I was wiping down the counter at the little convenience store where I worked the late shift, the kind of job you take when you’re young and desperate for tuition money. The place was barely more than a box with three aisles, a humming cooler in the back, and a flickering sign in the window that buzzed like an insect trapped in a jar. Nights were usually quiet—too quiet sometimes. A couple of drunks looking for cigarettes, a trucker staggering in for coffee, the occasional teenager trying to shoplift gum. Same routine, same silence, same loneliness.
I’d only been there a few months, but the hours had begun to blend together. Sweep the floor. Stock the chips. Check the expiration dates on the milk. Pretend not to hear the strange creaks from the back storage room. Lock up at sunrise. It was all muscle memory now.
But that night—that night—everything shifted in a way my body sensed before my brain caught up.
The bell above the entrance chimed around midnight. I glanced up from the textbook I pretended to be studying but mostly used as a way to look busy. A man stepped inside. Ordinary. That was the first thing I thought. Ordinary in the way people can be so painfully forgettable you only realize afterward that forgettable is its own kind of danger.
He looked mid-thirties, short hair, plain jacket, face that could blend into any crowd. He wandered the aisles slowly, touching things without really looking at them—picking up a candy bar, setting it back, scanning the shelves with a strange stillness. I kept an eye on him the way you do when you're alone at night and don’t have a coworker to joke with or hide behind.
Eventually he approached the counter empty-handed.
“Excuse me,” he said softly, but there was something tightened underneath the softness. “My car broke down outside. Do you have a phone I can use?”
We had a payphone outside, but it had been out of service for days. I pointed to the one behind the register. “You can use this one. Just keep it quick. What happened to your car?”
“Just won’t start,” he said. He smiled, but his eyes didn’t. They stayed hollow, unfocused, almost rehearsed. “Probably the battery.”
He dialed a number, turning slightly away from me. He spoke low—too low. I heard nothing but faint murmurs. When he hung up, he let out a breath that sounded perfectly crafted to gain sympathy.
“No answer. My friend must be asleep. Look… could you maybe come take a quick look at the car? I just need another pair of eyes.”
My stomach tightened. Store policy said never leave the building during your shift. And everything in me whispered don’t go, don’t be stupid, don’t put yourself in a situation you can’t get out of.
But he looked harmless. Tired. Embarrassed. And the parking lot was just a few steps away under bright lights.
“I don’t know much about cars,” I said, hoping he’d let it go.
“Please,” he pressed. Not desperate—controlled. “Just a minute.”
Against every instinct I had, I nodded. “Okay. One minute.”
I locked the drawer, grabbed my keys, and followed him out.
The air outside felt colder than it should’ve. The parking lot was empty except for his car—a dark sedan pulled near the tree line, where the security lights didn’t reach. That should’ve been the second warning. The first was him.
He popped the hood. I leaned over the engine, pretending to know what I was looking at. “Maybe the battery cables are loose,” I said, because it sounded like something a person might say.
And then I felt it—cold, hard, pressed into my side.
I looked down. A knife. Long. Reflecting the dim light like a tiny strip of moon.
My breath hitched, everything inside me freezing.
“Get in the car,” he whispered. The softness was gone. His voice was steel. “Don’t make a sound.”
“What—why? Please, I—”
“Shut up,” he hissed. “Move.”
He pushed me toward the passenger door. My mind spun—scream? Run? If I made a sound, he’d stab me. He was too close. Too calm. Too sure.
He shoved me inside. Got behind the wheel. The knife stayed out, inches from my ribs.
He turned the key.
The car started instantly.
The breakdown had been a lie.
We pulled out of the lot and onto a dark road that cut through empty woods. My pulse hammered so hard I felt it in my teeth.
“Where are we going?” I whispered. “Please—just let me go. I won’t—”
He glanced at me, and for the first time, I recognized something familiar in the harsh angle of his jaw.
“You know me,” he said. “Don’t you? High school.”
My brain scrambled. A face. A hallway. A memory that wasn’t even a memory so much as a blur.
“Ken?” I forced out. “Ken Morgan?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t have to.
We drove only a few minutes but it felt like hours before he turned down a gravel road. A pit opened up beneath us—an old construction site, abandoned, silent, swallowing the car’s headlights like a mouth.
He killed the engine.
“Get out.”
The knife pressed into my back as he marched me toward a flat stretch of dirt and stone. Panic drowned out the night sounds. I begged. I pleaded. None of it mattered. He pushed. I fell. And then the world split open into terror.
I won’t describe it in detail—the assault. The way he kept the blade within reach. The way his breathing changed. The way the sky above me felt impossibly wide and unreachable.
When he finished, he stood back, chest rising and falling.
“You’re not… you’re not going to let me go,” I said.
He looked down.
“No.”
The first stab was a white-hot explosion. Then another. And another. My body jolted with every impact. My mind screamed. My hands grabbed at nothing. I was drowning inside my own skin.
When he finally stepped back, I let my body go limp. I forced my breathing to slow. I let my eyes half-close.
I pretended to die.
He watched me for a few moments, expression unreadable. Then he turned, walked away, got in the car, and drove off.
The silence afterward was unreal—thick, suffocating, broken only by my own shallow, wet breaths. Blood soaked through my shirt, hot and slick. I pressed my shaking hands against the wounds. I didn’t know which ones were fatal. I didn’t want to know.
Move, some voice inside me ordered. Move or die.
I rolled onto my side. Pain flared so violently I almost blacked out. Gravel dug into my skin, sticking to the blood. I crawled. I dragged myself inch by inch, pushing through the haze, through the fire under my skin, through the terror that he might return.
At the edge of the pit, I saw it—a faint porch light.
A house.
Hope almost hurt worse than the wounds.
I pulled myself across the grass, leaving a trail darker than the night. My arms trembled. My vision pulsed. I reached the porch. Lifted my hand. Knocked.
“Help,” I rasped. “Please…”
The door swung open. A woman screamed. A man rushed behind her. They pulled me inside, wrapped me in blankets, pressed towels against my wounds.
Sirens rose in the distance, weaving through the trees like salvation.
The paramedics arrived. Voices. Hands. Lights. A helicopter. The world blurring and unblurring.
At the hospital, the last thing I heard before slipping under anesthesia was someone saying, “Multiple stab wounds. Prep for emergency surgery.”
When I woke up, days later, the police were waiting. I told them everything. The store. The lie. The pit. The name.
They found him fast. He confessed even faster.
The trial was a different kind of nightmare—but I faced him. I said what needed to be said. He got life.
But the scars stayed.
Years passed. I healed, physically. Mentally—it was slower. But I went back to school. Earned a psychology degree. Helped others who survived things no one should.
I wrote a book. I moved to Florida. I volunteered. I lived.
And that night—what he tried to take from me—it became something else. A warning. A fire. A reminder that evil doesn’t always look like a monster. Sometimes it looks ordinary, polite, quiet.
Sometimes it walks into your store at midnight asking for help.
If you ever find yourself alone like that… trust the part of you that whispers that something is wrong.
It might save your life.
"The Quiet Hours":
I had only been working at the small gas station on the edge of town for a few months—just long enough to memorize the layout, the regular customers, and the rhythm of nights that all felt the same. It sat alone along a quiet stretch of highway, surrounded by open fields and dark woods that swallowed the road once the sun went down. We stayed open twenty-four hours, the kind of place meant for truckers fighting fatigue, night-shift workers grabbing a coffee, or the occasional stranger drifting through town without a story they wanted to share.
I took the job because I needed the money for school, and the owner didn’t ask too many questions. Night shifts paid a little more, and I figured I could handle some boredom and fluorescent lighting if it meant keeping my tuition plans alive.
But that one night—that night—rewrote the way I saw darkness forever.
My coworker called in sick an hour before the shift, leaving me alone. The manager brushed it off, said it happened all the time, told me he'd "check in later"—which usually meant he'd fall asleep on the couch and forget.
After midnight, the store settled into that eerie stillness only lonely places get. The coolers hummed steadily, the lights buzzed overhead, and outside, the pumps stood under the harsh white canopy like abandoned stage props. Not a single car refueled between 1:00 and 1:30 a.m.
I kept myself busy—restocking cigarettes, aligning candy bars until they looked like soldiers, wiping down the counter just to give my hands something to do. Every time I checked the clock, barely a minute had passed. The kind of night where the silence felt heavy, like it was waiting for something.
At 1:32, the door chime rang.
A man walked in—short, solid frame, maybe late twenties or early thirties. His jacket was dark and worn, his jeans dusty, his hair cropped close like he didn’t care much about style. He didn’t look at me, didn’t greet me, didn’t even hesitate. He just slipped into the aisles toward the back.
I said hello anyway, out of habit. He didn’t respond.
Something about the way he moved—deliberate, unhurried—made me glance at the small security monitor above the register. I watched him choose a pack of energy drinks, then chips, then circle back once like he was checking something.
He eventually approached the counter, placing his items down without a word. Then he added a box of condoms—dropping it last, like a punctuation mark.
I rang everything up. “Twelve dollars and forty cents,” I said.
He handed me cash, then tilted his head slightly as he read my name tag.
“Elena,” he said slowly. “That’s a pretty name. How do you say it? Eh-lay-nah?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He lingered on the word—Elena—as if rolling it around in his mouth.
When he didn’t move, I tried sliding his bag a little closer. That’s when he leaned forward on the counter.
“You working all by yourself tonight?”
My stomach tightened. The manager had drilled the standard line into me: Never say you’re alone.
“No,” I lied instantly. “My partner’s in the back.”
He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Oh yeah?” he asked softly. “Didn’t see anyone else when I came in.” He leaned even closer. “Must feel pretty lonely out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s fine,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Have a good night.”
He didn’t move.
“You got a boyfriend, Elena?” he asked. “Someone to keep you company after shifts like this?”
My pulse quickened. “That’s personal.”
He chuckled—a low, breathy sound that chilled me. “Just making conversation. Lucky guy, if you do. Real lucky.” His voice shifted, dropping into something darker. “Unless I can have you instead.”
My throat tightened. I managed, “Take your things and go.”
He straightened, his eyes never leaving my face. “You know,” he murmured, “I’ve been watching you since midnight. You look real good behind that counter. So tell me—are you scared of me?”
His words froze me in place.
Watching me? From where? For how long?
Outside the windows, the pumps were still empty. The highway was dark. I had looked out there dozens of times and seen nothing.
“You need to leave,” I said louder, forcing the words through my tightening chest.
And then—right then—the door chime rang again.
A group of guys stumbled in, loud and laughing, smelling like beer and cheap cologne. Fresh from some party. They headed straight to the beer cooler.
The man looked over his shoulder, the spell breaking. He grabbed his bag, shot me one last expression—something unreadable but sharp—and walked out without a word.
I didn’t breathe until the door shut behind him.
The group paid and left after a couple minutes. The second they were gone, I locked the door for a safety break and called my manager, voice shaking. He told me to keep the door locked until another customer came; he’d send someone in the morning.
The rest of the night crawled by. Every shadow outside felt like him. Every headlight on the highway made me jump. I didn’t unlock the door again until the sky started turning pale blue.
When my relief arrived at six, I barely mentioned it—just enough to unload the weight sitting in my chest. I didn’t want to sound dramatic. I didn’t want to sound scared.
But I was scared.
On the way home, exhausted and wired, I stopped at the diner for coffee. And that was when everything inside me dropped.
By the entrance, tacked to the community bulletin board, was a sheriff’s office wanted poster. The face on it was his.
Same cropped hair. Same stare. Same build.
Wanted for questioning in multiple assaults on women—one at a rest stop fifteen miles from the gas station. One woman said he watched her for a while before approaching. Another said he asked if she was alone.
My hands shook as I dialed the number on the poster.
The police came to my apartment later that day. I told them everything—his voice, his questions, the time on the receipt, the way he stared at my name tag. They took notes. They asked to pull the store’s security footage.
They told me he was targeting isolated women at night. Gas stations. Parking lots. Places where no one else was around.
I quit within the week.
I moved to a bigger town, found a day shift job at a café with windows facing the street and people always around. But even now—even years later—I can’t stop my stomach from tightening whenever I pass a lonely gas station at night. I can’t look at empty pumps without wondering what might be hiding in the dark.
And every time I think about that night, one question hits me the hardest:
What if those guys hadn’t walked in at that exact moment?
Because deep down, I know exactly how close things came to going wrong. And how easily I could have been another face on a poster pinned to a wall.
"No Witnesses":
I had just finished chatting with Officer Lacina when the store fell quiet again. She stopped by around four in the morning, like she did on some of her graveyard patrols, grabbing a coffee and checking in. She was one of the few familiar faces I actually looked forward to seeing on my shift.
“Slow as usual,” I told her while she stirred sugar into the cup.
“That’s good,” she said with a tired smile. “Stay safe, okay?”
I nodded. She left, the patrol car’s headlights sweeping across the front windows before fading into the dark. Then the store settled back into its usual hum—the refrigerators buzzing, the air vent rattling every so often, and the old neon sign outside flickering like it was struggling to stay awake.
I went back to organizing the candy racks, trying to keep myself busy so I wouldn’t fall asleep standing up. My mind drifted to my classes later that morning and how the Kwik Shop on First Avenue was supposed to be just a simple job to get me through college. Most nights were exactly that—restocking shelves, cleaning, and counting the minutes until sunrise.
A few minutes later, the door chimed.
Keith walked in.
I recognized him immediately—mid-fifties, wiry build, deep wrinkles, gray stubble, always buying cigarettes or beer. He had the kind of presence that made the air feel heavier. He nodded at me, wandered the aisles, picking up a soda and setting it back down, grabbing a magazine and putting it back without opening it.
Something felt… restless about him.
I stayed behind the counter, counting the drawer, pretending not to pay attention.
Eventually he came up with a single pack of gum.
“Evening,” I said, trying to sound polite but detached. “That’ll be a dollar ten.”
He handed over exact change, but his eyes didn’t leave mine. They lingered too long—too focused, too curious.
“You working all alone tonight?” he asked casually, though there was an undercurrent in his tone, something oily and wrong.
“Yeah,” I said. “Quiet shift.”
He pocketed the change, still watching me. “My bike’s locked up outside. Think you could watch it while I step out? I forgot something.”
I hesitated. It wasn’t really allowed to leave the counter unless necessary, but he was a regular. His bike was right outside. It didn’t seem like a big deal.
“Okay,” I said. “Just for a second.”
His smile was thin, almost relieved. “Come to the door with me so you can see.”
I stepped out from behind the counter and followed him toward the entrance.
But the moment we moved out of the camera’s line of sight, he spun around.
A knife flashed from his jacket—cold steel pressed against my ribs so quickly I barely saw it.
“Don’t yell,” he whispered. His breath smelled sour. “Walk with me. Act normal.”
My body went rigid. I felt the point of the blade pierce my shirt, a tiny sting of pain blooming beneath it.
“Please,” I whispered. “Take the cash. The register’s open. You can have everything.”
“Shut up,” he said, pressing the blade harder. “We’re going for a walk. Try anything, and it’s over.”
He slipped an arm around my shoulders like an old friend escorting me outside. To anyone passing by, we probably looked like two people chatting. But the knife never left my side.
The parking lot was empty. No headlights, no pedestrians, not a single witness.
He led me across the street, through backyards, past sleeping houses and dark alleyways. Every step felt like stepping deeper into a nightmare. My heartbeat thumped so hard I felt it in my throat.
“Where are we going?” I asked quietly, trying to keep my voice steady.
“My place,” he said. “Not far. Keep quiet.”
His apartment building was only a few blocks away. He dragged me up the stairs, unlocked the door, and shoved me inside. The smell hit me first—stale beer, sweat, and something moldy. The room was cluttered with boxes, dirty laundry, and empty bottles littering the floor.
He locked the door behind us with a sharp click.
“Sit,” he ordered, pointing to a stained couch.
I sat, shaking, trying to control my breathing.
“I know you,” I said softly. “From the store. I’ve always been polite to you. Please just let me go.”
He set the knife on the table, still within reach, then leaned back in his chair and stared at me like examining something he’d already decided belonged to him.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said calmly. “You’re nice. Not stuck-up like other girls. Thought I’d have some company tonight.” He got up, grabbed a beer from the fridge, opened it with a hiss. “Want one?”
My stomach turned. “No.”
He drank, eyes never leaving me.
Then he said, flatly: “Take off your clothes.”
The words hit harder than the knife. My body froze.
“No,” I whispered. “Please. Don’t do this.”
He picked up the knife again, tapping the blade on his palm. “Do it. Or I’ll make you.”
I felt tears slide down my face before I even realized I was crying. My hands shook uncontrollably as I obeyed. The humiliation, the dread, the certainty that something irreversible was happening—I felt all of it at once.
He assaulted me. Violently. Without hesitation. Without mercy.
I closed my eyes and tried not to leave my body entirely. I needed to stay aware. I needed to survive.
When he was done, he stood up, breathing hard. “Don’t move,” he muttered, grabbing another beer. The knife stayed on the table, still close enough to reach in a second.
I watched him drink. Watched his shoulders relax. Watched his attention wander.
I also watched the kitchen.
The block of knives.
A plan formed—not out of bravery, but pure survival instinct.
He sat back down beside me, muttering dark threats about keeping me here, about no one ever finding me. His voice slurred more with every beer.
When his eyes drifted away—just for a few seconds—I moved.
I bolted into the kitchen, grabbed the largest knife I could. He lunged after me, roaring, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”
He grabbed my arm, but I swung. The blade sank into his chest. He staggered backward, eyes wide in shock. I stabbed again, hitting his arm. He cursed, bleeding heavily, but still coming toward me.
I shoved him with everything I had. He crashed into the table, knocking over bottles.
I ran.
The bathroom was the only room with a lock. I threw myself inside, slammed the door, locked it, and shoved a cabinet in front of it, bracing it with my shoulder.
He reached the door seconds later, pounding so hard the hinges rattled.
“OPEN UP! YOU’RE MAKING THIS WORSE!”
I curled up in the bathtub, clutching a pair of scissors and a can of spray deodorant as makeshift weapons. I tasted blood—realized later it was from biting my own lip so hard.
Minutes dragged into what felt like hours. He alternated between threats, groans of pain, and moments of eerie silence that scared me more than the yelling.
I whispered to myself, over and over, “Someone will notice I’m gone. Someone will come. Please let them come.”
Eventually, the pounding stopped.
The apartment grew quiet. Too quiet.
Then—voices outside. Commanding, sharp.
“Police! Open the door!”
A crash as the front door splintered. Heavy footsteps. Shouting. A struggle.
Then: “Amanda? Are you in the bathroom? It’s the police.”
I pushed the cabinet aside with shaking arms, unlocked the door.
It swung open instantly. Officers filled the doorway, guns lowered the second they saw me. One wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and guided me out gently.
“You’re safe,” he said. “We’ve got you.”
Keith was on the floor in the living room, bleeding, hands cuffed behind him.
The paramedics checked me over. I couldn’t stop trembling.
I told them everything.
In the weeks that followed, I learned he had been planning it. He had a long history of violence—never caught, always slipping through cracks. The trial was brutal—I had to relive every detail in front of strangers—but I testified.
He was sentenced to life without parole.
I switched jobs. Got counseling. Learned how slowly trust rebuilds.
Even now, I double-check locks. Avoid night shifts. Watch shadows a little too closely.
But I fought. I survived.
And I didn’t let him take the rest of my life from me.