#juno rambles

You wake up and you don't know where you are. The way your head spins when you give a half baked attempt of just raising your head to discern your location is met with a violent pounding from the back of your head. Fuck. your head goes back to the earth with a soft crunch from the leaves under. Leaves? Your eyes only slightly open to darkness, it's late, even through the spinning you make out stars in the dark and bare trees and a lovely crescent moon that if it was any other day and any other place you would've loved to admire it. When you walked back home from your evening class it was usually dark and your camera had run out of space several times from all the times you thought a constellation sparkled especially bright that night or if the moon changed into a new shade. Looking back you were more irritated at how dumb you were to wait out in the middle of an empty parking lot even before they showed up but there's no time to reminisce in anger. 

You want to touch the back of your head to see if you've been hurt only to not prevail, your hands don't even make it from your sides. Both hands are tied together in front of you. As you peer down you find yourself captive with several zip ties not just on your wrists but your ankles too. There was no way you were getting out of these alone with no tools on hand, even if you brought along your pocket knife it's not like you could reach your back pockets anyways. When your best friend gave it to you after your useless campus police said they couldn't do  anything about your dorm window lock being continuously broken she gave you self defence tools that were never able to be much help clearly.

 Soon your visions stabilized to at least the point you're not disoriented. You know where you are, sort of, you have a good idea of why youre here is better to say. 

Weeks ago when school started up again and when your locks mysteriously began failing on you letters would appear on your bed. All those fucking letters and you only ever read the first one that appeared. It was late and you were exhausted and done and thought it was a weird sick joke from your roommate. 

‘I missed seeing you. I missed your smell. I'm so thankful I can see you all the time again. I need you to see me too meet me-’ 

Paper scattered over your bed as you ripped it into miniscule pieces, you didn't have time for this. After caking it up to evil pranks and a long sleep the hope it was a one time thing was ruined along with the departure of your hated roommate. Her parents couldn't get in contact with her, they found her phone and keys inside your room but of course days later they found her hands in the main campus fountain at least her left one. The letters continued. You couldn't blame them on any mean spirited jokes anymore. This was living proof.

Now there's footsteps out of your field of vision. Definitely coming from the darkness above your head and definitely moving closer. Fast. 

Do you even want to move? Of course you want to but what's the point? There's no way you could outrun your stalker even if your legs were untied. Your head injury could barely let you move. You're somewhere in the aches of woods in your college's backforest that only the nerds in agriculture or Environmental bio actually explored. 

“I waited for you here, every time I left a letter y’know.”

The unseen figure mutters. You can hear him deeply breathing between each wood and the heavy silence after. Their voices trembled as they spoke as if they could break into tears at any second. Your chest starts to heat up. They don't have the right to cry, or feel hurt. 

“I waited the whole night here but you never came. Even when I came back you were there comfortably in your bed. Sleeping without a care in the world. Like my words meant nothing to you.” 

Even though the dim light provided by the moon is not enough to see your stalker's face. He's right above you now. Standing right above your head with his back slightly forward so he could get a better view of you defenceless on the forest floor. 

“But it's fine. I asked you to meet me here and here we are. Even if I had to drag you out here myself.”

Fucking stupid locksmith, to hell with rapid repair, stupid campus police, stupid roommate Emma.

“I knew it would be different seeing ya up close but… Is my heart racing?”

He leans down closer. Too close. You can feel his body heat now and with every exhale you feel his breath tickle your face. It's disgusting, it only gets worse when you see a gloved hand making its way to your chest. Your chest heaves up and down quickly you don't know what the hell he could be thinking. He's not rational and you don't even want to try communicating with him in this deluded state. But despite the circumstances his hand finds itself right over your heart and hovers over it for a few seconds in perhaps nervousness before laying right on your skin in a grossly gentle manner. His breath seems to hitch the moment he makes contact. 

“You’re nervous too huh, you have no idea how glad that makes me.”

Your skin is crawling and you want to throw up out of pure nerves. He's being sweet. He knocked you out and took you out of your room, dragged you so far away that no one could get you and he's being gentle. The worst part is that it calms you and you hate it. You could've been dragged out by some homicidal manual with anger issues that killed you for ignoring his letters the first time it happened. But whoever this man is clearly has a different game in mind and the fact he doesn't seem to want to put his hands around your throat eases your mind in the worst sense. 

“Im sorry it took this long for me to take action, my mamman said some girls are too nervous to meet you half way. I think it's cute you were hard to get.”

Tears start to pool in corners of your eyes. ‘Hard to get’? Hard to get?? As hard as you try to protect yourself, your sanity and the people around you this psycho chalks it up to playing hard to get as if you were some cheeky little schoolgirl with a playground crush. He's getting closer. He moved himself around and brought a leg over your waist and straddled your torso. The full weight of his body felt like he might crush your lungs. A weak cry of pain leaves your lips but he doesn't even seem to notice. His face leans in closer and his eyelids close shut in a tense way. He's trying to kiss you. 

Your head is spinning again and you can't tell if it's from the lack of air or the absurdity of this entire night. He's centimeters away now, you have no choice. 

With as much momentum as you can get from barely any space you push your head right into his in a painful knock right between his eyes and nose. The stranger falls back but not enough to free yourself from under him. 

It's unclear how long you've been out here but a soft orange breaks out from the tree line. The promise of daylight gives you a clearer vision of your attacker as he blinks in surprise. His lip begins to quiver but you have a feeling it's not because of the pain that briefly coursed through his head. 

“You just hafta act mean.” 

Before you can even dwell on whatever nonsense he said he lifts himself off of you and grabs your tied hands and starts to drag you. You find whatever strength you have left in you to frantically protest, scream, thrash, anything to stop the inevitable. Before long you see a tree stump and an unclean ax resting within it. You don't want to think about what the dark stains on it are but it would be naive to deny what happened before and what is about to happen to you soon. With a final rough tug he pushes your head and upper torso onto the cleanly cut stump.