Mine First

by A. J. Marchant

  Lori stopped her mind from plunging her back underwater. Instead, she stood up and tugged the bottom of Marina’s shirt, her silent plead turning to fire as their eyes locked. Their lips met in a biting kiss, haste stepping them backward, Marina pressed up against the wall, their bodies colliding. Pausing only long enough to shut the bedroom door, Lori pulled Marina’s shirt up over her head and dropped it on the ground. She lifted her arms as Marina peeled the damp sweatshirt off her, flashing back on how Addy had moved from button to button, taking her time. Shaking the thought away, Lori focused on Marina, who was kicking out of her shoes and fumbling with her belt.

  Lori took over and with a practiced flick had Marina’s belt undone. She kicked her track pants off at the same time as she slid Marina’s jeans down her hips, letting them fall to the floor.

  She spun Marina and marched her backwards, falling with her onto the bed. Scrambling to be the one in control, she gripped Marina’s wrists, pinning them into the pillow above her head, the other ranging over her body.

  She caught Marina’s lips mid-gasp, sinking deep into her kiss, fighting against the image of Addy’s bare skin in the back of her mind, the flash of her red toenails in the water. Lori spread Marina’s legs with her knee and Marina bucked, grinding against Lori’s thigh, her body stretching beneath her. Lori felt her twitch with each touch, using her thumb to stroke the pulsing bundle of nerves, slipping one finger in to feel her warmth and then another.

  Need took over with an urgency that scared her a little, giving her mind no chance to wander. Their lips lingered close, brushing roughly with each thrust, sharing the same breath. Lori closed her eyes at the moment she felt Marina tense, their bodies arching together and collapsing back, little shivers rippling through Marina’s body as Lori pushed her past release, relenting only at the nip of teeth at her jaw.

  And yet it hadn’t worked; the tenuous grip of control and connection severed as they broke apart, only a momentary distraction from the fear that flooded in all too quickly.

  44

  IT HAD TAKEN hours for Lori to fall into something resembling sleep, and even then it was fitful and fearful. She had reoccurring nightmares that someone was holding a pillow over her face and she couldn’t breathe; or her bed was underwater and people were swimming along the lanes above, waving down at her; or a hand was reaching out, covering her mouth and nose and eyes. Then everything went black and when she opened her eyes, it was morning.

  Marina was staring at her from across the pillows. Her face morphed from a worried frown to a smile. Not fast enough, though.

  ‘Hey.’ Lori covered the shake in her voice with a cough.

  ‘How you feeling?’

  ‘Crappy.’

  ‘Think maybe it’s a cold or something?’

  ‘Think so.’ Lori groaned into the pillow, playing the part.

  ‘Probably because you insist on walking to work, even when it’s snowing. Speaking of, are you teaching today?’

  ‘No.’ There was no way Lori could face being anywhere other than in the safety of her home, her bedroom, in bed.

  ‘Want me to stay home? We can spend the day on the couch, watch movies, play a board game, whatever you want. And I can make a run for that Chinese chicken noodle soup—’

  Lori squeezed Marina’s hand to get her to stop talking. ‘You’re sweet, but I think I just wanna sleep.’ As much as she would have liked to spend the day with Marina, she wanted even more to be alone.

  Marina got the message and left to get ready for work at her own place. It didn’t go as easily when Em called to see if she wanted company, a repeat of the same conversation turning into a full blown argument. Lori stood her ground, Em giving in grudgingly, telling her to get some rest.

  A few hours later, something pulled Lori out of a thankfully dreamless sleep. A noise. She checked her phone. A notification about cloud storage access popped up and disappeared before she could read it, serving as a reminder to get her phone fixed.

  Another noise. Lori sat up, back pressed into the cushioned bedhead. Marina had left the bedroom door open. A distant sound from down the hall, a rattle. Lori looked out the window; the trees were still, there was no breeze.

  Footsteps outside in the snow. Lori drew her legs up, hugging her knees tight to her chest. A crunch, a metallic slide, a thud and then a second of silence before it started again. It went on for a while, moving around the perimeter of the house.

  Lori got up and stood in the doorway. Marina had talked her into leaving the other doors open too, to let in more light, complaining the house was depressing all closed up, and that no one could get in through the top floor windows, anyway. But the sound was coming through as if every window was wide open. Even though they weren’t; she’d checked.

  The noises were coming from out the front now. Shivering from a current of cold air coming up the stairs, Lori listened. There was more time between each noise now; whatever Addy was doing, she was slowing down. It was strange; believing, being sure it was Addy, knowing that it was her out there. It didn’t make it any easier, any less unnerving, for Lori to confront her. She reasoned with herself, reminding herself that she’d been able to walk through a dark house in the dead of night and during a snowstorm, thinking someone was in the house.

  But hindsight made it seem less threatening than it had felt at the time; it had only been a harmless cat, breaking in to get out of the cold.

  Plus, things had changed since that night.

  The sounds altered. The sound of… something, and then a thud. Over and over for a minute, and then dead silence. Not even the crunch of footsteps moving away from the house.

  Lori listened and waited. When there was nothing for a long time, she grabbed the baseball bat from under the bed and went down the stairs, her careful steps slow and disjointed.

  45

  THE HOUSE WAS darker than it should have been in the middle of the day. Something was covering the windows, all of them. Lori held a hand up to the glass but didn’t have to touch it to feel the cold coming through. A different cold. Harsh, bitter. There was no way to see out, but a dusky glow filtered in.

  It was snow, packed up against the glass.

  At the front door, Lori reached for the handle. The metal was cold and stuck to her fingertips when she let go. She couldn’t bring herself to open it. There was no way to know if Addy was still out there, waiting.

  Again, she listened, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. She pulled her sleeve down as a glove and turned the handle. The cold made it stiff.

  Lori braced herself, ready to inch the door open slowly, poised to slam it shut and lock it at the slightest movement outside. She weighed and adjusted her grip on the bat in her other hand.

  The door didn’t budge. She pulled harder, putting the bat down to use both hands. It gave a tiny bit, then swung open with a sucking sound and a gust of icy air. Snow blocked the entire opening, just like the windows. She dragged a fingernail over the packed ice. It was frozen solid, thick enough that hardly any light came through. She was stuck.

  Before Lori could calm herself and think through the situation, she was hyperventilating, pacing, panicking. She’d never been claustrophobic before, but the house that was once too big now became all too small. The ceilings lowered, the walls shrunk closer together. Her focus narrowed to one thought; she needed to get out.

  The back door was the same as the front. Lori went upstairs. Climbing out a window and hoping the snow would be soft enough to cushion her fall was not an option.

  In the kitchen, she raided the drawers for every container she could find, thinking she could melt her way out with warm water. Looking around, she saw it was a little brighter in there, and a lot colder. Feeling her way along the windows, Lori came across a pile of melted ice on the counter. The window above it had been pushed in slightly by the force of the snow. Beanie’s window.

  Glad that she never got around to fixing it, Lori used both hands to pull the window as far inwards as s
he could. The old hinge was frozen, and the wood groaned, the pair threatening to separate. Lori eased it wide enough to get her hand through.

  In a frenzy, not noticing the cold biting into her fingers, Lori dug and pushed at the icy snow. It gave way slowly, collapsing under its own weight and freeing the window to swing out and open.

  Lori slid up onto the bench and climbed over the sink, knocking over everything that Beanie skilfully avoided every time he made his way in. She sat down on the window ledge, slid out and down.

  The backyard was empty, but it was an eery sight to see the mounds of snow pushed up against the house, just the bare boards visible between the covered windows.

  Too late, Lori realised she was empty-handed. She’d left the baseball bat inside, leaning at the front door. The shovel she used to clear the front path was now sticking out of the snow pile covering the back door, not on the porch where she left it. Lori picked up the shovel, hefted it in her hands, and figured it was a good enough replacement for the bat.

  She checked each side of the house before making her way along, slowly scanning the trees that created a barrier between her house and the one next door. Nearing the front yard, she used the garden tap as a step to peek around the corner and check the porch.

  There was no one out there. Just a mess of dirt and snow. That must have been the noise Lori couldn’t place; the sound of her potted plants being emptied out onto the porch.

  The shovel hung by her side, dragging in the snow as she made her way around to stand on the step. The front door had a great big mound of snow against it, at least three feet thick at the top and even more at the bottom. And all around were the remains of her plants, crushed and scattered.

  Addy had spread the soil thick enough to hold the shape of her sweeping hands, and there were two words traced in the dirt; wrong choice.

  46

  LORI STARED AT the words written in dirt, wondering how it might have turned out if she’d made a different choice, one that wouldn’t have led to all of this. Addy’s reaction proved Em’s warnings weren’t for no reason. Footsteps coming up behind her pulled her mind back to the present. Reflex made her lift the shovel as she turned around, ready to swing.

  ‘Whoa. It’s just me.’ Marina stepped back with her hands up, a white polystyrene tub in one, keys in the other. She looked past Lori, her eyes sweeping along the front of the house. ‘What the hell…?’

  Lori swiped her foot across where the writing was, hoping it was now illegible.

  ‘She was here? Why didn’t you call me?’

  There was no need to answer. Lori dropped the shovel and sat on the bottom step. Marina towered over her. Her eyebrow twitched, eyes moving as thoughts raced through her mind; conclusions and realisations, confusion rising into fear and then anger.

  ‘You don’t have a cold, do you?’

  Lori shook her head.

  ‘So you’re what? Hiding and hoping she’ll eventually stop? That really is your plan? I thought you were joking.’ Marina was trying not to sound frustrated, but Lori could see it was testing her patience. ‘You can’t keep letting her do this to you. Tell someone, do something. You have to stop her.’

  Lori was relieved that Marina didn’t ask what triggered her hide-out in the first place but, more so, it stunned her that Marina would think she was letting Addy do any of this.

  ‘Lori. Say something.’

  Lori didn’t know what to say, so she broke the tension instead. ‘What’s that?’

  Marina seemed to have forgotten the tub she was holding. She stared at it and then passed it to Lori. ‘Chicken soup.’ Hands now free, Marina wiped the step and sat down next to her.

  Lori lifted the edge of the lid. Steam escaped, but all she could smell was dirt and snow. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  They sat, silent, looking out at the street. For a moment it was as if nothing had happened. As if there was just an ordinary house behind them with an ordinary front door, and ordinary windows, and the pots were back in their ordinary places filled to the top with ordinary dirt and ordinary plants.

  After a while, the anger melted out of Marina’s shoulders. ‘Promise me you’ll call next time, that you won’t shut me out anymore.’

  ‘I promise. I’ll call, even if it’s for the smallest thing.’

  Marina looked at Lori and then between them, back at the front door and the windows. ‘Are they all like that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How’d you get out?’

  ‘Kitchen. Beanie’s window.’

  She laughed and picked up the shovel. ‘Want some help with the rest?’

  47

  LORI COULDN’T SLEEP that night, mind flooded, trying to figure out what to do. All she did was talk herself in circles. She needed to do something, but so far she’d come up with nothing useful.

  The police were no help without evidence. Emmie was out of the question. She’d already dragged Marina in further than intended. Plus, Marina didn’t know the whole picture.

  When morning came Lori brewed a massive pot of coffee and stood at the sink with a cup in hand. Somehow she wasn’t surprised by what she saw out the window, pushing it to the back of her mind until Marina had seen it, staring at it again and then crashing back on the couch, staring at the silent television screen.

  A knock at the door saved her from tossing the remote at the screen in frustration. She rolled off the couch and checked through the glass panel before opening the door.

  Olly was standing on her welcome mat, as if her psych-radar had heard Lori’s subconscious cry for help. Olly tossed her a little blue and green tub as she walked in. ‘I’m not rubbing that on your chest, but it’ll help.’

  ‘I’m not sick.’

  Olly turned on her. ‘I know. You complain more than anyone I know when you’re sick and I haven’t heard a peep, so…’ She waved to Marina sitting at the dining table, then spun around, arms crossed and her eyes measuring. ‘What’s going on?’

  Lori led her to the kitchen, pointing out the window at the yard. Olly stood next to her, wordless and bewildered, taking it in. Strangely, Lori still wasn’t surprised by it. She hadn’t reacted when Marina had pulled her off the couch and outside, confronting her again with not being told when something happened. Or when she’d stood at the sink staring at it again while Marina poured them each a cup of coffee and decided she wasn’t going into work. Lori was everything else but surprised; by now she’d gotten used to bizarre things happening around her home.

  But this had to be the most mystifying scene so far.

  Twenty or more garden statues, of all sorts, were clustered in the middle of her backyard. Beanie wove his way through them, sniffing and rubbing up against them. He sat staring at one for a while, a blank-eyed hedgehog standing on its hind legs with a faded sign under its chin. Then the cat jumped gracefully up on the rickety wooden table and licked his paws, looking down over the crowded yard.

  ‘What the…?’

  ‘Tell her about yesterday too.’ Marina had turned in her seat to face them.

  ‘What about yesterday?’ Olly’s gaze was stuck on the scene outside.

  ‘Snow piled up against the doors and windows.’ Unhappy about being forced into telling Olly something she would have told her anyway, Lori rolled her eyes at Marina and motioned for Olly to follow her.

  In the laundry, she grabbed them each a snow jacket as Olly unlocked the door. They stepped out into clouds of their steaming breath, the sun warm on their faces.

  ‘Where’d they come from?’ Olly lit a cigarette and wandered over to Beanie, who was still sitting on the table.

  ‘I dunno. She must have gotten them from around the neighbourhood, I guess.’

  ‘She? So you’re certain now that this was Addy?’ Olly scratched Beanie under his chin with her free hand.

  ‘Yeah.’ It was the first time Lori had spoken it out loud. It was strange, how wrong it felt, how uncertain it sounded.

  Bea
nie was purring up a storm, but Olly had heard the uncertainty too. ‘How do you know, for sure?’

  Even though she’d been ready to tell her everything just a moment ago, Lori wasn’t about to reveal how she knew, for sure. As vivid and confusing as the day it had happened, Lori saw a flash of red toenails, bubbles floating frantically through the water as her feet kicked, only the wavering outline of a faceless head above her, above the water… ‘I just do.’

  ‘Has it all been like this? Psyching you out, messing with your head? Or has she gotten… physical, as well?’

  Lori said nothing, but Olly could see it written on her face.

  ‘It’s harassment, Lori. Or worse. Did you report it, tell Cooper?’

  Lori shook her head, aware of the undertone in Olly’s voice, readying herself for the coming reprimand.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just, I couldn’t. There’s no proof. And you said it before, there’s more at stake. I can’t ruin her life when it’s—’ Lori stopped short. She stared across the yard at the bare trees. She could see right through them, their trunks like sticks in the ground, bare branches, the meandering creek and the building behind. Anyone could be out there, watching, she thought, and how would she know?

  48

  OLLY WANDERED THROUGH the statues, using a toe to tilt one of them. She stared down at the gnarled face of a garden gnome, made a face back at it, and then let it thud down to the ground again.