My Book

It was a cold winters day, unseasonably cold in fact, for Virginia Beach. Jesalyn sat peacefully mulling over her life. It had It was a cold winter’s day, unseasonably cold in fact, for Virginia Beach. Natania sat peacefully mulling over her life. It had been a good life thus far, with the usual failures and successes… None really outweighing the other and no major personally felt tragedies to taint her outlook on life or people. Still it hadn't been easy these past few years. Struggling to start anew at age 40, not nearly in her prime, but alone for the first time in her life. It was at night she felt her lowest, the silence in the 5 bedroom house seemed deafening. The silence screamed out at her and some nights she gave in to the despair and soaked her down-filled pillows with tears. Other nights she conquered the despair pulling herself up from her bootstraps, possibly venturing out to the local coffee shop or chatting on line with old friends.

She wasn't afraid to be alone, per se. I mean not often did she entertain thoughts of robbers or rapist lurking at her back door ready to pounce. That’s not to say those thoughts didn't plague her from time to time. It is amazing where an active imagination can take you, if left unchecked. She thought back to the night she ran out of the house, heart beating frantically inside her chest, so hard and fast she felt as though it would burst.{ through its vault}. She had heard a recurring noise downstairs which kept coming at oddly timed intervals. She had phoned her parents, yes her parents who resided in Albania, thousands of miles across the sea, hoping they would soothe her tethered nerves a bit. No such luck. The phone call did nothing except add humiliation to the terror, pushing further to the edge her fragile emotional state. She tried to distract herself but it was futile.

There it was again, the grinding banging noise that now sounded louder and more persistent. Someone was trying to get in the house. Her mobile phone was dead and if they climbed the stairs she would be trapped in her room with nowhere to go, no one to cry out to for help. Yes, she would make a run for it. In her nightgown, with no bra and no shoes, she ran out of the empty house into the driveway now driven mad with fear. She tiptoed to her neighbor’s house thinking of knocking on the door. The embarrassment of it all won over her irrational fears. Besides, this neighbor was a friend of her fathers and surely would repeat the ridiculous story. She decided to wait it out in her daughters car, hoping her middle child, who thankfully was going to be spending and was being dropped off shortly by a friend, after she finished her waitressing shift, would be there any minute. Yes she would wait it out in the car and hopefully not freeze to death.