The Dress - part two

It's week two at Matinee Muse, and I have chosen the prompt What If as my subject this week. This piece follows on from last weeks post Life In The Shadows which can be found by clicking HERE.
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She never really understood why he just left her without at least putting up some form of resistance. It was so strange. For weeks she had been running through what she would say. For weeks she waited for the right moment, and when it came, he just upped and left. The man that had tried to control her just... went!

She often asked herself ‘what if he is still watching me?’ It seemed inconceivable that this man, this jealous man, would suddenly lose interest in who she was seeing and what she was doing. What if he were suddenly to appear again? The thought made her shudder.

One night, I think it was last August, a motorcycle courier delivered a package to her house. There was nothing suspicious about the package – just something she had ordered from a catalogue. The only odd thing was that it normally would have arrived during the day in a white van, but instead she found a man standing in the shadows on her doorstep in a full-head crash helmet. And there was something familiar about his voice. What if......? No she was being stupid.


There had been other strange visitors. At Halloween, one of the masked ghouls that knocked on her door had eyes she felt she had seen before, and a couple of Christmases ago, the Santa that accompanied the carol singers had a laugh she thought she recognised.

But no, she persuaded herself that she was being paranoid. Being stupid. He had gone – history. At least, she tried to persuade herself, but always there was that nagging feeling that he was out there somewhere, watching, looking, following.

And so he was. Living his life in the shadows. Now he was waiting for the right moment.

go to part three