Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24996913-20160223081020

This story is a bit iffy with me, but I wanted to get some opinions before I erased it. I just wanted to put some new material on here that I've been working on that have been sitting in my notes for months. This is the start. Hope you guys enjoy.

My boyfriend and I were having a hard time. He seemed so unusually irritated and a lot more secretive with me. From the beginning of our relationship, we have been on the rocks. One minute everything is great, no one could come between us, and our eyes lingered only upon one another. The next, we are savagely arguing, calling eachother vicious names, and slandering one another. Multiple times within the relationship, I have thought to myself why I had even entered into the relationship at all. I wasn't physically attracted to my boyfriend, I loved him for his personality, which had taken a downward fall for the worst.

Of course I had my issues. I was never an affectionate girl. Some would say I was a little too flirtatious unbeknownst to me. I had problems communicating my feelings, and more often than not, I held grudges for days, weeks, and months without even mentioning I was mad to begin with. But, like I said, I fell for a guy that was amazing, charming, and honest. That guy was no longer within my reach.

Though we were such opposites in every way, the environment I reluctantly lived within for the first few months of our relationship was much too toxic for me, and he noticed it right away anytime it was time for me to catch a flight back home. Within the first few months of dating, he had already asked me to live with him. He said it would be good for my emotional health, and perhaps even bring out my affectionate side more due to the fact I would no longer be stressed.

So I packed all of my bags, left behind all of my friends, which weren't many, and started anew hundreds of miles away. At first everything was relatively good. I was a lot less stressed, and I didn't have to worry about being homeless or being antagonized by my step father. Everything was good. That is, until I had no way of escaping my boyfriend's company.

See, I was a very, very hard girl to lock in. I'm very avoidant, very selective, and I get bored quite quickly with routine. Due to the fact that I was living with my boyfriend, and I had no friends to evade hanging out with him all of the time, my commitment issues began to pick up. Liam, my boyfriend, was a good boyfriend before everything went to hell. He would go above and beyond to accommodate anything I wanted, but like I said, he had another side to him that wasn't quite as appealing.

He was very insecure, and would get angry with me because of what other guys would say to me on social media. He claimed to trust me, but not trust them. In his mind, they were all trying to be with me, and because I wasn't public with our relationship, he felt maybe I was hiding him from social media. Honestly, that wasn't the case. I've always been a private girl on public sites. I don't want just anyone to know what goes on in my relationship. That is a huge difference between my boyfriend and I. He's very public, while I'm quite avidly private.

Needless to say, my boyfriend didn't trust me. He claimed he did, but he didn't. I learned quite early on that me and him would clash often due to my reluctance to tell my personal information to those I perceived to be strangers. And as all things crumble with the introduction of insecurity, my own doubt for his loyalty grew with his suspicion of the lack-thereof of mine.

Oftentimes I would catch him going through my phone in the middle of the night. Being that I did nothing wrong and had no reason to be upset by his intrusion of my privacy, I simply faked sleep while he ravaged through my phone. Of course he would find nothing, but in his eyes, finding nothing meant that I had deleted all of the evidence. So no resolve came from his midnight investigations. If anything, his suspicion only grew.

I could no longer go home or hang out with my male friends. In his mind, they only wanted to screw me, even though half of them had committed relationships or they were gay. His insanity grew with each passing day, which only fueled my resentment for him. I felt trapped. I didn't want to go back home and live in the environment that had made me contemplate suicide on multiple occasions. I didn't want to go back to a home filled with rage and overwhelming anxiety. Even though he had become such an irritating person, I stayed because even his actions were better than the actions I had to put up with my entire life back home.

So I had to stay. In my mind, I had no other options. Though he would purposefully argue day in and day out, somehow it was more tolerable than the arguments I had back home. Still, our arguments delved deeper into an abusive nature, and we found ourselves livid over small, minuscule things that no one should ever get that upset by. One of the more recent topics we would argue about was the electrical outlet in our bedroom.

Something as small and meaningless as that could easily be fixed with an extension cord, or even a double charging outlet that we both could use to charge our phones at night. But of course, we couldn't compromise. I had to have my fan plugged in or else I couldn't sleep, so that left one more outlet, which was designated for my single charger. The other outlet was across the room and powered our tv, light, and PlayStation.

So we debated for weeks and weeks before he finally threw in the towel and opted to charge his phone in the living room. Though we still argued, it was relaxing to not debate over a stupid outlet anymore. Things went as they normal had, and everything was decent. That is until Liam would not put down his phone. We would go out to see a movie, he would be on his phone. We would be at home watching Netflix, and he would be on his phone. Normally, I wouldn't care because it's not really any of my business who he is conversing with, but the way he tilted his phone was the icing on the cake.

I've been in the position where I received a text from an ex that was inappropriate, and I tilted my phone in that manner to avoid an argument with Liam. That was one or two occurrences. Liam tilted his phone like that all of the time. It was really starting to get under my skin because he had the audacity to search my phone every night and accuse me of cheating every single day, but somehow it was completely fine for him to be blatantly secretive? No, it wasn't, and I wanted to know who he was texting that was so important that he couldn't pay attention to me or the movie we were watching.

So I got him drunk. Liam had always been a lightweight when it came to drinking, and anytime he was drunk, he didn't do a midnight investigation on me. Also, by me getting him drunk, he would not have the time to delete messages or cover his tracks, which he had suggested time and time again I had been doing. So it was only fair that I had my time to investigate him.

He fell asleep rather quickly after a few drinks, and his obnoxious snoring pursued immediately thereafter. I knew this was my chance, so I slowly got out of bed and drifted off into the dark hallway. Being that we lived on the 30th floor of a high-rise apartment building, my boyfriend always left the 6 foot tall windows open because he loved the view, and like I said, was a very public person and didn't mind people being able to see into our apartment from the other high-rise buildings adjacent from ours. Due to them being wide open, the moonlight and the glow of the snowfall outside lit my path to the living room.

Anxiously, I walked towards his phone, which was recently notified of a text. The white ambiance extending from the phone made my heart race. Who in the hell would be texting my boyfriend so early in the morning? I picked up the phone, making sure to mute the sound he carefully switched on at night, and I immediately clicked onto the messages app. I went through each and every message, starting from the most recent, only to find his best-friend drunk texting him. Needless to say, my search provided little to no reason for me to have wasted my energy or time, and I guiltily placed his phone back where it had been.

With failure looming over my head, I walked back into the room, and slid back into bed. I began to close my eyes and drift off into sleep when my phone vibrated. Not expecting a text or anything, I was puzzled as to who would be texting me so late. But once my eyes made contact with the name across the screen, my heart sank into my stomach.

Liam👫❤️ "Are you ready for me baby?"

I immediately turned over to Liam, who was still sound asleep. This recollection alone made my mouth drop open. My breathing became erratic, and I felt like my heart was going to explode. There was no logical way Liam could have texted me that. He was right next to me. Instinctively, my mind began to wander. Was somebody in our apartment? That was the only way I could have received a text from a sleeping man's phone.

My eyes reluctantly shifted towards the bedroom door, which was wide open as usual. The darkness of the hallway seeped into our bedroom, and not even the dim, blue tint from the tv could overtake it. I wanted to cover my eyes with my blanket like a child would, but I couldn't just ignore something like that. I had to go see who was in the living room. I tried to wake Liam, but unfortunately my effort was unsuccessful. As drunk as he was, I knew no matter how hard I shook him, he wouldn't wake. So I had to go into the living room alone.

I dreaded the thought.

Slowly, I rose out of bed, watching the door with my every movement. My body trembled as I stepped into the hallway. Though I was terrified, I was prepared to attack if in fact there was an intruder in our apartment. The eeriness that was not previously there, intensified with each step forward. That all too familiar ambience came into view, and I realized that I only had to turn one more corner before I was face to face with whoever was in our living room. Taking in a deep breath, I turned the corner.

I was shocked to see no one there. Naturally, I was curious as to how a text was sent without anyone being in the living room, so I hurried to check his phone resting on the windowsill. After a quick look through his messages, I found no evidence of a text being delivered at all. Though it was very strange, I tried to convince myself that there was a malfunction with the service providers that somehow resulted in a ghost text being delivered. Of course that made absolutely no sense, but without any other logical explanation, I returned his phone to the windowsill and began to turn towards the hallway.

Unfortunately, my relief ended abruptly. Before I could fully turn around, I heard a phone vibrate as clear as day. Being that Liam's phone was right in front of me, I reached down to silence it, only to find the screen black with inactivity. The vibrations continued to sound, and with each hum, I clutched the phone tighter within my hands in disbelief. The vibrations weren't coming from Liam's phone.

With that daunting realization, I stared into the blackened screen as the vibrations appeared to grow louder. Squinting my eyes, I noticed a dark silhouette on the left side of the phone. It appeared to move slowly towards me, its stride irregular and unstable. Terrified that some creep was lurking behind me, I turned my head towards the area where it stood. Nothing. No one was there. I exhaled a sigh of relief before lowering the phone back down to the windowsill.

I turned back towards the hallway and started to walk to my bedroom when I heard a vibration sound once more. My head snapped towards the area at which I had stood seconds prior, only to find a dark figure standing in my place. Many of times, Liam would stand in front of the windows, peering out of them at the stunning view of Chicago. He would wake up, come to join me in the living room, and stand in front of the median window before stretching. This thing appeared to be stretching as he did every morning, though it appeared much less graceful in its method.

What really struck me as odd was the fact that it had not revealed itself with the presence of light. Normally, with the luminescence from the moonlight accompanied by the radiant, white glow of the snow falling outside, a silhouette would become a solid shape. With whatever it was that stood before the window, it remained a silhouette, hidden within the shadows.

I say 'it' because its shape didn't resemble that of a human or anything I had ever seen before. It seemed to be posed in an odd and uncomfortable fashion, its body unable to retract from the position it was in. I simply stood there silently for what seemed like an eternity.

After the shock began to wane, I gathered enough courage to run back towards my bedroom as it began to violently shuffle towards me. I sprinted as fast as I could, but the journey back seemed to last an eternity. It was exhausting how little progression I made, though I was running at full speed. Perhaps my adrenaline made the journey to my bedroom seem unusually long. My thoughts were surely scattered, causing the mind I depended on to completely lose focus on the matter at hand: returning to my bedroom.

Once I safely made it back to the room, I slammed the door behind me and locked it. Shakily, after a few deep breaths, I turned to face my bed. To my dismay, my snoring boyfriend did not greet me, and the shock that I had previously experienced returned with a vengeance.

Though I had escaped the living room, though I was supposed to be in my bedroom, the living room presented itself to me once more, and the dark silhouette of the stretching being stood before the windows. My mind lost all focus. I simply broke down, falling to the floor in disbelief. Once my knees hit the hardwood floor, the being hobbled towards me. Though it did not move swiftly, and I had a good amount of time to escape it as it struggled across the room, I was paralyzed in fear.

All I could do to rationalize the entire experience was chalk it up to being a lucid nightmare. Perhaps I was having a bout of sleep paralysis, but I had never had a problem with nightmares prior, matter of fact, I never dreamed at all. I knew for a fact that I ran out of the living room, through the dark hallway, and into my bedroom. I remember closing the door behind me, locking it swiftly with trembling hands. There was no way that I could have imagined that. The perspiration dripping down my forehead confirmed I had escaped, and that the entire experience was real. But, even with the acknowledgement that this was not some case of a nightmare gone 3D, there it was, lurching towards me.

As it took its last few steps towards me, the light from the moon bouncing off of its opaque body, I looked down at a strange beam of light steaming from its left hand. There, grasped within its palm was a phone. As it continued to pursue me, the screen of the phone became close enough for me to see. The texts were addressed to my phone, the phone still in the bedroom with Liam. With each and every step towards me, it sent message after message, overloading my phone with notifications.

Finally it took its last step before kneeling down to my level. I swallowed down hard, ignoring the heat of its breath as its cold stare pierced through my avoidant eyes. All I could focus on was the phone, which displayed the same words sent to me previously. Christina💏👪💍 "Are you ready for me baby?" 