The Story of Heather, Part 2.

What happened was warped by rumor, news reports, and Heather’s hazy memory. It quickly spread to legendary proportions, until she couldn’t so much as leave the house without someone spouting half-facts at her and questioning. Crueler people made jokes.

That wasn’t the worst part of it, though. Since seeing what had happened, she was seeing ‘Him’ everywhere.

It was as though he had been around all along…and now, was making no attempt to hide himself. She watched him raid her gardens. She watched him lurk outside her window. At her front door. In the hallway of her home. In the corner of her room.

It was beginning to take a toll, and – with considerable persuasion that turned to half-mad begging – her parents allowed and helped her move into her own little house, out of town. It was very modest living, but she hardly minded. It was somewhere that wasaway. It was perfect.

Heather labored under the delusion that she had gotten away, at last. The delusion only lasted as long as it took for a dried-out, dead bouquet to be delivered to her doorstep. The very same flowers from her garden.

Knowing that she was being stalked, that she was never alone, that there wasn’t a single moment that she wasn’t being watched…it made all the difference. There were no moments of reprieve, nothing to make her feel safe – even if that safety was an illusion. She all but boarded herself up in her home, half-numb to the paranoia and panic that came from constant scrutiny, trapped by the constant threat of danger.

She found ways to work, from home, sewing and hemming, making works of art or clothing. She made very little money, but just enough to avoid starvation, while her parents were made poorer and poorer as they paid off her little house. Heather was locally infamous, and the only person she tended to see at all was her mail man. As a favor, he brought her the mail, then took any parcels back to the post office.

He was kind…and human contact was scarce.

It made her physically ill, knowing she was being watched as she took him to bed. She managed to hold back her tears and her nausea until he left, but the door had just barely closed before she broke down and sobbed, screamed, asked if that was what He wanted to see.

Of course, He said nothing, and only grinned. That terrible grin, that stretched wider than his face.

The following day, the mail man came to her door with a bouquet of flowers.

She pulled him inside, and ripped out his throat with a kitchen knife, in her fearful craze.

Heather came to her senses too late, and spent the afternoon in her small backyard, digging up a new garden. By dim light, not late enough to be suspicious, she packed him deep under the earth.

The next day, she ventured outside at last, and bought flowers to plant in her garden. Her paranoia worsened, but no one seemed to suspect her. Still, the sickness was brutal, every morning, for months.

An entire trimester.