Part two: Where did she go?

Zanthy stared blankly out of the window. She had been simply floating in her body since Mickey passed away. Zanthy could not wrap her head around how or why Mickey died. It did not make sense to her. She had just woken up and while she was disoriented, she had no reason to believe that she would not survive. The way she died did not sit right with Zanthy. No one at the hospital could give her or Mickey’s family any real reason she suffocated to death.

“How are you doing?” Mickey’s mother, Nora said to Zanthy as she placed her hand on Zanthy’s shoulder. Zanthy just stared blankly at Nora, but Nora was not fazed by this as she had been catatonic for the last week and a half and struggled to pull it together for Mickey’s funeral. Nora then pulled Zanthy into a hug which Zanthy did not resist. Nora held her embrace for quite a while causing Zanthy to weep loudly and incessantly. Nora squeezed Zanthy tightly and whispered into her ear “I know sweetheart. It’s okay.”

Zanthy pulled away and attempted to pull herself together. Zanthy wiped the tears from her face and stated that she was okay. Nora informed Zanthy that it was okay to not be okay. Nora took a step back and grabbed both of Zanthy’s hands in her own and said “lets go take our seats. The service is about to start.” Zanthy nodded and followed Nora and took her place in front of Mickey’s closed casket.

***

Zanthy laid in her bed awake for the third time that week. She picked up her phone and saw that the time read 3:20 AM over the photo of her and Mickey on a date to their local rose garden. She sighed quietly and fought back tears. As she closed her eyes and attempted to fall asleep, she heard a tapping, but she could not make out where the sound was coming from. She stared at the window and froze as she thought of approaching it. Zanthy was terrified of what she might see if she peeked out of the curtains. Suddenly the tapping turned into knocking. Zanthy then realized that the tapping, now knocking was coming from behind the wall that her bed was pressed against. Zanthy catapulted out of bed as the knocks turned to banging. Zanthy ran to her bedroom door when she heard what she could only describe as cracking. Zanthy swung the door open and ran down the hallway and before she knew it, she hit the floor with a thud, slamming her face into the hardwood floor. As she felt her nose crack, she felt two hands wrap around her neck and she blacked out.

Zanthy woke up screaming in a cold sweat. She had been having this reoccurring nightmare since the day Mickey passed away while she was visiting her at the hospital, but she did not know what the dream meant but she had a feeling that it was tied to Mickey’s death. Zanthy got out of her bed and walked down the hallway to the bathroom. It was pitch black in the hallway. Zanthy never had a fear of the dark but lately the dark had seemed dangerous to her. Almost like the shadows were going to come to life and eat her whole if she let her guard down.

Zanthy wanted to sprint to the bathroom, but she did her best to walk down the hallway with her chest out, attempting to assert her dominance. Zanthy made it to the bathroom and hurried to turn on the bathroom light. She looked around the bathroom, in the shower, in the closet, under the sink even behind the toilet. She let out a sigh of relief when she did not find anything.

As Zanthy washed her hands, she looked into the mirror as she usually does but this time it was not her reflection looking back at her. She saw Mickey and Mickey looked frightened and confused. She had deep black circles around her eyes, and her lips were blue and cracked. As Mickey began to open her mouth to speak, Zanthy screamed and ran full speed back down to her room. Zanthy’s mother rushed into her room screaming “baby what’s wrong?”

Zanthy did not respond, she just sobbed loudly as her body shook uncontrollably. Her mother attempted to hug her, but Zanthy jerked her body away from her mother’s embrace. Her mother spoke again, “baby tell me what happened?”

Zanthy took a deep breath and attempted to tell her mother what she saw but she stopped herself as she thought about how outrageous she would sound telling her mother that she saw the face of her dead girlfriend in the bathroom mirror. Zanthy knew that her mother would put their house on the market in the next five minutes if she said that to her. Instead, she told her mother that she was still shaken up from losing Mickey. Her mother embraced her and told her that it was okay to not be okay.

“I know you loved her, sweetheart. I am not going to give you any cliches about she’s in a better place because we both know those words don’t do much to comfort anyone through anything, you just need time to heal, and I am here to help.”

Zanthy tried to find comfort in her mother’s words but all she could picture is Mickey’s frightened and bruised face. She wanted to know why Mickey looked like that and what Mickey was trying to tell her.

***

Zanthy woke up the next morning exhausted and disgruntled. She barley slept that night and was tossing and turning all night long. It was Zanthy’s first day back to work since Mickey passed away. When she walked in some of her co-workers looked at her with pitty and some with concern. Zanthy’s boss called her into her office. Zanthy sat down and looked at her with a vacant empty look. Her boss looked at her intently and with concern. “Zanthy, you look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”

Zanthy responded “It has been a long two weeks since, you know.”

Her boss responded, “I know but we need you present.”

Zanthy stated hopelessly “I am present.”

“mentally present, Zanthy.”

Zanthy quietly shifted her eyes.

“Zanthy, I would love to give you another day to go home and figure it out but unfortunately I cannot make that happen without letting you go completely and I do not want to make your life harder than it already is so I am going to give you 20 minutes to go outside and sit in your car and pull it together. That is the best I can do for you right now.”

Zanthy said okay and got up and walked out of her boss’s office, softly closing the door behind her. As she walked out, her co-workers continued to look at her with a concerned look on their faces, and this bothered Zanthy deeply.

Zanthy unlocked her car and got into it and locked the doors. She looked around to make sure no one was outside and when she determined that the coast was clear, she began to sob loudly, letting out what sounded like a primal howl. When Zanthy looked up she saw that it had begun to rain, and the fog was dense. Zanthy was confused because despite the fact it was the middle of fall, this was unusual. As Zanthy was looking out into the fog she saw a figure come into view. At first, she thought it was one of her co-workers and she began to swiftly wipe the tears from her eyes and look in the mirror to rub her face and make sure it wasn’t puffy as she did not feel like answering questions. However, she began to notice that the figure approaching her car was not any of her co-workers and she quickly went from curious to terrified when she noticed the features on the figures face. It was Mickey. Except it wasn’t Mickey because Mickey was dead. Zanthy froze in fear as she saw the thing smile a very unnatural smile. The smile on its face literally spread from ear to ear as if something or someone had cut its cheeks wide open.

When Zanthy snapped out of whatever trans she was in, she began to scream bloody murder. Zanthy watched as the thing started to run at her car at an unnatural speed. Zanthy turned on her car and hit the gas and hit the thing with her car as she accelerated to 50 mph. Zanthy heard the car hit the creature with a thud and she watched it fly into the air. Zanthy then hit the brakes and looked into the review mirror to see if the thing had come back down but it didn’t; then suddenly Zanthy was jolted forward as she heard a loud thud on the trunk of her car and she looked into the rearview mirror to see that the thing had landed on her car. She screamed again and put the car into reverse and again accelerated to 50 mph. Zanthy sped in reverse until she got close to the dumpster and slammed on the brakes and saw the thing fly over the dumpster. Zanthy quickly drove away. She was screaming and shaking from the adrenaline rushing through her veins. Zanthy drove halfway home before she remembered she had been at work. She pulled over on the side of road and weighed her options Did she call her boss and tell her that she had been almost attacked in the parking lot or did she go home and bite the bullet and wait to be fired.

Zanthy knew she did not want to go back to that job now because she did not know if the thing with her dead girlfriend’s face was dead too and she knew now that the thing knew where she worked and that scared her more than losing her job. So, Zanthy did what she thought was best and she called her boss.

“Zanthy were the hell, are you?”

Zanthy tensed up and began to tell her boss what happened. “Look, someone tried to attack me in the parking lot and things got, well, messy.”

“What do you mean messy, Zanthy?”

Zanthy took a deep breath and closed her eyes “I hit them.”

Her boss let out an audible gasp “You hit them?! Like, with your car?” She shouted into the phone.

“Yes, with my car.” Zanthy said exasperated.

“We have to call the cops.”

“You can call them, but I will not be calling them.”

“Zanthy, get your ass back here now.”

Zanthy sighed and said, “I cannot do that.”

Zanthy could feel the anger rising in her boss’s chest over the phone. “Zanthy what do you mean you can’t come back here?”

“I am not willing to put my life at risk to come back there. If you have to fire me, then so be it but I am not coming back there. I am sorry.”

Zanthy then hung up the phone and continued to drive home. When Zanthy arrived home, she realized that her mom was not home. This made her nervous because what if that thing with Mickey’s face came back to the house to get her. Zanthy sat in her car with her foot on the break and contemplated what she should do next. Zanthy thought about calling her mother but how would she explain to her what had just happened. How would she explain any of it? Mickey dying the way that she did, Mickey showing up in the bathroom mirror after she had that same reoccurring nightmare or the thing with Mickey’s face hunting her? She started to tap her other foot on the floor of the car before she made the decision to back out of her driveway and leave the house. She didn’t know where she was going but she knew couldn’t be at home or at work. Nowhere was safe right now.

As Zanthy drove down the road aimlessly, she asked herself out loud, “where the fuck is Mickey?”