Free Through Her Eyes by Amber Morgan Page A

eyes bloodshot. She looked like she felt – haunted. She
turned away from her reflection and headed downstairs.
    Dylan was already on the sofa, arranging a blanket
around himself . He held it up so she could slide
under, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close
against him. The familiar scent of the watermelon bubblegum he always chewed
whilst working washed over her. The solid warmth of him was as much a comfort
as the blanket, and she let the sense of safety and security
fill her.
    "Let's see what trash we can find on TV," he
said. "Three am is prime time for Bigfoot documentaries and b-movies ."
    It was an old routine. Dylan didn't know her past, but
he did know it haunted her, and he never failed to create the sanctuary she
needed.
    It didn't have to be real, she told herself as he
settled the blankets around them. It could have just been a nightmare.
    Please, please let it be a nightmare.
    ****
    Dylan soon nodded off in the middle of a documentary
about steroid abuse. Keira couldn't settle, afraid to fall asleep in case it
happened again and she was sucked out of her body, dragged back to that scene. Blood and blades in the night, screams and pleas for mercy falling
on merciless ears.
    At six am she stopped trying to sleep and crept out of
the blanket nest, leaving Dylan snoring softly. She went into the large
kitchen-diner, which they'd turned into a kitchen-office. He'd left his
computer on, as usual, and the bluish glow from the screen lent a sinister air
to the room. It highlighted the debris of their lives – wires, discs, speakers,
and motherboards from his, piles of unmarked essays and lessons plans from
hers. She flopped onto the sofa, studying the essays with a distant sense of
guilt. It was only three weeks until the school term started again and she
hadn't done a damn thing yet.
    She'd been questioning recently if she even wanted to
return to teaching. The school she worked at was a residential for children
with emotional and social problems – in theory somewhere she'd love to be.
She'd gone into teaching wanting to make a difference to children. But the kids
were rowdy, impossible to discipline, and the atmosphere at the school was
depressing, as if every teacher knew they were fighting a losing battle.
    Maybe that was what triggered the nightmare. She had
to think of it as a nightmare. Stress and anxiety over her future, maybe that
caused the nightmare? It was a better explanation than the other one, that her
past was coming back to haunt her.
    That someone died tonight and she saw it.
    She shuddered, bile rising in her throat again. She
swallowed hard and went to the kitchen to fix herself some warm milk, loading it with honey. Her mother swore by it as a remedy for everything.
    She sat at the kitchen table, cradling her mug and
watching dawn break over her little garden. The neighbor's tabby cat lounged in
the grass, watching blackbirds hop along the fence. The sky was streaked with
pink and gold. Beautiful. Peaceful. A world away from her nightmare, the woman's agonized face, the blood staining
the blade as it flashed down again and again...
    Keira rubbed her ribs absently, feeling the jagged
ridges of old scars through her thin cami top.
Phantom flashes of pain rippled through her. Her ribs still ached in the
winter. She'd told Dylan she'd been assaulted, a random mugging when she'd been
living in London. He'd never asked for more details.
    The ring of her mobile phone broke through her
reverie, making her jump. She pressed her hand to her forehead, sighing. She
couldn't go back to this. It had taken a year for her to get over jumping at
every noise, to stop being paranoid at every shadow. She hadn't even been able
to watch the TV for months; news of the Shoreditch Slasher had kept the
journalists and broadcasters busy for so long. Speculation on who , why, where... She shuddered.
    The phone kept ringing. God, who rang this early? She
went to retrieve it from the living room,