Dead Pretty

Facebook page. It’s private, so I can only see the profile picture.
Unsure if this is the right Natalie Jenkins, I type murdered next to her name in the search bar. Several other news stories come up, and a couple of them include a picture.
I click on one, and it’s the same picture from her Facebook page.
So, it’s definitely her, and she has shoulder-length dark brown hair.
A sense of relief fills my chest.
Which makes me feel shitty.
This girl lost her life, and I’m relieved that she had brown hair.
It’s just … Tobias would only kill girls who fit my physical description. He never deviated from that. The girls always had long blonde hair, like mine, and blue eyes.
And, yes, I know Tobias is locked up, so it couldn’t have been him. But I have a fear that Tobias will somehow get someone to come here and kill me. Or worse … there’s a copycat killer, and it will start all over again.
But with Natalie having dark brown hair, it means it couldn’t have anything to do with Tobias. If someone were following Tobias’s rules, the victim wouldn’t have dark hair. She would be blonde, like me.
And Molly was murdered months ago, and nothing weird has happened to me. No love notes, no dead animals left outside my door for me to find. No notes left on any dead bodies, addressed to me.
The first woman Tobias murdered, he left a piece of paper on the body with my name written clearly on it, stating that he had killed her for me. He left it unsigned though.
Always unsigned.
Like the note on the second body that he left for me.
After the third murder, he stopped leaving notes for me, but the police, the press, and I knew that those women—those innocent women whose lives he had snuffed out—were another of his gifts for me.
Why?
I don’t think I will ever know.
And I’m not sure I want to.
I let out a breath, my head dropping onto the back of the sofa.
I have got to stop this crap. I really need to quit torturing myself in this way. And I have to stop looking for similarities in every death or murder that happens, in fear that they are somehow similar to what Tobias did. Worrying that it’s one of his fans—yes, the guy has fans. I need to stop fearing that another sicko is going to come and finish the job that Tobias started.
Why didn’t he kill me that night?
It’s the one question in all of this that tortures and haunts me. The one thing I can’t get away from to this day. The thing that I will never understand.
I was supposed to be Tobias’s finale. Everything he had done … was building up to me.
Not that he ever told me that.
I came to that conclusion myself. I mean, what else could all of it have been for?
The night he took me … he didn’t speak a word to me. Not one single word.
I never saw his face.
But I felt him. Felt the blade that he used to cut my skin.
Mine.
That word forever scarred on my body.
Chills cover me, sinking into my bones. My hand instinctively covers my scars again.
I remember the pain. How much it hurt.
How I thought I was going to die.
I can feel my anxiety rising.
My breath starts to come out in quick pants.
Stop.
I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, trying to block out the memories, forcing my breaths to slow down.
Deep breath in through the nose. Out slowly through the mouth.
And repeat.
I’m safe.
No one is going to hurt me.
I’m safe.
I used to have panic attacks regularly after the murders, but they abated when I moved here.
When I stopped thinking about everything that had happened all the damn time. Letting it control every aspect of my life.
Letting Tobias still control my life.
He has no power over me.
I’m the only person who has power over me.
I have worked hard on myself to get to where I am. I’m not going backward.
I have control over that. What I allow myself to do. Think. Or feel.
I am in total control.
Deep breath in through the nose. Out slowly through the mouth.
And repeat.
I’m safe.
No one is going to hurt me.
I’m safe.
What happened is in the past. It’s over.
Tobias is in prison.
End of story.
I slam my laptop shut.
The murders of those two women have nothing to do with what happened to me, and they have no connection to Tobias Ripley whatsoever.
They are terrible and tragic. And I hope and pray that their killers are brought to justice and punished.
But those murders—or any, for that matter—are not something I need to think about. Or look into in any way, shape, or form.
Pushing my laptop aside onto the sofa, I get up and head to the kitchen to get a drink.
I reach into the fridge and grab a Diet Coke, slamming the door shut. I get some chips from the cupboard, flop back down on the sofa, pick up the remote, and turn on Netflix. It comes up with Stranger Things as last watched, and my mind instantly goes to Jack.
Then, I remember what happened the previous time I saw him, and I shut that thought down.
Nope. Not going there.
I’m not thinking about Jack or anyone else tonight.
And sorry, Stranger Things, but I can’t watch you right now.
I search for a comedy, needing to fill my mind with humor so I don’t think about anything related to my past.
I will sit here and pretend that I am a normal twenty-four-year-old who watches movies at home with chips for company and is … well, completely normal.

I haven’t seen Jack at the library for the past several days. Four, to be exact. He was coming in every day, regular as clockwork, and now, nothing.
I haven’t bumped into him anywhere or seen him around our apartment building. Not that I used to see him there, but …
It’s like he’s avoiding me.
And it bothers me for several