And after a guy tried to force a spiked drink on me…
Slipping that picture quickly behind the stack of others, I take in the next picture, my eyes working left to right as my anxiety grows by the second.
I’m walking to class with a group of classmates after having lunch uptown. I remember that day vividly because I kept feeling like someone was following me and watching me, but I never caught them.
I felt crazy and paranoid, like I was losing it…
In the next photo, I’m hiding behind a tree. There’s a smile on my lips and laughter in my eyes as I peek around the trunk. I can’t place it at first, then I recall visiting Beth last week. We were outside, playing hide and seek with Charlie.
The picture beside that shows me helping my father work in the front garden of our house. Both of us squatting down in the grass and digging through the dirt.
I stare at this one for a long time, my eyes drinking in my father as my heart aches at the memory. It was one of his rare days off. He’d been so busy with some secret case he was working on, I hadn’t seen him in days.
Swallowing past the tightness in my throat, I shove the picture behind the others and quickly flip through the rest.
Both the remarkable and unremarkable days of my life jump out at me, chronicled in no particular order.
All spanning over a few months.
The few months since I was abducted.
Not a single one appears to be taken before then.
Only a few of them look like they were taken from a distance, with an actual camera. The rest… they look as if they were quickly snapped with a cellphone, as if whoever was taking them didn’t want to get caught in the act.
Was it James?
Has he been following me and spying on me this whole time? Wouldn’t I notice him?
You’d think I would notice him.
Or did someone else take all the pictures? Take them all and give them to him for some unknown reason?
That seems the most likely answer. Otherwise, if James took them, why would he bother printing them?
Calming down a little, I set the stack of pictures to the side then grab the box and pull it to me.
It’s probably all surveillance…
They were watching me… for some unknown reason.
At the very top of the box are more pictures. Handfuls and handfuls of pictures. I sort through the top layer quickly, checking to see if there is anything out of place or especially creepy.
But no, like the other pictures, they were all taken when I was out somewhere in public. All taken when I was completely oblivious.
Classic surveillance.
I convince myself it was probably a private investigator, or one of Lucifer’s other men following me around, and keep sorting through the photos until I find something lodged within the stack.
I almost miss it at first, it’s so small. And it takes some digging to pull it out from under the weight of the pictures, but when I do, I’m only left more confused.
It’s a black elastic… the kind I use when I put my hair up.
It could still be a coincidence though. Practically everyone I know uses elastics like this.
I decide to dig a little deeper to be absolutely sure.
Lifting handfuls of the pictures out of the box, I stumble across another elastic.
No big deal. It’s still not necessarily mine, even if there are a couple of blonde hairs attached to it…
I keep digging.
I’m nearly to the bottom when my fingers poke and wrap around what feels like a small tube.
As I pull it out, the sharp edge of a picture cuts into the side of my hand, leaving a thin paper cut.
Cursing, I bring my hand up to my mouth and try to suck away the pain while I stare at what I pulled out.
It’s a tube of lip balm.
Again, it could totally be a coincidence that it’s the exact brand and flavor I use.
Regardless, a ball of dread begins to form in the pit of my stomach.
Determined to literally get to the bottom of the box, I decide to pick it up and dump it out. The stacks of pictures I created on the floor topple over as a new tidal wave of pictures crashes into them.
A couple more elastics slide out of the mess followed by a dark piece of cloth and a stack of pictures held together by a rubber band.
Ignoring the dark piece of cloth for now, I pick up the stack of pictures and slip the rubber band off.
The picture on top of the stack is dark, too dark for me to really tell what it is, so I quickly slip it to the back of the stack.
The next picture however causes the ball of dread in the pit of my stomach to sharply tighten.