1
00:00:01,919 --> 00:00:05,639
I'm never quite sure if I was
just stupid when I missed the signs,

2
00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:11,640
or if I'm just a normal person. Sarah was very sweet on the surface.

3
00:00:12,439 --> 00:00:16,239
She ticked all the boxes, even
if she was a bit awkward,

4
00:00:17,519 --> 00:00:23,120
But so what people are awkward.
I tried to look past the little things.

5
00:00:23,800 --> 00:00:26,000
I mean, we can all be
a bit weird, can't we,

6
00:00:27,079 --> 00:00:32,039
especially when we get nervous. But
Sarah was odd in a way that,

7
00:00:32,600 --> 00:00:39,399
in hindsight, maybe I should have
taken more seriously on their own. All

8
00:00:39,439 --> 00:00:44,520
the little signs seemed quite innocuous at
the start. She was very hands on

9
00:00:44,640 --> 00:00:51,359
during dates, pinching and grabbing and
winking. She'd make these hilarious innuendos and

10
00:00:51,479 --> 00:00:57,399
constantly towed the line of what was
and wasn't appropriate. I like a woman

11
00:00:57,439 --> 00:01:02,719
with a dark sense of humor,
and she had that in spades. But

12
00:01:03,240 --> 00:01:07,439
she pulled away if I tried to
reciprocate. And I realized early on that

13
00:01:07,560 --> 00:01:14,079
intimacy wouldn't be on the cards for
a long time, and I was fine

14
00:01:14,079 --> 00:01:19,159
with that. I wasn't in a
hurry. And yet she continued to send

15
00:01:19,280 --> 00:01:26,439
mixed signals. She'd asked for photos
almost every night. Girls don't normally ask

16
00:01:26,439 --> 00:01:32,719
for full length. It was weird, and taking a good picture wasn't as

17
00:01:32,760 --> 00:01:36,760
easy as I thought it would be. I always thought I looked weird in

18
00:01:36,840 --> 00:01:41,959
that kind of full body vertical picture, but she was always happy with what

19
00:01:42,079 --> 00:01:46,879
I sent. She had a lot
of requests. One was to see me

20
00:01:47,040 --> 00:01:51,159
lying on the floor, eyes closed, arms to either side of my back.

21
00:01:52,599 --> 00:01:56,560
She liked that one. One time
she made me do a strip tease

22
00:01:56,599 --> 00:02:00,640
with a white sheet, slowly pulling
it down in one pig draft of the

23
00:02:00,719 --> 00:02:06,319
other. This went on for the
first month, i'd say. I sent

24
00:02:06,400 --> 00:02:09,520
her pictures, she sent me some. We talked a lot about what we

25
00:02:09,599 --> 00:02:15,719
each wanted. It was kind of
fun and kinky, like we were taking

26
00:02:15,759 --> 00:02:20,439
turns being each other's long distance model. And as a guy, I don't

27
00:02:20,520 --> 00:02:24,439
usually get to enjoy the feeling of
being a promiscuous object. I normally feel

28
00:02:24,479 --> 00:02:30,120
like my sexiness is tied to some
kind of performance. It was novel and

29
00:02:30,240 --> 00:02:36,159
exciting to be valued as just a
physical being. We never really figured I

30
00:02:36,199 --> 00:02:39,479
had an exhibition at streak, or
that that was something that women wanted much

31
00:02:39,520 --> 00:02:46,599
of, but she did, and
I didn't dislike it. During all this

32
00:02:46,960 --> 00:02:52,439
we continued to meet up once or
twice a week for food. It seemed

33
00:02:52,560 --> 00:02:55,639
like we had a little thing going
that might one day become something real.

34
00:02:59,120 --> 00:03:02,319
We never did in the night together. First time I thought it was going

35
00:03:02,360 --> 00:03:06,919
to happen was after I sent a
photo of me lying on my kitchen floor,

36
00:03:07,479 --> 00:03:10,960
the white towels freezing my ass the
whole time. An hour after I

37
00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:15,199
sent the photo, she appeared on
my doorstep without warning, hair soaking,

38
00:03:15,240 --> 00:03:21,080
wet and smelling of booze. As
soon as she saw me, she grabbed

39
00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:25,039
me, guided me to the sofa, then climbed on top and started kissing

40
00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:31,560
me hard. She was handsy,
but it never went past over the clothes

41
00:03:31,560 --> 00:03:39,719
stuff, Just hot, heavy,
and well, not all that good.

42
00:03:40,120 --> 00:03:45,280
Do you ever wonder if some people
are bad at intimacy stuff because no one

43
00:03:45,319 --> 00:03:49,080
tells them the truth. It was
like she was trying to suck the air

44
00:03:49,120 --> 00:03:53,400
out of my lungs. I've had
better kisses off my dog. She got

45
00:03:53,439 --> 00:03:58,639
a lot of points for enthusiasm,
Don't get me wrong, I've never had

46
00:03:58,680 --> 00:04:03,639
anyone grote me show me with such
raw passion before. But whenever I tried

47
00:04:03,680 --> 00:04:08,719
to match her energy, I got
the sense she didn't really care for it.

48
00:04:09,879 --> 00:04:14,719
She never reacted or moaned or gave
off nonverbal cues to be like do

49
00:04:14,919 --> 00:04:19,800
that more. It was all about
her touching me, never vice versa.

50
00:04:21,360 --> 00:04:26,600
After maybe twenty minutes of this over
the clothes fumbling, she asked me to

51
00:04:26,680 --> 00:04:30,519
lie down on the floor. I
had no idea where this was going,

52
00:04:30,560 --> 00:04:36,319
so I did. Can you hold
your breath, she asked as she looked

53
00:04:36,319 --> 00:04:42,279
down at me. All of a
sudden, I felt very small, and

54
00:04:42,319 --> 00:04:46,519
there were lots of thoughts going through
my head. I'm pretty sure there was

55
00:04:46,560 --> 00:04:50,040
nothing I wouldn't have done for her
in that moment, although not necessarily because

56
00:04:50,079 --> 00:04:56,120
I wanted to. There was just
an intensity to us stare and shrunk me

57
00:04:56,240 --> 00:05:01,839
down until I was the size of
an end. So I held my breath.

58
00:05:03,199 --> 00:05:06,959
I held it so long my lungs
burned and my head swam until I

59
00:05:06,959 --> 00:05:13,360
couldn't do it any longer. When
I opened my eyes, she was looking

60
00:05:13,399 --> 00:05:16,560
down at me with so much hunger
in her eyes. I actually got a

61
00:05:16,560 --> 00:05:25,360
little scared. Admittedly, I sort
of liked it. She paused for a

62
00:05:25,439 --> 00:05:30,040
moment, drinking me in, and
then said she had better get going,

63
00:05:30,279 --> 00:05:34,360
she had work in the morning.
We kissed, at the door, and

64
00:05:34,439 --> 00:05:40,120
her hand roamed all over my back. I was called by that point,

65
00:05:40,480 --> 00:05:45,519
and her hands felt so warm,
I swore something was about to happen,

66
00:05:46,480 --> 00:05:54,360
but she simply left me standing there. It was confusing and frustrating, so

67
00:05:54,480 --> 00:05:59,399
much so I almost didn't call her
back. But she had a kind of

68
00:05:59,439 --> 00:06:03,639
commanding energy about her, a deep
awareness of what she did and didn't want.

69
00:06:04,639 --> 00:06:10,959
That it was just enough for me
to keep replying to her text After

70
00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:14,279
that night. I always laid on
my kitchen floor when she asked for a

71
00:06:14,279 --> 00:06:17,399
photo, but it never really had
the same effect of getting her to my

72
00:06:17,480 --> 00:06:24,079
doorstep. Still, she became a
regular fixture in my life, and pretty

73
00:06:24,120 --> 00:06:29,399
soon I hoped we might get close
to something a bit more serious. I

74
00:06:29,439 --> 00:06:32,759
looked for signs that she thought the
same thing, but the going was damn

75
00:06:32,839 --> 00:06:38,839
slow. By the time winter rolled
around, we'd been on and off for

76
00:06:38,959 --> 00:06:43,600
six months, and just about the
only thing that actually changed was the way

77
00:06:43,680 --> 00:06:47,519
she kept holding my hand. She'd
take my cold hands between her own and

78
00:06:47,600 --> 00:06:54,600
hold them against her cheek and neck, maybe even a chest at times.

79
00:06:54,680 --> 00:06:59,160
It was quite nice. It took
a while, but I managed to swing

80
00:06:59,199 --> 00:07:03,199
her around into another home visit.
You can guess what I was hoping for,

81
00:07:04,360 --> 00:07:08,720
but she actually made us spend most
of our time out on the balcony

82
00:07:08,839 --> 00:07:14,439
watching the stars, cuddling together in
the freezing cold. She made me give

83
00:07:14,480 --> 00:07:16,680
her my jacket as well, even
when I offered to get a one from

84
00:07:16,759 --> 00:07:23,079
inside, it had to be the
one I was wearing, and she wouldn't

85
00:07:23,160 --> 00:07:28,360
let me replace it. By the
time we went back in, I felt

86
00:07:28,399 --> 00:07:31,480
like I was close to getting pneumonia, and the shock of the warm air

87
00:07:31,800 --> 00:07:38,040
left me feeling dizzy. Lie down, she pegged me. Lie in the

88
00:07:38,040 --> 00:07:43,160
floor. I have an idea.
I was shaking by this point, the

89
00:07:43,199 --> 00:07:47,240
tips of my fingers ice blue.
When she came back over, she had

90
00:07:47,240 --> 00:07:51,680
a glass of red wine. She
stood over me, warming the glass in

91
00:07:51,680 --> 00:07:59,160
her hands before giving me clear instruction. Zip some, she said, and

92
00:07:59,279 --> 00:08:03,160
keep it in your mind. Close
your eyes, don't open them, and

93
00:08:03,240 --> 00:08:09,600
don't swallow the wine. I don't
even like wine, and I was pretty

94
00:08:09,639 --> 00:08:13,519
irritated by the whole thing, But
there was a tension in the air,

95
00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:20,160
something about her electric anticipation that infected
me. I didn't know what was happening,

96
00:08:20,160 --> 00:08:24,879
and in the past, when I
felt that way, it sometimes led

97
00:08:24,879 --> 00:08:31,399
to me having new and exciting experiences
out of nowhere. She kissed me,

98
00:08:33,320 --> 00:08:37,440
pushing her tongue into the lukewarm wine
until it dribbled messily out of the corners

99
00:08:37,440 --> 00:08:43,600
of my lips. At the same
time, and in one swift motion,

100
00:08:43,240 --> 00:08:48,279
she pressed the heel of her hand
into my diaphragm and pushed so hard that

101
00:08:48,320 --> 00:08:52,840
the wine gushed out of my mouth
and into hers. I started coughing.

102
00:08:52,519 --> 00:08:58,960
She did too. My immediate reaction
was that kind of irritation you can't hide.

103
00:09:00,679 --> 00:09:05,200
It actually ticked me off. It
was surprising in all the wrong ways,

104
00:09:05,879 --> 00:09:09,759
and given what I may be hoped
to was coming, it just meant

105
00:09:09,960 --> 00:09:16,600
all the disappointment turned into outright frustration. All I'd wanted was a normal kiss,

106
00:09:18,440 --> 00:09:22,759
some sign of basic normal affection.
Did she even realize how terrible I

107
00:09:22,799 --> 00:09:26,919
felt? Have to freeze my ass
off on the balcony so she could feel

108
00:09:26,919 --> 00:09:31,720
like some gentlemen was given her my
jacket. I pushed her off me gently

109
00:09:31,759 --> 00:09:35,720
but firm. Let's not do that
again, I said, choking at the

110
00:09:35,759 --> 00:09:41,840
words. What were you trying to
do? Nothing? She cried, It

111
00:09:41,960 --> 00:09:48,080
was nothing, just something different.
She seemed sincerely regretful and sorry, But

112
00:09:48,600 --> 00:09:54,399
I was half naked, horny,
irritated, and freezing cold. I didn't

113
00:09:54,399 --> 00:09:58,679
ask her to leave, but she
clearly sensed the change in atmosphere and made

114
00:09:58,720 --> 00:10:05,679
some I wipe myself down while she
went to the toilet, and when she

115
00:10:05,759 --> 00:10:11,840
emerged, I greeted her with a
handbag and keys. I didn't even walk

116
00:10:11,879 --> 00:10:16,320
her to the door. Instead,
as she looked at me with a sort

117
00:10:16,320 --> 00:10:20,840
of sad power from the door,
I simply ignored her and began to mop

118
00:10:20,879 --> 00:10:28,360
the kitchen floor. Looks like a
damn murder scene, I grumbled. She

119
00:10:28,519 --> 00:10:31,840
may have said something before she left, but I didn't look up until I

120
00:10:31,879 --> 00:10:37,639
heard the door close. After that, we didn't speak for a while.

121
00:10:39,600 --> 00:10:43,320
Now this is a very typical thing
for me to do, but over the

122
00:10:43,360 --> 00:10:48,840
next few days I did a little
retrospective on our dates and realized I'd been

123
00:10:48,879 --> 00:10:54,720
the one putting in all the work. It was always me escalating, asking

124
00:10:54,759 --> 00:10:58,559
for dates, phone calls, trying
to move things between us forward. I

125
00:10:58,639 --> 00:11:03,600
figured if there was any chance of
a real relationship, then she'd have to

126
00:11:03,679 --> 00:11:09,639
just come back and apologize and explain
her behavior and be the one to reach

127
00:11:09,679 --> 00:11:15,440
out for once. Of course,
at the exact same time, I couldn't

128
00:11:15,440 --> 00:11:20,080
get her out of my head.
Maybe she'd just been clumsy. I thought,

129
00:11:20,679 --> 00:11:24,000
maybe she was nervous. I couldn't
get my head around the wine thing.

130
00:11:26,120 --> 00:11:30,919
It seems so random. I'm more
familiar with the usual BDSM stuff people

131
00:11:31,039 --> 00:11:35,080
like. If I could have pinned
her actions down to some specific kink,

132
00:11:35,639 --> 00:11:39,639
I could have more confidently figured if
we were compatible or not. But without

133
00:11:39,679 --> 00:11:46,879
more information, I was just well
and truly confused. I wanted to like

134
00:11:46,919 --> 00:11:50,159
her, but if there was no
chance of us working out, if we

135
00:11:50,159 --> 00:11:56,720
were just incompatible, then I wanted
closure. As it was, I didn't

136
00:11:56,720 --> 00:12:03,200
have a clue what we were,
but what the hell we've been doing either

137
00:12:03,200 --> 00:12:07,559
way? When she finally text asking
if I'd like to pick her up after

138
00:12:07,639 --> 00:12:13,919
work, I agreed. I wanted
closure, and maybe I imagined it with

139
00:12:13,039 --> 00:12:20,120
something about her tone seemed a little
contrite. Her feeling was reinforced when I

140
00:12:20,159 --> 00:12:24,279
met her in the parking lot of
the hospital where she worked, and I

141
00:12:24,320 --> 00:12:28,360
found her sitting on the hood of
her car in a breath taking red dress.

142
00:12:30,080 --> 00:12:33,000
As soon as I was out of
the car, she took my hand

143
00:12:33,279 --> 00:12:37,000
and told me she'd set up a
little date for us, something special,

144
00:12:37,600 --> 00:12:41,039
and that she'd finally make it all
up to me. The way she kissed

145
00:12:41,080 --> 00:12:46,480
me, the way she guided my
hand along a waist, there was something

146
00:12:46,559 --> 00:12:52,440
so utterly different about it, so
committed that I immediately knew she wanted to

147
00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:56,200
go the whole way. I could
just tell she'd finally made a decision,

148
00:12:58,120 --> 00:13:01,279
a threshold had been crossed, and
I wanted to go see where this would

149
00:13:01,360 --> 00:13:07,399
lead. She didn't work at the
hospital itself, but rather took me off

150
00:13:07,399 --> 00:13:11,440
to a building on the same ground. It was a quiet, little red

151
00:13:11,480 --> 00:13:16,919
brick thing, just two floors from
the outside, and I wondered what it

152
00:13:16,039 --> 00:13:22,399
was exactly that she did. Inside. There was a chemical smell I was

153
00:13:22,440 --> 00:13:28,240
pretty overwhelming, but at first glance
it seemed like a simple g P office.

154
00:13:28,679 --> 00:13:31,399
There was a little reception area with
one or two chairs, a small

155
00:13:31,440 --> 00:13:37,519
countertop with some computers, and a
bunch of back offices. This was after

156
00:13:37,600 --> 00:13:41,639
ours, so no one else was
there, only a few dim lights in

157
00:13:41,679 --> 00:13:48,000
the reception area, everywhere else was
dark. She quickly disappeared upstairs, telling

158
00:13:48,039 --> 00:13:52,000
me she was going to slip into
something more comfortable, and I settled down

159
00:13:52,039 --> 00:13:56,480
for a short wait. At least
she locked the door behind us, so

160
00:13:56,600 --> 00:14:01,320
no one else could come in.
I took that as a good sign,

161
00:14:01,279 --> 00:14:07,759
but I still felt pretty uncertain.
Where were we and why the hell did

162
00:14:07,799 --> 00:14:13,120
you pick this place for our date. I tried to sit down, but

163
00:14:13,440 --> 00:14:18,159
it felt too strange, like waiting
for the dentist, so I stood and

164
00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:22,960
shoveled around a bit instead, listening
to the muffled dumps of whatever the hell

165
00:14:22,080 --> 00:14:28,720
she was doing upstairs. Outside,
it was starting to get dark, Fewer

166
00:14:28,759 --> 00:14:35,080
and fewer cars were going past,
and it was raining heavily, all of

167
00:14:35,120 --> 00:14:39,320
which made that little room feel even
like a lonely little corner of the world,

168
00:14:39,960 --> 00:14:45,120
well hidden and out of the way, even though the hospital was clearly

169
00:14:45,200 --> 00:14:50,600
visible, with heavy traffic not far
behind it. There wasn't much else to

170
00:14:50,639 --> 00:14:56,320
do except snoop, and I quickly
noticed the door had been left slightly ajar,

171
00:14:56,120 --> 00:15:01,519
like someone had forgotten to shut it. It was the only door I

172
00:15:01,559 --> 00:15:07,960
could reach without climbing over something,
so my curiosity got the better of me.

173
00:15:09,559 --> 00:15:13,240
I approached it and got maybe two
feet away before I realized it was

174
00:15:13,279 --> 00:15:20,440
the source of that damn chemical smell. Once I realized that, I had

175
00:15:20,480 --> 00:15:24,159
to take a look inside, just
so I could know for sure what the

176
00:15:24,159 --> 00:15:28,360
hell it was. I tried pushing
it open an inch or two and peeking

177
00:15:28,360 --> 00:15:33,559
inside, but it was pitch black
in there, so I pushed it open

178
00:15:33,600 --> 00:15:39,120
a little further, and using my
phone light, I saw that there were

179
00:15:39,120 --> 00:15:45,840
a set of stairs going down into
a basement. More thumps from upstairs told

180
00:15:45,879 --> 00:15:50,519
me she wasn't going to come down
any time soon. I had time to

181
00:15:50,639 --> 00:15:54,240
check, so I went down a
step and tried seeing if that helped,

182
00:15:56,320 --> 00:16:02,279
but there was nothing. So I
went down another and then another, until

183
00:16:02,320 --> 00:16:07,440
suddenly a set of automatic lights came
on, with a loud thunk and the

184
00:16:07,559 --> 00:16:14,840
rising whine of fluorescence coming to life. I'm not sure what I expected for

185
00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:22,200
what I saw. At first it
left me dumb struck, but then I

186
00:16:22,279 --> 00:16:27,200
don't know. It was a sterile
room with white speckled tiles, a few

187
00:16:27,240 --> 00:16:33,919
countertops running along the walls covered in
silver instruments I didn't recognize, one wall

188
00:16:34,000 --> 00:16:40,159
covered in a regular grid of metal
covered doors, and three steel slabs in

189
00:16:40,240 --> 00:16:45,919
the center of the room. One
of them was occupied a vaguely human shape

190
00:16:47,080 --> 00:16:51,120
covered by a white shroud, a
lone foot of a man sticking out of

191
00:16:51,200 --> 00:16:56,799
the bottom. Something about the strange
coloring and texture of the skin immediately let

192
00:16:56,840 --> 00:17:02,519
me know he wasn't having a nap. That and the toe tag was a

193
00:17:02,519 --> 00:17:10,160
pretty obvious clue. It was a
morgue. She worked in the morgue,

194
00:17:10,599 --> 00:17:14,599
and it was here, of all
places, she'd decided to set our final

195
00:17:14,720 --> 00:17:21,039
date. My initial reaction was to
want to go upstairs and confront her,

196
00:17:21,640 --> 00:17:25,960
get angry, let it out,
and just leave after making her unlock the

197
00:17:26,039 --> 00:17:33,640
door. But something stopped me.
I can't say for sure what. As

198
00:17:33,720 --> 00:17:37,759
quickly as it came, the anger
left me, and I was left with

199
00:17:37,839 --> 00:17:42,319
a kind of horrified curiosity, an
idea I couldn't even put to words in

200
00:17:42,400 --> 00:17:48,279
the privacy of my own head.
Instead of turning around and leaving, I

201
00:17:48,359 --> 00:17:52,720
waited a few seconds to make sure
she wasn't coming down right behind me,

202
00:17:53,920 --> 00:18:00,119
and I began to descend the rest
of the way to the body felt like

203
00:18:00,160 --> 00:18:07,400
a ten mile hike. Every step
was too loud, every breath a nervous

204
00:18:07,400 --> 00:18:12,599
shivering exhulation. The elicant might burst
into a gasp at any moment. I

205
00:18:12,680 --> 00:18:18,119
was terrified. I couldn't help but
imagine that faceless shape turning to look at

206
00:18:18,160 --> 00:18:25,599
me, or sitting upright in one
smooth motion, I quickly realized why ghost

207
00:18:25,799 --> 00:18:30,160
I stereotypically portrayed his walking sheet.
Someone must have had the same thought.

208
00:18:30,240 --> 00:18:37,359
I had the imagined scene of a
shroud covered body moving swiftly towards you in

209
00:18:37,400 --> 00:18:41,599
the dark. Hell of a time
for my brain to play those kinds of

210
00:18:41,599 --> 00:18:47,960
games with me, But that curiosity
drove me on. I couldn't walk away,

211
00:18:48,680 --> 00:18:52,960
not now. Before I knew it, I was stood by the body,

212
00:18:52,839 --> 00:19:00,680
and with a shaking hand, I
pulled back the sheet. He looked

213
00:19:00,720 --> 00:19:07,279
like me, vaguely. I think
we would have probably been a close match

214
00:19:07,319 --> 00:19:12,440
before the bloating. Same hair,
collar, same face shape, same ethnicity,

215
00:19:12,799 --> 00:19:18,039
age, so on. For a
moment, I considered the idea that

216
00:19:18,119 --> 00:19:23,839
maybe Sarah was just a very weird
woman. People get desensitized to this kind

217
00:19:23,839 --> 00:19:29,559
of stuff all the time, and
to her, the building Brewin might just

218
00:19:29,599 --> 00:19:33,599
be a nice empty place to bring
a date. But that body on that

219
00:19:33,680 --> 00:19:38,599
slab, I don't know how to
describe it, but it set something off

220
00:19:38,599 --> 00:19:45,039
in me, a kind of slow
rising dread. I'm not sure why I

221
00:19:45,119 --> 00:19:49,559
did what I did next, but
I couldn't stop thinking of that strange night

222
00:19:49,960 --> 00:19:56,279
when she pushed against my chest and
sent wine dribbling out my mouth so utterly

223
00:19:56,359 --> 00:20:04,240
bizarre. But I placed my hand
against the man's cold flesh, healed to

224
00:20:04,319 --> 00:20:12,599
the diaphragm and applied pressure. He
animated like a puppet, a brief gasp

225
00:20:12,640 --> 00:20:18,440
of air, followed by curdled blood
flowing out of his mouth. Black and

226
00:20:18,559 --> 00:20:23,920
yellow and red paletts, platelets,
and plasmas separated with time into a thick

227
00:20:23,960 --> 00:20:29,680
soup, and the smell hit me. I couldn't help but be sick,

228
00:20:30,880 --> 00:20:33,559
and as I hunched over the nearby
drain and emptied my body of all my

229
00:20:33,680 --> 00:20:38,880
vomit and bile, images of my
time with Sarah flashed through my mind.

230
00:20:40,880 --> 00:20:44,640
The photos of me nude lying on
the white tile floor, the use of

231
00:20:44,640 --> 00:20:48,680
the blanket to cover my chest had
vexation on my cold hands, and nights

232
00:20:48,680 --> 00:20:53,359
spent freezing in my balcony, filling
my mouth with wine and forcing it back

233
00:20:53,359 --> 00:20:59,359
out with a shoved to the chest. I looked at the body and quickly

234
00:20:59,440 --> 00:21:04,119
understood how and why she discovered what
happens when you apply pressure to the chest.

235
00:21:06,599 --> 00:21:10,599
The image was crystal clear in my
mind. The mental image of her

236
00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:17,400
slender frame straddling the bloated men before
me was as unpleasant and inescapable as nails

237
00:21:17,440 --> 00:21:23,119
on a chalkboard. Unable to shake
it. I hunched over once more and

238
00:21:23,319 --> 00:21:30,000
was sick again, this time until
my eyes watered and there was nothing left

239
00:21:30,119 --> 00:21:38,359
but saliva and bile. I felt
violated. I wanted to leave. I

240
00:21:38,400 --> 00:21:44,680
no longer felt angry or confused.
Instead, every moment of the last six

241
00:21:44,720 --> 00:21:49,240
months fell into place, and a
pattern emerged that terrified me. She wasn't

242
00:21:49,279 --> 00:21:55,880
meandering or clueless. Everything she'd done
had been moving towards this one night with

243
00:21:56,039 --> 00:21:59,759
me here, locked in this place, with no one to call for help.

244
00:22:00,759 --> 00:22:04,079
I'd blundered into what might just be
the most dangerous situation of my life.

245
00:22:06,279 --> 00:22:10,799
And now I was too deep into
the trap to just blindly panic.

246
00:22:11,680 --> 00:22:17,119
Under ground and inner room with only
one exit, I had to be careful.

247
00:22:18,440 --> 00:22:22,880
She was up there somewhere, maybe
clueless about what I'd realized, maybe

248
00:22:22,920 --> 00:22:27,640
not. She seemed small enough,
but a cursory glance at some of the

249
00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:33,240
glinting blades on the nearby work surface
told me she didn't have to be a

250
00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:38,119
bodybuilder to hurt me. Any One
of those razor sharp instruments could work its

251
00:22:38,160 --> 00:22:45,119
way into the meat of my neck
with very little effort. Sooner or later

252
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:49,359
she'd realize where I was. Sooner
or later. This plan of hers had

253
00:22:49,359 --> 00:22:56,039
to have an endgame. I looked
up the stairs. If she came down

254
00:22:56,119 --> 00:23:00,799
from the top floor, she'd see
the lights from this room be obvious to

255
00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:07,079
anyone where I'd gone. I was
torn. Do I go up and pretend

256
00:23:07,119 --> 00:23:11,640
I saw nothing? I thought about
having to go up there and lie my

257
00:23:11,720 --> 00:23:15,720
way through some aw good encounter.
Oh I'm feeling a little unwell. I

258
00:23:15,799 --> 00:23:22,880
have to skip polite, smile,
nod. Could I stomach even that brief

259
00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:26,759
exchange? And that's if she bought
it? And it required that the next

260
00:23:26,759 --> 00:23:33,400
step of a planet involved me conscious
or alive. I thought of her attacking

261
00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:37,839
me out of nowhere with a scalpel, silently dragging it across my throat,

262
00:23:37,519 --> 00:23:44,279
letting that surgical blade bite into cartilage. She was small, but so what.

263
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:48,720
I had no idea what she was
planning or where she was lurking.

264
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:55,039
Walking into an ambush and toughing it
out didn't seem like the best of plans.

265
00:23:55,720 --> 00:24:00,160
What I wanted was distant. I
just needed a door or a window.

266
00:24:02,119 --> 00:24:07,680
I just had to avoid her.
My first instinct had been to get

267
00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:11,599
out of the basement, and I
wanted to go with it, but the

268
00:24:11,640 --> 00:24:15,319
strange sounds coming from upstairs made me
think she might have finally come to find

269
00:24:15,359 --> 00:24:22,680
Reception empty. Terrified, I looked
around, desperate for some way out or

270
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:26,680
maybe even a good hiding spot.
Just about every bad idea you can think

271
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:33,240
of went through my head, including
swapping myself out for the corpse. I

272
00:24:33,319 --> 00:24:37,279
nearly laughed at the stupidity of it, for my attention had been pulled to

273
00:24:37,319 --> 00:24:41,400
the mob drawers, and with a
sinking feeling in my gut, I slowly

274
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:47,000
realized there was nowhere else in that
room large enough to hide a person.

275
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:55,599
Michael. The voice was muffled and
distant, but I could tell she was

276
00:24:55,680 --> 00:25:00,279
finally looking for me. This was
really fast becoming and now or never moment.

277
00:25:03,319 --> 00:25:06,279
With a deep breath, I pulled
at the first drawer I saw,

278
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:11,559
and felt bittersweet relief that it was
empty. I wasn't sure I could go

279
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:15,880
through with this, but at least
it hadn't been already occupied. With a

280
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:22,319
rising gorge, I climbed inside feet
first, slid myself back into the darkness,

281
00:25:22,759 --> 00:25:25,839
try my best not to think of
a pair of cold hands snatching my

282
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:30,880
ankles, and then quickly pulled the
door shut. I'd barely heard a click

283
00:25:32,279 --> 00:25:37,000
when there came the sound of footsteps
down the stairs. They stopped halfway,

284
00:25:37,759 --> 00:25:42,559
and I clearly heard a hiss damn
under a breath before turning back around and

285
00:25:42,599 --> 00:25:48,000
returning upstairs. She must have figured
I'd seen the bodies and run off somewhere

286
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:52,720
else. Wherever that might take her. It had at least brought me time.

287
00:25:55,799 --> 00:25:59,559
I opened the door, using the
internal latch, while pushing aside more

288
00:25:59,599 --> 00:26:04,400
bequest of why that feature was even
necessary, and stepped out as quietly as

289
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:10,720
I could onto the tile steps.
After that, I scaled the stairs as

290
00:26:10,759 --> 00:26:14,279
silently as I could manage, and
made my way to the door at the

291
00:26:14,319 --> 00:26:18,559
top of the basement. She had
thankfully left it a char once again,

292
00:26:18,839 --> 00:26:22,519
bit of a habit of hers,
I assumed, and peeked through into the

293
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:29,960
darkness beyond. In the time I
had been in the basement, the sun

294
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:33,599
had fully set, and now there
were only the lights of passing cars to

295
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:41,400
illuminate reception. Bright and the light
with hard edges swept across the room one

296
00:26:41,599 --> 00:26:48,519
after the other with strange irregularity.
They made for an unpredictable insight into the

297
00:26:48,599 --> 00:26:53,920
room's components, a chair, a
computer, a countertop. I had to

298
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:59,519
squint and wait patiently for a few
of them to go by before I realized

299
00:27:00,079 --> 00:27:03,559
one of the back office's doors were
open, and there was the sound of

300
00:27:03,599 --> 00:27:10,720
frustrated footsteps coming from within. She
was distracted, and this was my best

301
00:27:10,799 --> 00:27:17,519
chance of getting out. I tiptoed
out of the basement and listened carefully.

302
00:27:18,839 --> 00:27:25,039
She occasionally hissed an angry refrain to
herself, opening what sounded like cabinet doors.

303
00:27:25,839 --> 00:27:30,519
Why you doing this, Michael,
she whined, and I was surprised

304
00:27:30,759 --> 00:27:36,960
that she sounded not malevolent, but
sad and pitiful, like an upset teenager.

305
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:42,880
She was genuinely confused by my reaction. For a brief moment, I

306
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:48,640
dared to wonder if my imagination had
gotten the better of me. Right there

307
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:55,039
on the counter was a bottle of
wine and two glasses. Maybe she really

308
00:27:55,160 --> 00:27:59,400
was just intending for a normal date, and I'd made connections that were never

309
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:04,160
really there. But in my mind
I saw that corpse bloated and bloody once

310
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:11,599
again, and ultimately decided I was
better safe than sorry. A quick check

311
00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:17,240
of the front door showed who was
still locked, and so with nowhere else

312
00:28:17,279 --> 00:28:22,200
to go, I went off another
floor, careful to stop every step or

313
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:27,279
two and listen for signs she had
changed course. Thankfully I was at the

314
00:28:27,279 --> 00:28:33,240
top step by the time I heard
her leave the office and enter another Come

315
00:28:33,319 --> 00:28:40,160
on, she cried, why are
you being like this? I wasn't sure

316
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:44,759
what my game plan was. I
figured my best chance was a window who

317
00:28:44,799 --> 00:28:48,480
was already trying to start tearing the
top floor apart when I was stopped dead

318
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:52,839
in my tracks by what I saw. There were a few rooms on the

319
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:57,119
top floor, but only one of
them had an open door and the lights

320
00:28:57,160 --> 00:29:03,920
turned on. What I saw inside
hit me so hard I stopped dead in

321
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:11,359
my tracks and led out a gasp. It was covered in plastic crap top

322
00:29:11,440 --> 00:29:15,720
to bottom, floors, walls,
and ceiling. The small white table had

323
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:21,000
been set up in one corner,
and on it lay three open pill bottles,

324
00:29:21,319 --> 00:29:26,799
a hack saw, and several scalpels. Seeing all that stuff, getting

325
00:29:26,839 --> 00:29:30,359
such an unfraught sight into what she
had planned, it all made my damn

326
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:36,480
skin crawl. That and the bottle
of lotion made me want to be sick.

327
00:29:37,039 --> 00:29:41,240
Suppressing the urge to gag, I
decided none of that really mattered,

328
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:45,880
because, and this wasn't a great
surprise, she had picked a room with

329
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:51,839
a large and easy to open window. I pushed the side of the plastic

330
00:29:51,880 --> 00:29:56,440
sheeting and opened it to find the
drop below was in anywhere near as bad

331
00:29:56,680 --> 00:30:00,640
as the thought of spending another second
in that damn room. I began to

332
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:07,160
climb out, got one leg through, carefully balancing so that if I fell,

333
00:30:07,359 --> 00:30:12,079
I'd minimize injury. When I heard
a sound by the door, the

334
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:21,279
crinkling of plastic, the gentle glide
over door. I turned and saw her

335
00:30:21,319 --> 00:30:25,960
standing in the dark hallway beyond.
It was hard to see, but she

336
00:30:26,119 --> 00:30:30,119
wasn't grinning like a maniac or waiting
with a knife. More than anything,

337
00:30:30,799 --> 00:30:38,640
she just looked disappointed, maybe even
frustrated. In hindsight, it made sense

338
00:30:40,799 --> 00:30:44,359
she'd spent a long time setting this
up, not just the room with a

339
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:48,200
plastic sheeting, but the entire relationship
had been built carefully around that night.

340
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:55,160
I expected her to crack break,
come at me, screaming and slashing with

341
00:30:55,200 --> 00:31:02,799
some hidden blade, but she only
shook her head and quietly it's not my

342
00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:10,599
fault. I considered a reply,
but found none to be fitting. I

343
00:31:10,720 --> 00:31:15,200
jumped and landed safely below with a
bit of a knee shaking thumb. Nowhere

344
00:31:15,200 --> 00:31:18,799
near as bad as the shin splintering
worst case scenario, I kept imagining.

345
00:31:21,079 --> 00:31:26,079
Then, with a deep breath,
relishing the small of fresh air, I

346
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:30,559
ran as quickly as I could towards
the hospital and the lot where my car

347
00:31:30,599 --> 00:31:37,119
waited. You know, you might
not be too surprised to learn this,

348
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:41,200
but there wasn't actually much I could
prove when it was all over. By

349
00:31:41,279 --> 00:31:45,200
the time the police visited the morgue, it was apparently back to normal.

350
00:31:47,119 --> 00:31:49,880
Her side of the story was that
I'd insisted on visiting the morgue out of

351
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:56,480
curiosity and got upset when she didn't
want to stick around. It was kind

352
00:31:56,480 --> 00:32:00,839
of hard to prove anything else.
I had no injuries, no evidence of

353
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:06,000
intent, or anything else other than
a suspicion of some pretty mess behavior.

354
00:32:07,599 --> 00:32:10,200
In the end, the best the
police were willing to do was hook me

355
00:32:10,279 --> 00:32:15,400
up with a lawyer who dealt with
restraining orders, and he told me I

356
00:32:15,519 --> 00:32:21,119
need some evidence of actual harassment.
Well that and the main gist of his

357
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:25,160
advice was actually for me to stay
away from her, because, if anything,

358
00:32:25,799 --> 00:32:29,839
it'd be a hell of a lot
easier for her to convince people I

359
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:35,599
was the problem and not the other
way around. I didn't have much choice

360
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:39,920
in the end except to move on, and all told, I was just

361
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:45,079
happy to have made it out alive, even if the thought of her out

362
00:32:45,119 --> 00:32:50,640
there made me deeply anxious. I
had to assume she'd go looking for another

363
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:54,920
target since I'd wised up, although
I hoped that maybe the close encounter with

364
00:32:55,039 --> 00:33:01,519
me would stop her from trying again. As for me, I deleted my

365
00:33:01,559 --> 00:33:07,200
tender profile, having decided that internet
dating would never be a thing for me

366
00:33:07,279 --> 00:33:15,039
again. But the nightmares persist,
and I often think of her standing there

367
00:33:15,119 --> 00:33:20,799
in the doorway. She didn't look
half as upset as I might have thought.

368
00:33:22,240 --> 00:33:25,599
The whole thing was like I'd been
a bit naughty. There. She

369
00:33:25,799 --> 00:33:30,640
was an aspiring murder, moments away
from executing a plan that had been months

370
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:36,680
in the making, and she'd stood
there like it was all nothing but a

371
00:33:36,759 --> 00:33:44,359
miner set back. It just didn't
make sense, and like everything with Sarah,

372
00:33:44,759 --> 00:33:51,720
I struggled to move on from this
peculiar behavior until I got an answer.

373
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:58,000
Well to day, I finally got
it when I woke up and felt

374
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:04,920
something strange by my feet. I
pulled back the sheets and saw something that

375
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:07,800
made my heart sink, and a
cold sweat form on the back of my

376
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:17,639
neck. I was wearing a toe
tag. I think I might have underestimated

377
00:34:17,639 --> 00:34:23,000
her patience, and I am starting
to appreciate just why she found that night

378
00:34:23,079 --> 00:34:28,719
in the morgue to be a little
more than a set back. On the

379
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:34,199
tag itself, my name is scrawled
on one line, and on the date

380
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:51,320
of death below she had simply written
in just a few days
