Sarah entered her apartment, the familiar creak of the door barely offering comfort after the chaos of her recent day. She felt a cold dread creep down her spine, a sensation that had lingered ever since the discovery of the corpses in those dark, empty apartments. It was as if a shadow had followed her home. She let out a heavy sigh, shut the door behind her, and hung her keys on the hook with a soft clink. After slipping off her shoes, she stood in the entryway for a moment.
"John!" she called, her voice clear and unconscious, more out of habit than necessity. "John, are you home?"
Silence answered her. Still, she repeated herself, the words echoing back in the quiet, dark space.
"John? Honey?"
Nothing. No one was home.
She let out another sigh, this time filled with disappointment, and walked into the living room. Dropping onto the sofa, she grabbed the remote and flicked on the TV, scrolling mindlessly and aimlessly through the channels. Each station showed something more disconnected from her reality than the last. Some channels showing the vulgarity of the society far from the reality, some showing reality far too much stretched into vulgarity.
Her body felt heavy, weighed down by more than just the day. A loneliness pressed against her chest, wrapping tighter as she stretched out on the sofa, tossing the remote aside. The TV was now showing a documentary about animals migrating for winter, their instinctual need to move reminding her of her own internal restlessness.
She couldn't take the silence anymore. Sarah picked up her phone and dialed John's number.
"The number you have dialed is not responding at the moment. Please try again later."
She frowned, redialing immediately, a knot forming in her stomach.
"The number you have dialed is not responding at the moment. Please try again later."
She stared at the phone for a moment before setting it down. The TV continued to play in the background, but she wasn't paying attention. Her thoughts were consumed by John's absence. She dialed again.
"The number you have dialed is not responding at the moment. Please try again later."
She stared at the phone for a moment, her mind struggling to process the absence of his voice. Slowly, she set it down, but her thoughts stayed on John.
She opened a text message and typed quickly, her fingers dancing on the bare screen.
"Honey, where are you?"
"Are you at the station?"
She put the phone down again, staring at the screen, waiting for it to light up with a reply. After twenty minutes of silence, she picked it up again and typed another message.
"John, if you're coming home, tell me. What do you want to eat? I can order us something."
Still, nothing. The seconds felt like hours, and her mind began to wander into the suspicious places she always tried to stay away from to protect her marriage and protect her lover. The empty feeling gnawed at her, growing louder with every unanswered call, every minute that passed without a response.
She texted him again.
"Will you be back tonight?"
Her thumb hovered over the send button before she pressed it. The text felt heavier, more desperate. She had never been this anxious about John before, but something about today was different. What happened earlier at the station had left her unsettled, a small crack in her unwavering belief in him. Despite everything, she trusted him. They'd been married for twenty years—twenty years of building a life together, of shared secrets and laughter, of fights that always ended with forgiveness. But lately, there was something off, something she couldn't quite put her finger on.
Her instincts as a detective had been whispering to her for months that something wasn't right with John. It was small at first—his late nights, the distance between them that seemed to grow wider with each passing week. She had brushed it off, blaming the stress of work or the routine of married life. But when Maya, her colleague, confirmed her worst fears—that John had been acting suspiciously—Sarah couldn't ignore it anymore.
But how could she confront him? How could she turn her sharp instincts on the man she loved? They had been through so much together. She wasn't just a detective; she was his wife, and that bond had always been stronger than anything else.
Now, though, that bond felt fragile. The woman who faced down criminals without flinching, who carried the weight of her job on her shoulders without complaint, found herself unable to face the possibility that her marriage was unraveling. There was a deep, feminine dread gnawing at her, a primal fear that perhaps, despite everything, she was losing him. She couldn't shake the feeling that their twenty years together were slipping through her fingers, and that terrified her more than any case she'd ever worked.
And the worst part? She didn't know if she could stop it.
Sarah stared at her phone, her heart sinking further with every minute that passed without a response. She texted him again, this time the desperation bleeding through in every word.
"John, answer me. I just want to know you're okay."
She sent one last message.
"John, I need to talk to you. Please come home."
As she lay on the couch, staring blankly at the TV, the feminine feeling of dread wrapped tighter around her heart. it was not easy for her to leave her companion of 20 years. she was a brave woman, but the feminine feeling of being loyal and not realizing until the last point was becoming a bane for her.