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A Story by Isa Ruffatti

Social influencer Dannie Cardenas has been on a 5 week cleanse when a follower tracks her down and asks for her help.

Dannie barely registered tree after tree after tree. Around her, the birds chirped, the sun shone, and the cold dry wind slapped her face. She’d never been to this part of the woods before and her foot hit an unexpected log. The world spun, and she landed on her knees.

‘Moron!’, she groaned, driving a fist into the dirt and turning around.

Lost, she was so...there it was. The black light post with the Missing dog flyer she used to mark thirty minutes spent running. Ginny the beagle was apparently still missing. She stared at it stupidly.

A snarl comes from the thick shrubbery. In this position I’m a deer in a clearing. Dinner.

Two more snarls come from the tall and thick trees around me. One from the left, the other from the right. I’m surrounded now. An impossible escape that. Even then, wherever I run, they will follow. The certainty itself could kill me.

...Ok, stop it. You’re not a deer. No one is following you. Breathe in, breathe out. When did you become so unbearably paranoid?

It was time to go home. Once back, she would have been out an hour. Well, slightly more considering she’d run straight past her marker. Ignoring the scrape on her knee, she got up and started running ran back. Thump, thump. Breathe in, breathe out. Tree after tree after tree, she drew closer. Tree after tree after- person.

Person? Dannie stopped, turned around. Sure enough, there was a person. A scowling teenage girl to be exact. Dressed in black. Layer upon layer of make-up. Not trying to break any stereotypes, I see. Holding up a phone in the air like it was Simba being initiated into the Circle of Life, the teen groaned, and snarled under her breath. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

‘Hi’ Dannie said, mentally scanning through her daily to-do list. Tear herself from a dream-less sleep? Check. Run for an hour in the woods? Check. Greet another human being for the first time in five weeks? Check.

The girl’s swollen eyes widened slightly.

‘Are you lost?’ Dannie added, face-palming herself almost instantly. Judging from the teen’s frantic search for signal, no s**t.

‘Dannie Cardenas. You just ghosted. Not cool.’ the teen spat and took a step

forward, towering over Dannie.

‘Who...?’ Dannie started to ask.

‘I’m Theresa. You don’t know me, but I follow you. And I need your help.’

‘Hold on, you’ve been following me? What the hell?’

‘Oh god, not like literally. I’m not a stalker, okay? I meant online. Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter’.

'Oh.'

‘It’s kind of funny really. If people who follow you online got together and like really followed you... You’d look like the messiah or something’.

‘How did you find me?’

'In one of your first vids, you mention jogging in these particular woods as part of your stress begone ritual. I'm from around, so I know you're not talking about the Forbidden Forest.'

‘Huh’.

Theresa proceeded to roll her eyes. ‘You were talking about the Scottish referendum and how the BBC was the government’s puppet. You love politics but sometimes it stresses you out. Running helps you relax,’ she shrugged, and Dannie thought she saw a tiny but brief smile, ‘Not sure how you’ll run the crazy away now that a cheerio runs America, though’.

‘Couldn’t you text?’

‘I did. 50 times.’

Sigh. ‘What with?’

‘My ex. He needs to die.’

Dannie’s thick eyebrows shot up.

‘He won’t stop’ Theresa blurted out, ‘Following me- Literally, I mean. He still thinks we’re together.’

‘Have you gone to the authorities?’

Theresa nodded. Looking her in the face, Dannie thought she could see a hint of purple under all the mascara. Silence stretched for some time.

II.

‘Coffee or tea?’

‘Just water, please,’ Theresa sat on a tiny yellow couch, the only piece of furniture not colonised by clothes or books. She found herself staring at Dannie’s to-do list-covered walls.

Do the groceries. Brainstorm ideas for new video. Call mom. She wondered how Dannie didn't drown in the debris of responsibility. Guessing from the missing checks or lines drawn through the middle, maybe she had. Or at least, that's what Dannie thought she was thinking. Her mother had said something similar.

‘Sorry for the mess’ Dannie said, motioning and handing her a mug with water. It read: Don’t panic. Drink coffee and carry on. It appeared she hadn’t lost that relic, dating from her uni days. Back then an unfinished thesis was a more than reasonable cause for panic.

‘So, you’re a coffee person’ Theresa said as she regarded the mug, as if critiquing a work of art. Eyes level with said object, pursed lips, knitted eyebrows. She was gazing at a mug, but Dannie suddenly felt gazed at herself. Worse, she felt naked before Theresa, like those marble statues in museums, except her features hadn’t been chiselled by an eminent Italian Renaissance artist. There were bags under her eyes. Hair was already breaking free from her high-up tight ponytail. And despite all the exercise, her love handles were showing. Whatever anxiety she hadn’t cardioed out of existence was promptly given diabetes. An exaggerated case of pear shape, more like.

Her critic sipped water from the mug, then (finding no space on Dannie’s coffee table) put it on the floor dismissively. Disappointed. Dannie adjusted her jumper nervously.

‘You came alone?’

Theresa shrugged again, ‘Maybe.’

‘I don’t have a gun’

‘I do’ Theresa whispered.

Closing her eyes, Dannie saw a line. Or thought she did. Was she imagining it? Where there no lines in this life but the ones people draw for themselves?

Someone knocked at the door.

III.

‘Don’t,’ Theresa hissed, crossing her arms tightly around her skinny torso, ‘Please’.

‘Theresa! Theresa! Open up, damn you!’, came a voice from outside. The knocking grew louder. Theresa’s crossing tighter.

‘My next-door neighbour has supersonic hearing. Anything happens, he’ll know’

Dannie assured her, then headed for the door ‘As a matter of fact, he’s probably already outside’. At half five in the morning, every morning save for Sundays, the man’s alarm would go off. Through thin walls, Dannie could hear him typing away. Clunk, clunk, clunk. Probably on a very old Windows desktop. Composing his master novel, he’d told her once.

‘Dannie Cardenas lives here. Look, I don’t know any Theresa. And stop screaming, will you?’

Crrrreeeeaak. Bloody door.

Sure enough, Dannie’s neighbour, an old wiry man in his fifties wearing a red bath robe over his pyjamas was outside arguing with what looked to be Theresa’s ex.

‘You get out of my way now’.

The ex was short, about Dannie’s height. But he was big, evidently the type that spent long hours at the gym, never happy with his sculpted body. Or with anything, really. The choleric expression he was giving her neighbour said, ‘Back off or I’ll break your face’.

‘Or else what? You’ll tell your dad? Ha! Tell him I’m not voting for him next election while you’re at it. All those promises about stimulating the economy? Rubbish.’

Dannie was stung by a foreboding fear for the safety of her neighbour’s face.

But the ex’s piggy eyes now focused on her. Seeing the door open, he pushed past her, casually swatting her aside like a fly. Dannie fell, she became vaguely aware of a dull thud on the side of her head, the tell-tale metallic taste in her mouth as she bit hard on her unsuspecting tongue.

She thought she heard a shrill shout, ‘I’m calling the police!’ and her neighbour’s receding footsteps as he scurried back to the safety of his room.

Emergency, which service?

Dannie could imagine him describing how the hulk that was the mayor’s son had randomly showed up at his neighbour’s doorstep. A real brat. Dangerous. Had pushed past his neighbour -she could be hurt- Not to mention it’d interrupted his creative process. Something had to be done about that. And the hulk’s father... Well, there was a reason why his writing remained a hobby. He’d then go deep into rant territory.

In a matter of ten minutes the most, the cops would be at her door. Theresa had a gun. But Dannie couldn’t be sure she had ten minutes. With difficulty, she got up and entered the room.

‘Please...’, Chekhov’s gun was drawn and pointing in the ex’s direction. Anguished and shocked, Theresa didn’t see him coming as he sprung towards her, wrestled the gun from her hand, and threw it across the room. He put his hands around her neck as she thrashed against him helplessly.

A man stands by the side of the street just outside the subway station. On his phone, oblivious. Ripe for the picking.

He walks on.

Three young men follow him. Something other than blood pumps in their veins. Alcohol. Hormones. And s****y advice.

Kill, kill, kill.

Scenting their prey, and emboldened by wise words, they walk faster. Feet propel them

towards the unavoidable. Almost hurting towards it. So close.

They are walking through a residential area now. It is late at night. There’s few people

around. Now.

But the man has stopped before a house. His house. Fumbles through his coat pockets for his keys. In a second he will be gone.

The keys fall to the floor and the man swears in Spanish, ‘Mierda’. Bends down to pick them up.

This is it. The three men circle him, coming closer, fists raised.

‘Por favor,’ the man begs, ‘I have a daughter!’

That was the last time Dannie heard her father’s voice.

She’d been re-reading 1984, and was excreting a love of freedom from every pore. Everyone should have it. Why? Cause-why not? He thought it should not to be given lightly, quoting the fourth book from her favourite Young Adult book series, Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld, “You see, freedom has a way of destroying things”.

A neo-Nazi was as free to spout his beliefs unto anyone who might lend him an ear as Dannie was to share her critical views on the government with the world. As a result, her father had been murdered, and a young follower went to Dannie asking for help in fighting back when all else had failed.

She thought of those hands whose impact had painted Theresa’s right side of her face purple, splayed on the cold concrete floor. Bloody. A hole through his forehead.

Limping and pushing through towers of books, she picked up the gun.