‘Hello? Who is this?', Miriam asked, speaking into the phone.
‘It is Sam', came from the phone. Miriam covered her mouth with her left hand to keep herself from screaming. ‘How did he find me? How did he get my number?’, she thought.
She kept quiet for a few minutes; the silence was deafening. ‘How did you find me, Sam?', she whispered.
Sam broke into a fit of laughter and said, ‘I have told you that I will always find you, to the ends of the earth if need be. You shouldn’t be surprised. I knew where you were all this time, and I just wanted to give some time before approaching you. You disappeared on me the last time I called. And right now, I know where you are’.
Miriam screamed, ‘Get away from me and go back to wherever you crept out from! I do not want you around me. You hear me? Please! Let me be!’
‘Ah. I see you are not ready to see me yet. It’s no problem. I will give you some time. After all, I just want to talk to you’, Sam told her.
Miriam dropped the call and looked over her shoulders to see if anyone was watching her. Her heart sank in fear of what might come. For years, she has lived her life without drawing attention. She currently works as an employee of a small insurance company in the small town of Le Roy, Iowa. Luckily, her features were unremarkable. She has soft brown eyes and olive skin with long, silky brown hair, which she always wore up in a bun. Her height was five feet and two inches, and she always needed the help of a chair to pick up things from her wall cabinet.
It had been five years since she had heard from Sam. Samuel was her first and only lover. They had met on a sunny afternoon during the summer eight years ago while she was on a holiday at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, for a month. She had decided to spend her summer break there. She was in her third year, and she majored in Mathematics at California State University, Los Angeles.
Sam was so polite and kind to her, and he was a great conversationalist as well. These were things she appreciated about people generally and so it was easy to fall in love with him. Little did she know that he would turn out to be a monster. They started dating about six months after they met at the beach in San Francisco and it wasn’t easy as their relationship was a distant one. They saw each other at least twice a month, where he would either drive to her place in Los Angeles or she'd take a night bus to his.
She moved into his home in San Francisco after her graduation about two years later, and everything was fine. She was happy. Until one night, he came home completely wasted from alcohol from his friend's housewarming party. Miriam couldn’t go along with him because she was feeling a bit under the weather. He tried to kiss her, but she refused, saying that he reeked of alcohol and needed to shower first.
She found herself on the floor with her left palm holding the left side of her face, and she realized that Sam had slapped her. She tried to run away, but Sam kept coming after her and completely had his way with her that night. She was hurt and dumbfounded. Miriam lay in bed all night and all day the next day without moving an inch. She kept replaying last night's events in her head, which made her scream a few times.
Meanwhile, Samuel woke up, hungover, around 3pm and went to take a shower. It was while he was in the shower that he remembered what he had done the previous night. Immediately, he ran out of the shower, all wet and soapy, to meet Miriam, and started to plead with her and apologize. Miriam couldn’t stop seeing what he did to her last night. They lived in silence for three weeks, and she wouldn’t let him touch her. This continued for a few more months, during which the same incidence repeated itself once more, and this time there were bruises. She couldn’t call the police. She had no family, as she was abandoned in front of the church as a child. She had been in and out of foster homes and was able to help herself through school with the help of financial aid and scholarships. She felt tired and helpless. Where would she go?
It took a few weeks after the second incident to find the courage to run away. She did not even pack her belongings. Miriam decided to start a new life elsewhere, far away from San Francisco, because she couldn’t be with a man who had violated her.
At this very moment, Sam had found her again. He found her once before at the place she moved to before coming to Le Roy. She had always been careful not to pick up strange numbers on her phone. She could not fathom why she picked up that phone call today, but now she knows that Sam wants to meet her and he wants to talk. At the age of twenty-eight, Miriam was tired of running.
It has been five years. What could he possibly want from her?