Day 11      Charlotte POV            (December 27th 2013)

It had been three days of solitude. When I look at that number on paper it doesn’t seem that long. Three days: 72 hours: 144 episodes of Modern Family. At the time it felt like eternity. I barely slept at night. Most often I woke up in a fit of cold sweats and shivers. One time I was awoken by a spider bite to my lower back.

As odd as it may sound, I was never bored. I had too much too much to think about, too much to fear, to be obsessed with boredom.

One moment I was sitting in the center of the box with my face to the ceiling. I closed my eyes gently and drew up a picture in my mind. I tried to remember the day that all of this started. No, not that time in the alleys of Paris just eleven nights ago. I meant the day I fell off of a chair in the middle of a high school library.

That was the true start of it all.

I pictured a much younger version of myself reading the One Direction Contest headline then stuffing the article in whatever bag I had been carrying around. Then I recalled spending all that time revising and editing my stupid song to enter in a contest I had no intention of winning. Even though I knew I wasn’t going to win, I wasn’t willing to put anything but my best work into the world.

Lying there in the dark it felt as if a thousand lifetimes had passed since then.

Fast-forwarding a bit I reminisced about sitting on a roof somewhere in New York with Niall at my side. I remembered with a smile the whole conversation, ending with the decision to move to Mullingar with him.

Only a few months after I had packed up all my things and flown across the pond. I couldn’t recall the day, the outfit I was wearing, or even the words I had said: but I remembered a distinct feeling when I walked into my apartment for the very first time… I felt at home.

“Do you like it alright?” Niall had asked me eagerly.

I replayed his foggy sounding words in my head over and over again until my scull throbbed. Then I get another random flashback.

“Come here girl,” I hear Niall’s voice coo. He’s calling our new puppy to his side of the bed- smile bigger than the moon. I see our bedspread being ruffled by the puppy’s small paws as she bounds towards him eagerly. “I think she likes me!” His laughter pounds at my temples.

Suddenly my mind is taken over by a different memory.

“Tell me something,” Niall whispers only to me. His face is glowing and only a few inches from mine. I can almost feel his warm hands wrap around my waist under the sheets. The mess of blonde hair on his head is knotted from my yanking the night before. His fingers brush against my bare hip and his foot hooks with mine. Niall’s blue eyes sparkle and he says, “Tell me you love me.”

I say it.

I see him smile sweetly. He leans forward to kiss me gently but I can’t close my eyes. I can’t risk closing my eyes and not being able to see him again.

“We’ll meet again Miss Hemming,” A voice foreign to Niall’s hisses at my neck.

I pry my eyes open, hoping to stop the horror. My chest is rising and falling at a scary pace and my hands are trembling.

But it wasn’t a dream: I wasn’t sleeping.

Waking up wouldn’t end this nightmare.