DILEMMA
1167 Words
Freya didn’t sleep. She couldn’t. No matter how hard she tried.She sat up from her bed and paced around her room in an attempt to forget everything her father had just said. His confession felt like a nightmare. One she desperately needed to wake up from.
She’d heard of Mr Morrison a few times. She’d seen him on even fewer occasions when she was younger.
She couldn’t really remember what exactly he looked like. But her memory held a few details about him— His dark shiny hair,a face that looked like a representation of a Greek god,a physique so huge he towered over most people,but most especially what she couldn’t forget was his dark, magnetic authority that made it hard to breathe.
His voice was smooth but edged with steel, the kind that silenced a room without effort,ice-pale eyes that seemed to see far more than he should. He was elegance wrapped in danger, a man who didn’t need to raise a hand to hurt someone. Everything about him spoke of power too absolute to be questioned.
“He’s coming tomorrow,”she said to herself snapping out of her thoughts.
The atmosphere in the house was heavy, like something was being mourned.It made her think of her childhood—how every corner of their home had once been full of comfort. The way the light seeped through the curtains into the living room each morning, the scent of the smoke mixed with a tinge of spruce. It had always felt like safety. But not today. All she felt was insecurity.
Her eyes spotted the photo on the bedside table.7 years old Freya wrapped tightly in the arms of her father all smiles. She remembered the day it was taken—he had lifted her up and spun her around while her mother laughed from behind the camera.
Mama.
She felt a sharp pain in her chest. Mama would have never let this happen.
She walked toward the photo,picking it up from the bedside table to gaze properly at it. She remembered the soft voice of her mother. The lullabies she sang when Freya was ill, running damp cloths across her forehead in order to ease her temperature.
Then came another flashback.
She was six. Lying in a hospital bed, pale and down with fever. Tubes attached to her.. Machines beeping. Her father at her side, holding her hand in both of his, whispering again and again, “Please, please, just hold on.”
She remembered the dim hospital room, how the smell of everything made her stomach turn. She remembered waking up to hear her father arguing with someone in the hallway.
“She needs this surgery now! Don’t tell me it’s too expensive. She’s dying!”
And then silence.
She never knew what he had done to save her.
Until now.
Freya’s fingers tightened around the picture frame until her knuckles turned white.
Upstairs, the floor creaked—Thomas moving in his room. She waited until it stopped again. Then she moved, quietly, deliberately.
She paced her room in restless circles, her heart tied in a knot of betrayal and confusion.
“He said it was to save me. That without this deal, I wouldn’t be alive today”. But that didn’t dull the sting—it only sharpened it.
“So now I’m just a debt to be paid off? A bargaining chip?”
Her gaze swept across the room, landing on the small backpack in the corner, the one she used to pack for trips to the coast as a child. And that was when it struck her—a jolt, clear and terrifying.
“What if I didn’t stay?”
“ What if I ran?” The thought came swift and wild, burning hot through the fog of her misery. She froze, eyes wide.
“I could leave. Disappear. Be free.” Her breath caught.
“Before they take even that from me”.she completed.
That was it—her eureka moment. She wasn’t just angry or heartbroken. She was done waiting for someone else to choose for her.
She didn’t want to run. Not from him. But she couldn’t stay.
She sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the walls before picking up her backpack that lay by the corner of the room and began to shove a few things into them.
Each item felt like a goodbye. A sweater her mother knitted. Her favorite book. A small tin of cookies she’d baked the day before. Toothbrush. Journal. Socks. And a locket she had received from her father the year she turned ten.
She clutched the locket and slid it into her pocket.
She opened her dresser and pulled out her boots. Laced them up. Her fingers were trembling, and it took three tries to get them right.
She stood and turned toward the window.
The wind had calmed slightly. The rain was only a drizzle now, leaving streaks on the glass.
If she could get to the abandoned shed behind the train station before dawn, she could hide there until the morning came. No one would notice. At least not right now.
She paused.
Took one last look at her room.
At everything she had known,taking it all in.
And then,standing by the window mustering as much courage as her broken heart could muster,she opened the window and crept out into the cold.
As she crept along the edge of the tree line, her legs began to ache from the cold and the weight of everything she carried—her bag, her decision, her grief. The forest felt different now–heavy. Crickets chirped hesitantly, and somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted.
Every corner of the path reminded her of home.The tree where she’d once tied a ribbon to a branch and pretended it was a wishing tree. The rock she’d used as a throne in her games as a child. The hollow stump where she and her father had buried their pet cat when she was eight.
And yet, the forest no longer felt like a place she was once familiar with.
She stumbled, as a sudden thought struck her;what if he came not in the morning, but now? What if he had known her father would falter? What if Richard Morisson had already sent his men?
She tried to push the panic aside,and tried to focus instead.
She reached the far edge of the woods just as night fell. She was closer to the train yard now. Another five minutes, maybe less.
And then—something crunched behind her.
Freya froze. Her breath caught.
Not an animal.
Boots.
Carefully timed.
Deliberate.
She turned, slowly, barely daring to breathe.
A silhouette moved between the trees. Just one.
She ducked low and ran—not toward the shed now, but around it.
She didn’t stop to think.
Only to run.
And hide.
And pray.
She was being watched. By something.
Or worse,
Someone.
- Writer
