The End Comes

“Oh…Hi.” I said opening the door.

Amber was standing there in her coat holding a bottle of wine and a DVD.

“I thought we could have a movie night here at your place, order a movie, have a girl’s night…” She said walking in.

Murphy was laying on the couch and looked over at her as she enter. He puffed his hair up and suddenly ran to his cat tree and hissed at her from it.

“I'm really sorry about that," I said, "He's usually so friendly with people; this must be a side effect from being in the shelter before I found him. Anyway, a girl's night sounds great.” I said.

Amber put the wine in the fridge and handed me the DVD to set it up.

“And, Faith?”

“Yeah?”

“Something seemed off when we talked earlier so I talked to Adam and he told me that he asked you to limit your hanging out time with me.”

“He did?” I asked meekly.

“It’s fine, really. I’m not offended. He and I talked and came to an understanding and he is no longer feeling insecure about it.”

“Oh, wow. That’s so great!” I said turning around to put the movie in the tray, “There are a couple pizza place menus in the top drawer to the right of the dishwasher.”

“Do you want pepperoni?” She asked.

I came over to the kitchen and started perusing menus with her.

“You can take your coat off.” I teased her.

"Oh, okay, I’ll go hang it up.”

I heard her fumbling around behind me for awhile and when she didn’t come back to decide on the pizza after a few minutes I turned to look at her.

“Oh my God Amber! Are you hurt!?” I ran a few steps toward her but stopped. The shirt she was wearing was covered in blood.

“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

She was eerily calm and I noticed she was holding our butcher knife in one hand.

“Amber…what’s going on?” I asked slowly, inching toward my room where my cell phone was.

“Are we friends Faith?” Amber started moving toward me. I decided to try to stay calm and not make her angry.

“O-of course we are, we’re ha-having a girl’s night…” I paused for a moment, her eyes were wild, “Amber, where’d all that blood come from?”

“He didn’t want us to be friends. I had to stop him from interfering. You and I are meant to be together. I had to give you what you wanted. I DID THIS FOR YOU!?”

Amber was babbling quickly and pacing in the living room. I eyed my room and could see my phone on my nightstand.

“Di-did what? Who didn’t want us to be frie-” I stopped cold when I realized she was talking about Adam, “Amber what did you do to him? We need to get Adam some help, okay?”

“NO!” she became hysterical and pointed the knife at me.

“Amber what did you do?” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice, “Where is he?”

“I killed him! It had to be done!” She said standoffishly.

I felt a wave of nausea come over me. I couldn’t believe what she had said. All that blood on her shirt was his…and she came over here acting like nothing had happened. I was frozen with shock and couldn’t process what was happening.

“I couldn’t let him pull us apart! Not after all I’ve done for you to get you to be my friend!”

“Amber wha-what are you talking about?” I said puling myself together.

She looked at me as if she’d just realized I was in the room.

“You haven’t noticed…?” She was confused and clearly unstable.

She started walking towards me and I backed up into my bedroom and leaned against my nightstand. I quickly looked down as she started pacing around my room and started the record feature on my phone to capture what she was saying.

“I have done EVERYTHING FOR YOU!!!!” She screamed, “The deli! Your old college house with that HORRIBLE roommate! That scumbag boyfriend’s apartment! That jerk Eddie’s theatre! I did it all for you! I won’t let my best friend be treated like crap by ANYONE!”

“A-and thank you for that, Amber. I really appreciate what you’ve done for me.” I was horrified. Amber was clearly stalking me and for years and I had absolutely no idea.

“Your apartment lease was almost up and you weren’t sure how you were going to pay for it or a new apartment so I fixed it for you!” She said ignoring me.

“Th-that was so k-kind of you. B-but what about the vet? What about Murphy? Or the other apartment building fires?” I asked gently. I thought that at the very least I could help provide some evidence of what she’d done once this was all over and I was either dead or she was in jail or both.

Amber whipped around to look at me. Anger flashed in her eyes and then worry.

“The vet was a mistake…I wanted to arrange a way to bump into you; make you notice me. I know how much you love Murphy and I NEVER wanted to hurt him so I made sure to take him with me. I…used my cat to insert Murphy’s chip into and then I had to make sure it needed veterinary care…”

Amber looked remorseful. I remembered how bad and sick that cat was and my stomach turned at the thought of what she had done to it to get it into that condition.

“I thought that IDIOT vet would find both chips and call us in together and then we could become best friends. But that’s not what happened and they knew my identity from the chip information. I couldn’t let them report me so I HAD to…”

Amber stared at me sadly but then became very serious.

“The other apartment buildings…they were…I had to do a trial run to make sure YOUR apartment would be completely destroyed to get you out of your lease. I had to make sure I did a good job!”

“You are so thoughtful, Amber. What a good friend.” I said soothingly as I slowly walked toward her, “Why don’t you give me the knife and we can go order that pizza, okay?”

“Pizza?”

“Remember? For our girl’s night?”

“Right.” She said resolutely, “Because that’s what best friends do.”

I nodded.

“Exactly. Let’s go watch that movie.”

I slowly reached for the knife in her hand but just then someone burst through the front door of my apartment.

“Faith I’m back early!” Molly shouted as she hobbled inside with her duffle bag.

Amber pulled the knife out of my reach and pointed it at me and held a finger over her lips and she stood next to my bedroom door. It was an eerie picture: I could see Molly coming towards me from our living room and I could see Amber on the other side of my bedroom door holding the knife ready to attack.

“H-hey.” I said quickly.

Molly stopped walking as she reached my door frame, with just the thickness of the door separating her and Amber.

“Do you think you could run to the store, like, right now?” I tried to ask nonchalantly.

“Really? I just got back, can I at least unpack first?" 

"No. I need you to go now."

"Geeze, for what?” She asked sort of annoyed.

“…tampons?”

“Oh, so THAT’S why all of the take out menus are out on the counter. Sure I’ll go. Do you need me to get you some Advil or those disposable heating pad things, too?”

“No. Just the tampons. Now. Please.”

Molly looked at me as if to ask “what’s wrong”. I’m sure she could sense the fear in my eyes but she didn’t say anything and slowly turned to leave. She took one step and then stopped and turned to look back at me. Her eyes shifted to the side of the door that Amber was standing on, she could see Amber through the crack between the door and the door jamb. Her eyes met mine and I saw realization flash across them.

Everything after that happened so quickly. Amber slammed the door into Molly which pushed her into the door jamb. Hard. I tried to grab Amber but she pushed me away and I fell onto the nightstand and heard a pop. Molly was on the ground in the living room trying to crawl away from Amber. I saw the light from my phone (which had been knocked off of the nightstand after I was thrown into it) blink on because it was receiving a call and went to reach for it only to realize I couldn’t move my arm. I hit answer with the hand I could move and put it up to my ear.

“I need help. Send help!”

“Okay.” I heard Detective Geordi’s voice say as I threw my phone away and started running toward Amber.

By that point she had reached Molly and was stabbing at her repeatedly with the knife. None of the stabs were hitting Molly though because she had reached her duffle bag and was holding it up as a shield.

I tackled Amber to get her off Molly and felt the knife go into my skin. It burned and I remember vividly watching as drops of blood dripped on our floor from my fingertips. Amber stopped as soon as she rolled over and had seen what she’d done.

“I-I’m sorry, Faith…oh….oh oh oh God!” Her hands flew up to her face and she started rocking back and forth, “I can’t believe I hurt you.” She started hitting herself.

“I-I’m fine…” I said through the pain. I was too afraid to look at how bad my wound was so I glanced over at Molly who was gripping her duffle bag and must have had a deep gash somewhere on her head because there was blood streaking her face.

“Amber, listen, okay? Put the knife down. Molly isn’t a threat to you, okay?” I said slowly.

Amber looked at the knife and then at me before suspiciously glaring at Molly.

“She’s not as good of a friend as me.” She said almost child-like.

“I know.” I said reaching for the knife.

“I was there when you and Kevin the Scumbag broke up! I was there for your birthday! I even brought a gift but that STUPID boyfriend of yours gave you flowers first! I was SO ANGRY!” She said getting worked up again.

I tried to calm her down.

“I even got you flowers for Valentine’s day because I knew that asshole Kevin wasn’t going to do it!” She screamed.

I was confused as she continued her tirade but then I realized what she was talking about. SHE sent me the flowers that I had thought Kevin had anonymously sent me for Valentine’s Day. SHE sent me the bereavement card after we broke up. SHE was the one who broke into my apartment the night of my birthday dinner party.

“I know. I know.” I cooed and tried to shush her. After a few seconds she started crying.

Amber slowly moved to hand the knife to me until she realized there were sirens in the distance that had been getting closer and closer. She looked at me with an air of utter betrayal before pushing me aside and running to my bedroom.

I ran to Molly.

“Are you okay?” I asked her breathlessly.

“I…I’m not sure. I think so…”

I looked up and saw Amber opening my window to get to the fire escape.

“Let’s get you up.” I said to Molly and tried to get her to stand up. I put one of her arms over me with my bad arm between us.

When I looked up again Amber was gone and the sirens from outside were much closer. Molly and I hobbled over to my window and looked out. Amber had made her way down the fire escape and had started running through the alley to the street. From our vantage point, Molly and I could see a car coming down the street, I could feel what happened next coming. Amber ran into the middle of the street and there was a sickening thud and the sound of breaking glass. She was hit by the car and flung over it and onto the street behind it. Her legs were twisted in unnatural positions.

Molly and I screamed and looked away. I hugged her and she hugged me. That’s how Detective Geordi found us. I immediately told him Adam’s address and told him that Amber said she’d killed him and then showed him the recording I’d taken on my phone before Molly and I were loaded up into an ambulance. Amber was loaded up into a body bag.

(Author's Note: I'm sorry about how late this was posted. Today was my first day of classes for this semester and I bought a new laptop on Saturday and spent all weekend setting it up and transferring over my salvageable files from my dead laptop.)