This is it, the final chapter of Record Chaser. Feels a bit surreal to me.
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Chapter 11 – Come Back to Me
“You’re really going?! You can’t be serious!”
He sighed. Why did she have to be like that?
“Yes, Nora, I’m going. Isn’t that what you do when a friend asks for your help in the middle of the night? She wouldn’t have sent that text if she didn’t have a good reason.”
Jason was putting his clothes back on as he listened to his girlfriend complain.
“Oh come on, you can’t be this blind. You know as well as I do why she sent that text.”
Nora’s jealousy of Claire was starting to annoy him. It’s not like he didn’t get it. Your new boyfriend has a female friend he’s close with, they’ve known each other since they were eight, feeling insecure about that made sense to him. But this was getting ridiculous.
“Actually, I don’t. That’s what has me worried.”
Nora still sat on her bed while he was putting his shoes on.
“Then let me tell you. She clearly has feelings for you. And the moment you spend the night at your new girlfriend’s place for the first time she sends you a text like that at 3 a.m.? We both know she’s lying awake right now unable to fall asleep because she can’t stand the thought of you being with another girl.”
He rolled his eyes. Nora was so perceptive usually, how could she not notice that she was projecting her own insecurities onto Claire? He tried to reason with her one more time.
“I haven’t talked to her in two weeks. She doesn’t even know I’m here.”
“Yeah, right, as if she couldn’t have heard that from somebody else…”
He thought briefly about pointing out to her that there was not much overlap between the crowds they hang out with. Claire was a mathematics major and he was in psychology. So it was very unlikely that any of her friends could have told her about his plans to stay here tonight. But he realized it didn’t matter what he would say to her. How did that Jonathan Swift quote go? ‘
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.’ Usually, he didn’t want to believe that, but looking at Nora’s reaction it felt appropriate for the situation. He stood up and grabbed his jacket.
“Look, I showed you what she wrote. That’s all I know. And if a friend sends me a text like that in the middle of the night, I’m going. That’s all there is to it. Wouldn’t you do the same if it was Lisa asking you?”
Nora had a disgruntled look on her face.
“Fine, go, but don’t think about coming back when you get there and it turns out she texted you because her cat ran away!”
“She doesn’t have a cat…”
“NOT THE POINT, JASON!”
Jason was about to respond when they could both hear the neighbors in the apartment next to them angrily knocking against the wall. He took a deep breath and lowered his voice.
“Okay… okay… I get your point. And if this turns out to be about nothing, trust me, I’ll rip her a new one. But this is the first time this has ever happened. I know her, she’d never do anything like that for nothing. Can you please trust me on this? If, I don’t know,…”
He was trying to come up with any reason that could have made Claire send that message, but nothing plausible came to mind. That was what frightened him the most.
“… her dad had an accident and I just ignored her, I could never forgive myself.”
He had no idea why she wouldn’t have mentioned something like that in the text, but it was all he could come up with. He looked at Nora pleadingly. She didn’t look back, arms crossed over her chest. Then she fell back onto the bed.
“I think you made clear where your priorities lie…”
He buried his face in his hands.
“Nora, please…”
He exhaled, no response. He looked at her for another 5, maybe 10 seconds.
“I have to go… I’ll call you later.”
Still no response. He took a few steps backward, his eyes still fixated on her. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to be with her but she was asking him to abandon his oldest friend in a time of need. How was he supposed to square these two things? He finally turned around and went to the front door. He looked at Claire’s message.
“Can you come over? Now? No questions asked?”
She had sent that 10 minutes ago. As he stepped outside, he replied.
“I’m on my way.”
Claire didn’t live far from Nora’s place. He walked quickly at first, but then he slowed down his steps. He needed a moment to gather himself. Did he just blow up his relationship? Whenever Claire came up, Nora became so… unreasonable. Two weeks ago, after he’d lost his virginity with Nora, Claire was the first person he told. When Nora found out that Claire was the one he talked to, she was furious. Was that really so weird, talking to his childhood friend about that?
He and Claire, of course he had thought about that when he hit puberty. It’s hard not to notice your best friend is a girl when you hit that age. But that was it, being more than friends, that was never more than a hypothetical. And with both of them being late bloomers, they would have had plenty of reasons to at least try it.
Now here he was, walking in the middle of the night to that girl he knew since he was 8. Instead of having a romantic morning and sex with his new girlfriend after waiting so long for his first time, he now had a possibly relationship-ending fight. He was walking alone in the cold, and he didn’t even know what exactly he was doing this for. If he framed it like that, he wondered whether he was an idiot after all.
“Can you come over no questions asked?”
He repeated her words to himself. What could she possibly want from him? She could have given him something, some tiny hint at least. What could be so severe that she couldn’t even tell him why she needs him?
“Fuck you, Claire… this better be important.”
He sighed. This wasn’t fair of him, he knew that. He had avoided Claire since he got together with Nora. And Claire hadn’t said a word about it. She had quietly accepted this new distance between them, and when he had reached out to her because he needed someone to talk to, she had been there as always, without a single complaint, as if nothing had changed.
“No new message in two weeks, huh?”
He wondered... when was the last time they didn’t talk for two weeks? He couldn’t remember. As he scrolled through their message history, the thought dawned on him that there might have never been a period in his life when they didn’t talk for two weeks, not since he was 8.
He gulped. Then he scrolled back to their last conversation. He wrote:
“Guess what, looks like you won our bet after all!“
He smiled. That opening line read more playfully than he felt at the time. He had been convinced that of the two of them Claire would lose her virginity first. Of course, she believed the opposite. How exactly had they turned this into a bet? It didn’t matter.
“Wait...so you and Nora...?“
Looking at her response now, he felt like he was able to sense some distance in the way she phrased that. Like she wasn’t entirely sure anymore whether she was still able to decipher what he meant at first glance.
“Yeah, we did…”
He was so over the moon at the time. Nora was more experienced than him and he had been open about the fact that this was his first time. It was great how understanding she was. And boy, he had been so worried that he’d come immediately. Instead, it took him forever. He hadn’t expected that!
“Look at you, you dawg! <3”
He couldn’t help but laugh again reading that. The thought that this petite 5-foot math nerd channeled her inner frat boy and then stuck the landing with a heart emoji… it was just too adorable. He was anxious at the time and Claire must have known how this would make him laugh.
“Lol, appreciate the frat boy energy… Can we talk?”
Four messages back and forth with her, and calling her had felt like the most normal thing in the world again.
“I’m so happy for you! Just call me.”
And then they talked for an hour. That was their last conversation. He suddenly felt guilty. He had avoided her because Nora was so jealous. He had thought that giving it some more time would make Nora less anxious and then... then what? He was so scared that Nora would feel threatened by Claire’s presence in his life that he didn’t even notice how he had pushed Claire away. He had taken for granted that she would still be there when he felt like he could return to normal with her. He wiped a tear away.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry, Claire. Whatever happened, I should have been there and noticed sooner. Please, be okay.”
He put the phone away and walked faster again.
Jason rang the door bell. Some part of him wondered whether Claire would even let him in. She hadn’t responded to his text saying he was on his way. No “
thx”, no “
ok”, no “
please hurry”, nothing. He expected, he hoped to hear the buzzing sound that signaled to him that he could open the door. He was getting nervous when nothing happened. His pulse quickened, he was about to ring a second time when the door was slowly opened from the other side. Surprised, he took a step back.
“Cl… Claire?!”
It took him a moment to recognize that the person in front of him was truly her. She was barely dressed, a pair of yellow sleeping shorts and… his old t-shirt? The one with the dinosaur print he had given her when he was 12 because he had outgrown it? He didn’t even know she still had that. It was full of holes, the dinosaur print almost washed out completely, the fabric thin. And that was all she wore. She was standing barefoot on the cold floor, seemingly unbothered by the cold. Her face looked empty, bloodshot eyes with deep dark rings underneath. Her posture made her look smaller, smaller than she already was. There was no tension in her body. And… her wrists looked sore, red.
She looked like she would fall over at any moment. Instinctively, he grabbed the door she was holding, unsure for how much longer she’d be able to do that herself.
“H… hi.”
That was all she said. She gave him a fleeting glance, then she just stood there. He was unable to make sense of what he saw.
“Uhh… yeah… hi. Uhm… uhh, so… So let’s go inside. You… You can’t run around like this outside. It’s... it’s too cold for that.”
Apparently, when his brain was overwhelmed, he started to sound like his mother.
Claire stood there for two or three more seconds, then she started to move as if his words had only now registered in her brain. She didn’t say anything. He followed her, slowly, not saying anything himself. Should he call an ambulance, he wondered.
He followed her into her apartment. She didn’t turn on the light. She tripped once but caught herself. He could have been here earlier, minutes only, but nevertheless...
She walked toward her bedroom. He could see some light coming from there. He couldn’t see much because of the dark, but what he could see looked normal to him. Not like somebody had broken in or like she hadn’t taken care of the place for weeks.
He stepped into the bedroom after her. It looked normal, too. She had turned on a small light on her nightstand, that was it. He followed her with his eyes. She sat down on the bed. Was it okay to sit down next to her? He moved toward her, wondering if he…
“Ah!”
He had stepped on something and had almost slipped. Claire flinched at his sudden shout. She looked at his feet.
“Oh… That’s Pi. I threw him against the wall. I wanted to pick him up… sorry.”
He looked at the plushie he stepped on. It was that stupid Pi-symbol with the googly eyes that her mother had gotten her when she moved out for college. He picked it up.
“Uhm… you want that?”
What the hell was he saying? He wanted to scream at his brain to come up with anything useful! He saw Claire nod.
He moved toward her, slowly, carefully, like you’d approch a scared abandoned puppy. He scanned the room a bit. There was an apple on the night stand that she seemed to have taken a bite out of and it didn’t look old. There was also a half empty water bottle. So she was at least eating and drinking something?
He slowly sat down next to her, then handed her the plushie. For a moment, he could feel her fingers as she grabbed Pi out of his hand. Her hand was shaking and her fingers cold. And for a brief moment he thought he was able to see four small cuts on her palm. Then she clutched the plushie to her chest.
“I’m sorry…”
Her voice was so small. Was she apologizing to the plushie?
Jason realized he was in over his head. Some part of him had known that the moment she had opened the door. But he could feel the insight reach the conscious part of his mind. What was he supposed to do? What the fuck happened? Why had she called him of all people? Did she need professional help? Would calling somebody else make it worse? Could he touch her? Ask her what happened? Was she hurt? Physically, he meant. Did anybody else know? Why…?
“I’m so tired…”
He was about to answer ‘
I can see that.’ but he didn’t. That felt completely stupid. Instead he just nodded. So, if he didn’t say anything, it felt like they would just sit here forever. It was okay if he asked a careful question, maybe, hopefully. He noticed his hands were shaking. He couldn’t let her see that! He put them in his lap and kept them as still as he could, hoping she wouldn’t notice.
“Claire…?”
He waited for her to react. She looked briefly at him. God, he hated to see her eyes like that.
“Do you… want to… talk?”
She nodded, then nothing. His throat was dry. He had asked the one question that sounded like it wouldn’t make her collapse like a Jenga tower and now he was at his wit’s end. 30 minutes ago, the potential end of his relationship with Nora seemed like a world ending disaster. How he wished he could go back to that level of distress.
“How about… you just start wherever you want? And I… I’ll follow.”
He didn’t know how to phrase that in a way that exerted even less pressure.
“I was in a basement.”
He was surprised by her actually saying something. But a basement? He was careful not to make a noise of his own, he just nodded.
“No, uh, before… I was in a bar.”
Claire in a bar? That was rare, but it happened occasionally.
“Emily and Eugene were there, too.”
He knew Emily. She was her friend, a physics major. Wait… If they were together and Claire now looked like this… Should he call Emily to see whether she’s ok?! He needed to focus. Okay, this sounded harmless enough. Emily liked to drag Claire out sometimes. But he had no idea who this Eugene was.
“Eugene wanted my number. I gave it to him. I liked his band shirt.”
He had no idea why she was talking about the shirt. But he understood the part where he gave the guy her number. Under different circumstances he would have thought ‘
Good for her!’ but he didn’t like where this was going. She trusted some new guy and ended up in a basement?! It was suddenly very difficult for him to talk. He tried his best to sound somewhat normal anyway.
“And… did Eugene take you… to the basement?”
He could see how it took her brain a moment to process what he asked. Then her eyes flared up and tension returned to her tiny body. She looked at him angrily.
“NO! Eugene is not like Mark! He wouldn’t do that!”
Jason was baffled. He had touched some nerve he didn’t fully understand. He tried to stay calm, but her outburst scared him. He forced himself to calmly analyze what he just heard. So apparently, Eugene was nice… but who the fuck was Mark?!
“Okay, you’re right. I was wrong. So… we like Eugene, right?”
She calmed down. It looked like that burst of anger took almost everything out of her. She spoke the next words softly.
“Yes… Eugene likes Babymetal.”
There was a faint smile on her lips. But… Babymetal? What even is that? It didn’t matter.
“Cool…”
He didn’t know how to ask about this Mark guy but… there was another question he had to ask. He went for his best casual Jason impression:
“I haven’t seen Emily in a while. How is she?”
It seemed like talking was starting to feel more normal for Claire again. She put the plushie away and let her head rest against Jason’s shoulder.
“She’s worried about me. I didn’t answer her text.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. So Emily was okay. He carefully put his arm around her shoulder.
“Is that okay?”
She just nodded, rubbing her face against his arm. She seemed barely… functional. And yet, he saw something like life in her. Tears were welling up in his eyes.
“So you… uhh... you don’t have to…”
He had to wipe his tears away.
“You don’t have to say more if you don’t want to.”
It took him a moment to compose himself. Claire took his hand. Her fingers were so cold.
“I was in Mark’s basement. I was on my way home… and then I was in his basement.”
Instinctively, Jason held her hand a little stronger.
“He… wanted to break this record. He said he needed me for that. It was completely pointless. He knew that, but he did it anyway.”
Her delivery of these words was devoid of emotion. But they confirmed his worst fears. Mark had… hurt her, more than once. That much he understood. And for the first time in his life did he understand what the urge to kill someone felt like. He could picture it. He’d do it slowly. And… he suppressed his anger. At some point over the next few days he’d have to punch a wall, maybe more than once. But not now, not here. This wasn’t about him.
He had to breathe several times before he was able to speak with a confident voice.
“It’s okay. You’re safe. Nothing can hurt you now. I’m not going anywhere.”
Claire seemed to be on the verge of falling asleep. She was having trouble keeping her eyes open.
“I’m so tired… but I can’t sleep. That’s why… I asked you... to come.”
He wondered for how long she had been awake, desperately wanting to sleep but unable to do so.
“Want me to be your pillow like when we were little?”
“Yeah…”
She was barely there anymore. Jason took his shoes and jacket off. Then he climbed onto the bed, leaned his back against the headboard and pulled Claire gently into his arms. With her head resting against his chest and her small hands grasping his hoodie, he reached for her blanket and wrapped it around her.
“Hmm… I… need to… check the door… locked.”
Jason was holding her tight with one arm and used his free hand to gently stroke her hair.
“Don’t worry, I’ll check that for you. And Claire?”
He wasn’t sure whether she was still able to hear him.
“Thank you. I was so happy to see that you kept my old shirt all these years.”
“The … dinosaur ... almost … go…”
And she was gone, finally asleep.
Jason watched her breathing slowly. He didn’t move at all except for the hand that kept stroking her hair with the same constant, slow rhythm. He was watching out for any sign of her waking up again or being tormented by nightmares. But he saw nothing.
Then he realized that he kept stroking her hair not for her, but to regulate himself. He wasn’t breathing, scared to destroy the tranquility of the moment. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, feeling guilty for letting her out of his sight for even a moment, but he had to. With a trembling breath, he began to think about everything that had just happened.
Claire was raped by a man named Mark, likely more than once.
He forced himself to name the harsh truth for what it was, not hurt, not assault, but rape. He didn’t have the full picture of what happened but he had an idea. Claire went out with Emily, talked to a guy named Eugene, gave him her number, went home and was abducted by… Mark. Anger rose in him again. He had to be careful not to punch the next guy named Mark he’d meet in the face.
He calmed himself. Claire’s quiet breathing against his chest was soothing. So Mark abducted her and then it happened. He didn’t understand what she meant by breaking a record, it all being pointless and even Mark himself knowing that. But it was enough information for him to conclude that Mark and Claire talked and that this wasn’t some five minute encounter. There was a sense of ‘
familiarity’ between Mark and her in what she said, as digusting as that may be. She must have gotten to ‘
know him’ to a degree to understand what he wanted to achieve and what his motives were.
He took another deep breath. He was feeling so many things at once. But he couldn’t let any of them overwhelm him, not yet. He hugged Claire a little tighter as if he had confirm that she was still there.
Was there anything else he needed to do right now? Tell Nora that this was indeed serious? No, she would want to know what happened and it was not up to him to divulge what happened to Claire to her. And if he couldn’t give her an answer to her question, then he’d just run into another wall with her.
Should he contact Emily? Claire said that Emily had already sent her a concerned text. He could sent her a text himself, but what was he supposed to write? “
Don’t worry, Claire’s fine.”? What a sick joke. Emily would come over eventually when she didn’t hear from Claire, he knew that much. Would a white lie be appropriate? Telling her that Claire can’t answer because she lost her phone or something? He wanted to tell her something to assuage her fear, but he didn’t know what.
Emily was likely asleep at the moment, so he still had a few hours to think about that. Depending on when Claire would wake up and what state she would be in after getting some rest, she could make a decision on her own. But given how exhausted she looked, he wouldn’t be surprised if she slept for 12 hours straight.
He wouldn’t go to any of his lectures today and neither would Claire, that much was clear. Claire had to work on Mondays. So he should probably call in sick on her behalf if she was still asleep in a few hours. He saw nothing wrong with that. He should also make sure that she had something to eat and drink when she would wake up.
Those were all the things that needed to be done that he could think of. He opened his eyes again and looked at her once more. He recognized her unlike when he first saw her today. When she opened that door for him, the lack of tension in her body made her look deflated. Now she looked relaxed. Maybe it was her having her eyes closed that made her look more normal. Those lifeless, bloodshot eyes… he didn’t want to see her like that ever again. He let his free hand carefully slip under the blanket and put it over the tiny fist on his chest.
“Good, she’s warm now.”
He mumbled to himself.
He caressed the back of her hand absent-mindedly with his thumb. What now? He was starting to feel his own body again. It was getting pretty warm.
“You’re a decent heating pad, Claire.”
He whispered with an exhausted smile on his lips.
For how long would he sit here like this with her? What if he had to go the bathroom? He didn’t want to wake her, but he was also scared of her waking up and him not being with her. He took a sip from the water bottle Claire had brought before he got here. His throat was dry and he needed to do something about that. But he’d leave it at one sip, no need to test the capacity of his bladder now.
Looking at her, he couldn’t understand it. Why would anybody do something like that to her? How could you look at her and not understand how wrong that is? Of course he knew that these things happened. How often had he looked out for her when they went out together? But still, it didn’t make sense to him. He was shaking now. And he realized that what he felt wasn’t anger this time. He was scared. Scared that the Claire he knew would never return.
“Fuck…”
He was crying. He tried to hold it in but couldn’t. His sole focus was on not shaking too much, that was all he could manage. Waking her up was absolutely not allowed. Then one of his tears dropped onto her face. He immediately turned his head to the side.
“You idiot… don’t wake her up by crying on her face!”
He scolded himself. Wiping his tears, he chuckled at how stupid he was. Suddenly, Claire moaned and moved in her sleep. He froze immediately. He was staring at her with bated breath. Her hand moved slightly over his chest and... she just continued sleeping. Of course she did. She was so tired, there was no way a single tear could wake her up.
“I’m so sorry, Claire. I should’ve been there.”
He put both his arms around her. Embracing the sleeping girl who had trusted him and only him in the most dire moment of her life a little tighter, he let his head rest gently against hers. With his lips close to her ear, the boy spoke so softly that he could barely hear himself.
“Please, come back to me.”
The End
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Ok, getting a bit teary-eyed now that I'm posting this. To anyone who made it this far: Thank you so much for reading Record Chaser to the end. It took me over a year to finish this story. I published the first chapter on October 21 2024 in RavishU's One on One board. It was the first story I ever started writing and now it's 15th and currently last one I finished. The story means a lot to me. And if you made it to the end of a story this long, then I suppose you got something out of reading it, too. I'd be very happy to read what you think in a comment and I appreciate every rating you're willing to give the story!
I will write a long post with my own thoughts on the story and the writing process similar to what I did for my story Späte Genugtuung (English: Late Satisfaction) but for now I just want to end this post with a special thanks for
@JTCK. After I published the first 5 chapters of Record Chaser on RavishU, I barely received any feedback, especially feedback beyond a simple " liked it." or "This was hot." And then he wrote this comment:
JTCK wrote:What a great story! The slowly but intense build-up, wow!
The setting ist great, the description how tight she ist, the countdown.
And I just love the dialogue. By the way it is a completly different but still great story If you skip all the rest and just read the dialogue.
My absolutely favourite lines are these:
"I can’t promise you that you’ll be less frightened in a moment, but I think we can do something about your confusion"
At this point I was really excited about how the story will be going on....
“Mark, please, you don’t want to do this.”
“You are a very smart woman. But you are very wrong about this.”
And of course the promising
“I am Mark and… I am your rapist for the coming day.”
To say it with your own words: "it's classic [already] for a reason".
Please continue!
That meant so much to me at the time. I remember how that made me cry. It was the first ever comment I received that actually engaged with the text. When I was about to leave RavishU behind in early December 2024 because there was simply no feedback culture there to speak of, I told myself that I wanted to at least try to suggest some changes before I just gave up and left. If
@JTCK hadn't posted that comment, I probably wouldn't have even tried to change things back on RavishU. Without that, I would not have become a moderator on RavishU, not teamed up with
@Vela Nanashi (love you <3), and not created this forum as a successor to RavishU when the original went down back in February. Neither this forum would exist nor would I have (properly) finished this story. So thank you so much,
@JTCK, I really, really appreciate how you accompanied this story with your feedback.
And to everyone else reading this: Your comments matter. They are not some insignificant little thing, but the lifeblood that keeps authors motivated and the community at large alive. Those 5 minutes it takes you to write a few words of appreciation and the extra 20 seconds to click on that thumbs up to leave a rating, they are not a waste of your time.
edit: Uff, I just changed the Unfinished tag to Finished. That's pure catharsis. Gave me a shiver.
That was the first video of hers I watched, and so much rang extremely true with it based on my own experiences that it was not even slightly funny, tragic is more like it. Also watched others on death of the author and the curtains are fucking blue thing, and I still lean extremely heavily on the latter camp, due to how I have seen people completely utterly butcher any sort of trace of the original story and blame the author, even want them hurt for what they wrote sometimes, but yeah maybe wrong place for this, sorry.
