George McDonald

This whole dehydration thing is a pain, right now I’m nauseous and my mouth and my lips are so dry and cracked. I’m starting to feel kind of dizzy too.

My eyes are refusing to cooperate. I thought that by picking a spot on the wall and focusing on it that I could stop myself from feeling sick but it’s not working. I can’t afford to throw up; I need to retain fluids, not lose them.

It’s not so dark now without the blindfold, my eyes have adjusted and I can see cobwebs, damp patches on the wall beside me and what looks like a mushroom growing out of the plaster in one of the corners.

Hey! There’s that spider! At least, I assume it’s the same one. Nice to finally meet eye to eye, if you’ll excuse the pun. You’re not very big are you, I had a picture of a huge tarantula like object in my head, but you’re only a tiny thing, not much bigger than a fifty cent piece.

Damn it Joe, you’re talking to the spider again. If Frank were here now he’d be giving me one of those ‘looks’, the ‘my brother is a little strange folks’ look. He’d be right too, but if I don’t focus my thoughts on something they just wander back to that man, and the sound of his breathing as he crouched down beside me and took off the blindfold.

I wish I could have gotten a better look at him, if I knew what his face was like then I wouldn’t fear him as much, I know for sure that whatever face my imagination conjures up will be a lot worse than the real thing.

I just want to know who it is, because I think I might have an idea, but I don’t know how it could be possible, the person I think it is…well……

Stop thinking about it Joe, it couldn’t be him, think about something else. Whenever Frank and I come up against a particularly distressing case and its starting to get inside my head I usually meet up with Ness. She can take my mind away from the worst of situations and bring me back to reality.

Vanessa Bender.

You know its funny, everyone thinks of Vanessa and I as this picture perfect example of a romance. I guess we don’t hide our feeling for each other, at least not now, but it wasn’t always that way.

The first time I met Vanessa Bender I just remember thinking how pretty she was, and how tall! She’s almost the same height as me, and if she wore high heels, which she doesn’t, I think she would probably be taller than me.

Fair hair, blue eyes, legs that go on for ever and ever. I guess she is every guys dream.

But whilst she was friendly and chatty with Callie, Frank and I; she never really talked about herself and there was a kind of a mystery to her. I couldn’t put my finger to it at the time, but it was as if she had learnt from a young age to throw up a defense shield around her. It wasn’t visible, but it was there nonetheless.

After a while we got to talk more and more, and gradually the defenses lowered slightly. She has a really quick mind, and between the two of us there was nothing we couldn’t argue about, she taking one side and I the other. Whilst at times the debates would rage hot and heavy it usually ended up with one of us making a funny comment and then the whole conversation would be abandoned in fits of laughter.

But whilst she opened up to me, and was great company, there was still so much that she was holding back, I could feel it, every so often she would grow quiet in a crowd and I knew she was drawing back into herself just a little.

I think she was lonely, although she would never admit it. Ness in an only child you know, and her parents have been separated for years. Her Mom works a lot, and whilst they are close, she learnt from a young age to amuse herself in the evenings, to cook dinner and take on the responsibilities of running a house.

Her and her mum are really close too, you know. I like Andrea, she’s quite young herself, and had managed to carve out a really successful career for herself. And you can tell that she loves Ness more than anything else in the world. But they are too close, sometimes it seems like they have learned to rely only on each other, and to exclude outsiders.

Vanessa has changed though, she has changed so much in the last couple of years, and it’s not just because of me, I know that for certain. I think its because as well as gaining a boyfriend, she also gained another family, Frank, Mom, Dad, even Callie, we are all more or less a family at that stage. Mom and Dad loved Ness from the start and I know that they would and have done anything for her.

In the beginning she found it hard to be a part of such a big group. I remember one particular Sunday we had all eaten lunch and were sitting in the kitchen laughing and talking. Vanessa must have slipped out unnoticed, and it wasn’t until I went upstairs that I noticed her sitting on the back porch.

I remember going out and sitting beside her, asking her was everything ok

And that’s what it really came down to, Vanessa wouldn’t let herself trust people, she had spent so long dealing with everything herself that the idea of sharing, opening up at the drop of a hat scared her, she was afraid that of opening up and talking, afraid of what people’s reactions would be.

The thing was, by telling me that night that she was scared, by sharing that feared she halved it.

From then on we started to talk more and more, to share more and more, until we reached a point where it almost seemed that we were merging together into one person. That sounds silly, I know, but it doesn’t have to make sense, that’s just the way I feel.

Yes, I love her, and yes all the mushy romantic stuff applies, but that still doesn’t describe our relationship.

It’s like when you’re doing a jigsaw, and you have two pieces that are really similar but you can’t get them to join together, and then, hours later you realize that there was another piece that fitted in between, that made the whole jigsaw come together.

Vanessa is the missing piece, the thing that I’ve been searching for since Iola died, and maybe even before that. She and I will always be together, will always be close. Yes, we will argue and yes there will be bad times.

But at the back of it all will be unyielding and an unwavering trust, and with that, we can survive anything.