Caged Read Online Free

mental calisthenics were utterly fruitless, unless developing an ulcer was considered productive.
    On day eleven I actually considered stalking the bars to see if I could hunt him down. That should more than adequately demonstrate the depths of my desperation, considering the score between the bar and me. Later that day I started to come to my senses, realizing that I was about to hit new lows. I didn’t want to get so desperate that I eventually found myself laying in a gutter, covered in questionable fluids, before I smartened up. Getting the answers I sought just wasn’t worth obsessing over.
    At that point that I regained some composure and did what any self-respecting woman would do in the situation: I immediately started lying to myself to make it all more palatable. I found myself rationalizing things like: that wasn’t actually him, and that nobody could truly have their own guardian angel. It was all purely coincidence. I was amazed at the complete bullshit I could feed myself, easily swallowing it when it best suited my purpose.
    By day fifteen I really had myself believing the shit I was slinging. I thought about it far less often. Unfortunately, when I did, my curious nature would override my common sense, and my mind would wander back to lingering questions I was so eager to ignore. The power of my damaged psyche knew no bounds. None at all.
    On day sixteen I found myself thundering furiously around my store (my dad always told me that I sounded like a five-hundred pound man when I walked), trying desperately to find my platinum ring. I was certain I’d placed it in the back studio a couple of weeks earlier while working on a woven, metal bracelet. My mind was analogous to a steel sieve: strong but leaky. I abandoned all reason and started searching every nook and cranny in the whole place. It has to be here. It can’t be gone…it’s all I have left. I felt the desperation like a vise around my chest, creating a direct relationship; as one increased, so did the other. If my desperation had worsened, I would have passed out.
    I was bent over in the corner of the room, wedged in between the front counter and a display case, burrowing under a cabinet, armed with a flashlight to see if the ring that I knew I didn’t take off in that room could have fallen underneath the wooden structure. Though I wasn’t shocked when I didn’t discover it hiding coyly under there, I certainly was surprised that the tinkling of the entrance bells startled me enough to whack my head with enthusiasm against the cabinet when I shot up to attend to my customer. As I turned trying to nonchalantly rub down the growing goose egg on my head, I was greeted by a familiar voice.
    “I don’t think it’s safe for you to ever be left unsupervised. You seem to find danger in the most innocuous places, don’t you?”
    Holy shit! Him again…
    I was extremely capable of deluding myself, but even I couldn’t do it when I was faced with said delusion in the living flesh, in broad daylight, and in my very own place. It also didn’t help that he seemed all too aware of who I was. I tried my best to appear amused at his comment, though I found precious little funny about the situation. I was again rendered incapable of speech, an impediment I would one day have to focus on correcting. As I silently willed myself to speak he rescued me from myself. Again.
    “You must have really hit your head good. I’ve never seen a woman at such a loss for words,” he chided with a wicked grin on his face.
    “I…uh…it really hurt!” I stammered. Clearly that was what I’d waited all this time to say to him.
    He moved across the floor quickly with a utilitarian grace that was mesmerizing, coming to stand before me. He reached up and gently removed my hand from my head. The intensity of his presence made me shiver.
    “Let me see. I need to know if we’re making another trip to the hospital,” he said as he examined my frozen form. I could barely