Take My Breath Away

'What the hell? We were just talking on the phone a moment ago.'

Debbie called Kasie, Dixon, and lastly Kristina. All of them had turned off their phones. 'Hah! Just when I need them the most, none of them can be reached. What kind of friends are they?' Debbie was so frustrated she wanted to smash her phone. She gritted her teeth angrily. When she raised her head, she saw rows of tombstones standing there. It was as if they were all looking at her. Her heart started trembling and the cold breeze drove shivers down her spine. "Um... be cool, guys. Rest in peace. I am not looking for any trouble," she muttered, as she spun around to make sure nothing was behind her.

Meanwhile, her friends had been taken to a restaurant. A few men, dressed in black, had taken their phones and confined them to a room.

Completely unaware of what was happening to Debbie, they enjoyed the gourmet food spread out on the table.

On the other hand, in the cemetery, more than ten minutes had passed, but Debbie still hadn't been able to call in a car or a taxi to get her out of that terrifying place. Anxious, scared, and alone. Salty tears spilled over onto her cheeks leaving a tight, dry feeling. Crouching under a tree, she kept calling her friends on her phone and just about anyone she could reach at that moment. However, the reception was too weak. She tried and tried, but luck wasn't on her side.

'Am I going to spend the night here? Surely, I'll be dead in the morning, ' she thought to herself, sitting on the cold ground. 'That asshole Carlos. What an arrogant, insensitive bastard to leave me alone here like this! What did I do wrong in my previous life for God to make me his wife and punish me?'

"Martyrs, heroes, I'm sorry, but I don't mean to be rude. Please don't come near me. Please, please, please, please..." she begged, looking at the tombstones with her hands folded in front of her.

'Kasie, Kristina, Jared, and Dixon, if I make it out of here alive, I swear I'll never speak to you guys again. Oh, help me, God.' She wondered what her friends were doing and she couldn't understand why her best friends had all ditched her when she needed them the most. Then she thought of her husband who had put her in such a difficult position in the first place.

'Carlos Huo, you evil man. No wonder you have been single for the past 28 years.' Then she realized something was wrong with that sentence. 'Oh, right. He is my husband. We have been married for three years.' She remembered. "You deserved to be single for the past 25 years, you jerk. You're lucky to have me," she murmured to herself angrily. Again, she tried to contact everyone else on her phone, but the line didn't connect her even once. Debbie sat there, tired and dejected, as she buried her face in her arms.

There was only one person left, her husband, the last person she wanted to ask for help.

After letting out a deep sigh, she raised her head and dialed Carlos' number. Due to the lousy reception, she couldn't connect through until after she had dialed more than ten times. "Carlos, I'm sorry. I was wrong. Please take me back home..." she blurted as soon as the phone was connected. Unfortunately, before she could finish her words, the reception broke off.

Debbie was bordering on insanity.

Once again, she thought of how Carlos had treated her in the past. He had stubbornly refused to end their marriage despite the fact that they didn't love each other; he had tried to force her into school when she wanted a leave just to avoid him. It seemed that in his eyes, everything she did was wrong. It wasn't fair at all.

Why was he being so heartless and insensitive to her?

A frustrated scream dragged up her throat but it emerged as a groan, and soon it was followed by tears gushing out of her eyes. In the silent darkness, her raspy sobbing sounded creepy, even more so, due to the fact that she was in a cemetery. The night watchman heard her crying, but he was too frightened to approach her, uncertain whether she was a human being or a ghost.

Drops of tears kept falling ceaselessly. Leaning against the tree, she put one arm over her chest and covered her face with the other, brushing away the tears from time to time. Little did she know that a person was standing right in front of her all the while.

The sobbing gradually subsided. She wiped her tears and decided to get out of that place on her own. 'I have to be brave. I can't let that pervert belittle me, ' she told herself, trying to muster up some courage. "Ahhhh!" she screamed when she saw the man in front of her as soon as she stood up. Her shriek resounded throughout the cemetery. The startled birds in the trees took to the dark sky, flapping their wings restlessly.

Wistful, exhausted, and terrified, Debbie lost her balance and was about to fall down when Carlos stretched out his arms and caught her. She was shaking like a dry leaf in his arms. Without hesitation, he held her close in his arms and helped her up.

When Debbie saw the man's face, her tears went rogue, flooding her face. "Put me down! What are you doing here? Didn't you want to leave me here alone? Why did you come back?" She had never seen another man as hateful and petty as Carlos Huo!

Before Debbie, numerous women had cried their hearts out in front of Carlos. Most of them cried because he had turned them down when they told him that they wanted to be his girlfriend.

Nonetheless, their tears and desperation had made him despise them even more. He wished that they had lived on different planets, as far away from him as possible. Strangely enough, the woman weeping in his arms right now didn't make him feel anything like that. On the contrary, for some inexplicable reason, his heart broke for her.

What fascinated him was the fact that, even when he had thrown her into the ocean, she didn't shed a single tear. Instead, she came back like a fighter.

Carlos wanted to comfort her, but he didn't know how. "If you stop crying, I promise to get you out of here immediately." That was the only thing he could offer her.

Fortunately, it worked. Debbie stopped weeping and glared at him, her eyes and nose red from the crying. On a second thought, she realized that he was all she could depend on at that moment. Swiftly, she withdrew her glare and looked away.

Having noticed her varying facial expressions, Carlos felt a tug of attraction in his heart. Never had he laid eyes upon a girl so lovely.

He cast his warm feelings aside momentarily and assumed his usual cold tone. "Are you thinking of how to get back at me when you get to the villa?"

'Darn! How did he know?' Taken aback, Debbie was suddenly at a loss for words. "N-No, I'm not," she denied, trying to appear composed. "Can we go now?" asked Debbie.

The place was so grim and dreadful, the mere sight of her surroundings gave her goosebumps.

"Will you attend my class tomorrow?" Carlos sounded calm. 'Look at her. Pale, shaking, and sweating. What's so scary about this place?' He couldn't understand what it was about the place that made her feel that way.

"Mmm. I will. I will attend your class tomorrow," she answered at once. The thought of being in the same classroom with Carlos couldn't be worse than this.

At East City Villa

As soon as they got back to the villa, Debbie dashed into her bedroom and went to get a shower.

She desperately needed to wash off the sweat, grime and most importantly the bad aura from her body.

Before going to sleep, Debbie posted a message in the group's chat with her friends. "Friendship ended," she said. "I want to sever all ties with all of you."

Meanwhile, her friends had just been allowed to leave the restaurant. As soon as they got their phones back, Debbie's message popped up on their screens simultaneously. Immediately, their faces flooded with shock at her words. "What's wrong, Debbie?"

Having lost his patience, Jared called her directly. Soon, Kristina found a new post in her Moments on WeChat. "The whole world has abandoned me!"

"Debbie, what's happened? Some bodyguards took us to a big dinner tonight. The meal was fantastic. But they took away all of our phones, which was weird. We have just gotten our phones back, and received your messages. Why did you say that? What's wrong?" Jared poured out in a flow as soon as the call was answered.

Invited to a dinner by some bodyguards? And it happened just when she was left at the cemetery? The dinner ended just when she got back home? 'It must be the work of that Evil Carlos Huo, ' Debbie suspected.

"Oh, I'm fine and just going to sleep. How are you guys?"

"We're fine too. We've been wondering who invited us to that dinner. We thought of calling you to join us, but we didn't have our phones, you know," Jared joked.

Debbie's friends wouldn't have dragged her into the dinner recklessly, without knowing who those bodyguards worked for.

It puzzled them immensely why someone would anonymously invite them to a dinner out of the blue and force them to eat.

Finding herself in no mood to talk, Debbie look out the window. After a flash of lightening caught her surprise, she got out of bed and drew the curtains. "Go back to the dorm quickly. I think it's going to rain soon," she said to Jared.

"Okay, see you tomorrow. Good night."

At 1 a.m. there was a heavy downpour. The sound of emptiness was disrupted by the loud gregarious boom of thunder which lit up the entire room.

Debbie clutched the covers tightly. Generally, she wasn't scared as long as the lights were on, but tonight, her visit to the martyrs' park had frightened the life out of her.

lying in bed, she turned and rolled, afraid to close her eyes. Feeling restless, she took her phone from the night table and started to read the updates on Weibo. Outside, the rain was getting heavier. A jagged bolt of white hot lightning split the chilly sky, and within seconds, the rolling boom of the thunder reverberated overhead.

As if things weren't bad enough, an introduction of a horror novel popped up on her screen. The book was about the wedding of the dead. The pictures of a coffin and a dead bride in a wedding gown, along with the introduction was crippling horrifying.

Debbie was so shaken up, she could barely suppress her scream. She sat up immediately and looked around her bedroom.

A few deep breath steadied her rapid heartbeats. Only the did she remember that Carlos was in the next room.

'At this late hour, he must be sleeping.'

Here, she was losing her mind, trembling in fear, while he was sound asleep in the next room? Life could be so unfair sometimes. 'Hmph, he wishes!'

Debbie clutched a pillow tightly, and got out of bed.

Quiet as a deer, she opened the door. It was pitch black in the hallways, so she retracted her steps to the night table and got her phone. With the phone light switched on, she sneaked towards Carlos' bedroom, and turned the doorknob to get inside.