Vanessas Dread Assignment Novels & Stories

VANESSA Vanessa had changed apartments three times in eleven months. Not because she liked moving but because fear made permanence impossible. She stood near the window of her hotel room, watching early morning traffic crawl through the city below. Her suitcase remained half-packed on the bed. Always ready. Always temporary. Her phone vibrated. Unknown Number. Vanessa stared at the screen. Then declined the call. Thirty seconds later, it rang again. This time, a message appeared. **You should've destroyed the flash drive.**

“You deserve to walk forward, you deserve to live without fear.” I felt something warm and painful rise in my chest. Vanessa was the person who created that fear. Now she was telling me to leave it behind. The letter continued. “I do not know how long I will remain here. Maybe the rest of my life. But I accept my punishment.” The ink had grown slightly lighter in that part of the page. “This is the right place for me to spend a lot of time remembering who I used to be. Some nights I see the girl I was before everything went wrong.”

~ VANESSA'S POV ~ Mr. Johnson's words are still ringing in my ears like a death sentence. Me? A cheap fraud who sells herself? Me, a joke? And he will put it on every headline. My heart is thrashing against my ribs and I can feel the sweat pooling at the back of my neck. I look around the store and for the first time, I feel little. I look at Damien but his face does not look friendly. He is looking at me like I am something he needs to wipe off the bottom of his shoe. And then there is Daisy.

**VANESSA’S POV** 5 PM I sprinted through the dense bush, heart pounding like a drum in my chest. Branches snagged at my clothes, tearing at the fabric, and the sounds of shouting behind me sent adrenaline surging through my veins. They were gaining on me. " Stop her!” a voice shouted, echoing in the night, cold and relentless. I couldn’t let them catch me. I glanced back, catching a glimpse of Vincent, his eyes glinting with menace. All that mattered was getting away.

Vanessa was swaying back and forth on her feet, her eyes were cast down and her hair fell in front of her face. When she looked up at me with those round-dark eyes, I knew I couldn't count on her. Vanessa was scared and when you’re scared and you let that fear take over, you’re useless. I thought she was stronger but I was wrong. She was too scared of Damien to be trusted. ”He’ll kill you,” she said. ”No he won’t, he needs me.”

★。＼｜／。★ VANESSA DAVIS ★。／｜＼。★ I was disappointed by the news I’d gotten. Frustrated. Drained. It was like every lead we chased only circled us right back to the starting line, like some cruel loop we couldn’t escape. The more we uncovered, the more tangled everything became. And now, with Oliver’s call settling heavily on my chest and Abel still silent, I couldn’t stop thinking about Darcy’s blood staining the floor, about the message she died trying to deliver.

With a heavy sigh, I noted her thick metal glasses hung at the end of her nose as she looked down at the stapled papers in her hand. “Vanessa Thomas.” She glanced up from the paper to take me in before glancing down once more, her finger drug over the lines of student names until falling on my own. “Ah, yes,” she muttered before she turned towards one of the boxes on the floor, pulling out a yellow manila envelope and holding it out to me. “Here you go. Next!” Bedlam wasn’t known to be one of the friendliest places in the world, but I enjoyed it here.

Vanessa My dream felt like drowning in darkness. The vial of poison Olga had given me was talking. Its voice seeped up from beneath the floorboards of my room. “You’re pathetic. Look at you. Hiding. Shaking. Cleaning floors while I rot in the dark.” The floorboards groaned louder. I tried to walk away, but my legs wouldn’t move. “You think scrubbing floors and keeping secrets makes you brave? You can’t even use me. Coward. You smell like fear.”

Her assistant informed her that Beatriz Langley’s assistant wanted to see her, but she declined, stating she didn’t know Beatriz. Vanessa wasn’t afraid of her; she simply didn’t want to get entangled with Beatriz before executing her revenge. After all, she had witnessed Beatriz’s methods firsthand. When Beatriz heard the assistant's response, she assumed Vanessa was scared, growing even more confident and eager to call Vanessa herself. Seeing an unfamiliar number, Vanessa hung up immediately. However, unable to ignore the persistent caller, she eventually answered. “Vanessa, are you really that afraid of me?” “It’s you?”

Kai replied coldly. Vanessa turned to me with frantic wild eyes, panic appeared on her forehead in beads of sweat and began begging me frantically, and can I just say that it felt good in every possible way. Vanessa sniveling at my feet in a mess and an intoxicating mix of fear and panic at the prospect of her life crashing down around her. It felt fucking good, but it wasn’t enough. The person I wanted in Vanessa’s place was standing there watching the spectacle with a mixture of dread, fear and curiosity.