Chapter nine

Time passed slowly as the seconds turned to minutes and the minutes turned into hours. Briggs and Jillian chatted about inconsequential things and just hung out with each other. At noon, Jillian made a simple lunch of instant noodles and they ate while they listened to some music on her Gramophone, other than that nothing really happened.

Eventually day turned into night, Jillian and Briggs ordered some takeout pizza for dinner. After that Jillian decided to take a shower just like she does every day.

She went into the upstairs bathroom after getting clean clothes and towels from her bedroom. She lined up all her soaps and shampoos and made sure that she had all the required toiletries. She then took off all her clothing and pulled back the shower curtains to jump into the tub but instead of feeling the smooth ceramic bottom of her tub, she felt something cold and cylindrical beneath her right foot.

Jillian looked down to see what she had stepped on and she couldn't help but scream when she saw what it was, a double barreled wooden stocked sawed off shotgun.

Briggs was sitting down reading one of Jillian's books when he heard Jillian scream. He quickly ran up the stairs two steps at a time and reached the closed bathroom door as fast as he could, "Jillian are you okay in there?"

Jillian was going to answer him truthfully when a voice from inside her head interrupted her.

Briggs was outside the door getting more and more worried that something had happened to Jillian. He really was about to break down the door when he heard Jillian's quivering voice.

"I'm fi..fine. Sorry for worrying you but I screamed because I saw a spider."

"Are you sure Jillian? Can you let me in to check if everything is okay?"

"No! Umm...I'm already naked in the tub, you can't come in!"

That made Briggs pause for a second as he imagined Jillian naked but he quickly shook those thoughts away, "Alright but I have another concern. I just realized that I can't keep an eye on you in there like the doctor ordered."

Jillian was getting frantic, why wouldn't he just leave?

"I'm okay Detective Stud- I mean Briggs. It's just for a few minutes. I'll be alright."

"But what if you pass out in there? You do have a concussion after all. I get that you are shy so how about this, you keep talking to me through the door as you take your shower or maybe you could sing? As long as I can hear your voice then I'll know that you're fine."

Jillian thought about it for a moment and agreed. She took the shotgun out of the tub, turned the shower on and started to sing Dorris Day's Que Sera, Sera while googling 'safe way to handle shotgun' on her cellphone.

The disturbing part was that she found the exact same search in her browser history.