Sweetheart (freewrite)

It was a feeling like being caught underwater. No power left to fight, no voice to scream with and a growing feeling that there was no getting out.
This is it, she thought, again and again, looking up at the face of the man. She'd seen him before around the school, he was somebody's father. Probably one of the younger kids. His face was rugged and he might've been handsome, without the reddish mustache. Or not, he might've been terribly plain without it. That's the risk you run, sometimes, you just don't know.
Caitlyn wouldn't have cared either way, because she had eyes for no other man than Joshua. Joshua who was probably waiting for her on the beach, by now. Joshua who must be growing increasingly worried Maybe even frustrated. Oh God, perhaps he thinks Caitlyn stood him up. But she'd never. She screams against the idea, but only in her mind.
She flinches and the mustache man's grip of her grows tighter. He must think she's trying to fight him. Oh God, Joshua's slipped away from her mind and she's being brought back to the agony. No, no, no.
Go back.
Please, God, take me back. She'd give anything to be back on the beach, with Joshua, if only in her mind. Anything not to be in this stuffy classroom, with this stranger.

But the man with the mustache is not a stranger. He's been watching Caitlyn, every day, for almost a year now. Ever since he saw her sneaking out the back gate. She was cutting class with two other girls and the man was struck by lightning when he saw her. Caitlyn, with her thin hair dyed a deep purple.
It had gone back to platinum blonde now, and he was holding chunks of it tight, in his left fist.
The man with the mustache had known then and there, all those months ago, that this was the girl promised to him. He had to have her and it wasn't just her beauty, although she was quite a looker. There was something about her, an air of familiarity. Something he hadn't felt since his wife's death, one year before.
The girl, who couldn't have been more than sixteen, had kind eyes. The kind you could get lost in, maybe even drown in. And ever since his wife had died, boy, had he wanted to drown...
So, he binded his time.He waited for her, or rather, for his young son. The man never failed to pick his son up from school.
He loved Thursdays especially, because she had gym class in the courtyard at that same hour. He must've spent hours, in this past year, just stealing glimpses of her. Of Caitlyn, whom he'd begun to think of as his Caitlyn.
The man decided he would introduce himself to the girl on their one year anniversary. Exactly one year since she'd cut class and he'd become lost in her eyes.
And the day was today. He'd snuck into the school, pretending to look for his son's teacher and he'd found her alone, in a classroom, doing homework. This was going better than he could've hoped.
The girl was started at first, when he walked into the classroom, and whispered 'Happy Anniversary'. There was something awful in her eyes, just then. Something like...fear. And then, could it be, even rejection.
The girl had got up trying to go around him and out of the classroom. No. No. No. This couldn't be happening. Why would his Caitlyn run away from him? He'd grabbed her by the arm, making her drop her books, and...

A single tear escaped Caitlyn's eye as her attacker finished, stumbling over her, on the teacher's desk.
Today was their anniversary, hers and Joshua's. They'd been together exactly one year and she'd thought, when she first heard the mustache man's words, that it was some sort of surprise, planned by her boyfriend. If only she'd gotten up ten seconds earlier, she might've been able to get out.
But she did not.

And somewhere not too far away, a handsome seventeen year-old boy sits on the beach. Joshua looks out over the waves, toying with the ring between his fingers, and rehearsing it all in his mind –
'Caitlyn, I know it's only been one year. But a lot can happen in a year, you know? And to me, it feels more like a lifetime. And yet, like a single second. And I don't know how you do that but what I do know is that I want you to keep doing this to the rest of my life. I never want to spend a second, let alone a year, with someone else, love.'
And he always stops here, because he doesn't know how to ask her the question. 'Will you marry me?' sounds so...mundane. And his Caitlyn is anything but mundane. He smiles, imagining her tear-filled eyes as she says 'yes'. For there's no doubt in his mind that she will say 'yes'.
It feels as if they've known each other since the beginning of time.

He feels his phone vibrate against his thigh and smiles when he sees her face on the screen. He answers, thinking that it's funny how much can happen in a year.

And tragic how in a second, it can all go away.

Today's prompt was 'one year'. I'm not even going to pretend I wrote all of this in five minutes, because I did not. I got a flash of the man with the mustache and the girl suffering and I felt she deserved to have her story heard, so I just ran with it as long as it went. But I do stick (more or less) to the 5 minute mark on most days and I highly encourage you to try freewriting yourself. Head on over to @mariannewest's blog, get the prompt and there you go! It's wonderfully liberating.