The words on the screen didn't just appear, they crept, each one dragging itself into existence like something alive. They moved like cold fingers gliding over bare skin, slow, possessive, deliberate, as if he wrote them wanted me to feel every inch of their presence.
Even after the notification faded, the sensation remained, like breath on the back of my neck. And somewhere in the unseen dark, even if I couldn't prove it, I knew he was still watching.
Watching and waiting.
I stood there for a moment too long, my thoughts turning to the bag he'd left near my door. A normal person might have grabbed it out of panic or curiosity, but the idea of touching anything he had placed there crawled under my skin like maggots. For half a second, I almost convinced myself to take it, to open it, to end the guessing. But the thought of giving him that satisfaction twisted something in me.
No.
Fear was what he wanted, obedience disguised as vulnerability. If he could walk into my house, he would've already done it. He wanted the anticipation, the submission, the illusion of control. And I refused to perform for his entertainment. I wouldn't become the puppet in his sick, choreographed game.
I stepped outside with the kind of resolve that felt borrowed, like I was pretending to be someone braver. The night air clung to my skin as I bent down, careful not to let a single finger graze the bag. I used the tip of my shoe to drag it toward the edge of the doorstep and shoved it over the threshold. The soft thud of it landing on the concrete sounded final, like the punctuation at the end of a threat or a dare. My hands trembled violently as I straightened, a tremor that betrayed the war raging beneath my expression. But that didn't matter. Strength wasn't always about stillness, it was about choosing not to collapse.
I stepped back inside and closed the door with an intentional gentleness, the latch clicking into place with a quiet precision that felt louder than a slammed door. The silence that followed was suffocating, thick, aware, almost listening. I pressed my forehead to the cool wood and stayed there, counting the beats of my heart as if the rhythm alone could anchor me. One. Two. Three. Too fast. Too loud. Too raw.
The hallway around me still held the faint trace of the lemon air freshener I'd sprayed that morning, blending with the shadow of stale coffee that lingered on the air from hours ago. Everything looked undisturbed, untouched, exactly as I left it. The framed photos on the wall, the shoes by the mat, the faint glint of light against the mirror at the end of the hall. It all whispered normalcy, familiar, harmless, safe.
It should have been enough to convince me.
But then I heard it.
At first, I thought it was the wind pressing against the walls or maybe the refrigerator humming from the kitchen. But no, this was layered, irregular. A voice. Then another. A rise and fall of static and dialogue too far away to make out but close enough to feel intentional. My body went still before my mind could catch up.
The television.
The sound was soft, barely there, a murmuring breath of noise seeping through the quiet. But it was unmistakable. I didn't need to see the screen to know. And in that instant, every drop of blood in my veins turned to ice water. My muscles locked. My lungs forgot how to work. My hand hovered in the air, fingers curled inches above the door handle to the living room, the same living room I hadn't stepped into since leaving earlier. The same television I hadn't touched the whole day. The same remote still sitting on the coffee table exactly where I left it this yesterday.
I never turned it on.
And I never, ever leave it on.
The lights were on.
Not dim, not flickering, fully on. A warm, almost golden glow flooded the living room, spilling over the floor and breathing life into shadows that shouldn't have existed. They stretched long and thin across the hardwood, twisting into distorted shapes that seemed to lean toward me with quiet anticipation, as if they knew I was coming. My pulse spiked. I swallowed, but my throat felt scraped dry, each breath catching on the way down.
I clenched my phone so tightly that the hard edges pressed into my palm, grounding me in pain and reality. My mind reached for anything that could pass as a weapon. My hand landed on the ceramic vase by the entry table, solid, weighty, cold. It felt like safety in a world suddenly stripped of it. But the moment I wrapped my fingers around it, another thought slithered in, ceramic breaks. Even this could fail me in a single hit.
I moved forward anyway.
Each step across the wooden floor felt painfully slow, as though the air itself had thickened, resisting me. The silence around me wasn't silent at all, it was alive with subtle noises I'd never noticed before. A creak somewhere in the walls. The soft click of the AC vents. The whisper of something shifting in the distance. Every sound made me flinch. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, drowning out everything else.
The living room looked exactly the way I had left it. The cushions on the couch were perfectly aligned, the blanket folded into a neat rectangle draped over the armrest. The remote still rested on the coffee table, untouched. Not a single object out of place.
And yet….. the air was wrong.
It wasn't just cooler, it carried a charge, the kind that clung to your skin before a storm. The AC hummed softly in the background, but I hadn't turned it on. I knew that with absolute certainty. The realization slithered up my spine, each vertebra turning to ice.
Someone came inside my house when I wasn't here.
I barely had time to process the unease before my phone buzzed violently in my hand. The sharp vibration shot through my arm, and I nearly dropped the vase. My fingers fumbled as I lifted the screen to my face.
The message glowed in the dim light.
Message:
"I think you didn't understand my text. You left the bag outside. Should I come inside and give it to you, Venisa?"
For a full second, my mind emptied. No thoughts, just this cold, crawling certainty that he was closer than I'd ever allowed myself to believe. He didn't sound angry. He sounded….. entertained. Calm. Patient. As though my defiance had been expected, a move he had already prepared the next step for.
He wanted me to know he could reach me whenever he wanted. That every boundary I thought I still had was imaginary.
My legs moved on their own carrying me back toward the front door. The hallway felt longer this time, as if the house itself was stretching, trying to keep me inside its ribs. When I opened the door, the bag sat exactly where I'd kicked it. No movement..... No tricks... Just there, waiting.
I picked it up this time. The weight was wrong for something dangerous. Inside, I found only medicine and bandages, ordinary, harmless, mundane. I stared at them for a moment longer than necessary. Was it a threat disguised as kindness? Or kindness meant to feel like a threat?
I closed the door again, and my phone lit up before the latch even clicked.
Message:
"There's scrambled eggs in the kitchen. You can eat it since you might be hungry going back and forth."
My stomach churned, but it had nothing to do with hunger. He spoke as he finally announcing he had been here. As though he'd watched me leave, return, freeze, breathe. As though my home wasn't really mine at all, but a stage he'd set long before I knew I was performing.
He knew too much.
My schedule. My appetite. The way I think. The way I fear.
My hands trembled as I typed, not bothering to hide the panic flooding through me.
"Who are you?? Why are you doing this to me!?"
The reply came before I even lifted my thumb from the screen.
Message:
"I told you. I'm your admirer. I want nothing but to make you happiest. One more thing, I didn't make that scrambled eggs. It was made by someone you trust a lot, so eat it without worry."
The words sank in slowly, like poison through skin.
His last message didn't just unsettle me, it unearthed something deeper, a fear I didn't even want to acknowledge. My fingers hovered over the screen before I typed, barely breathing.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment, the typing indicator appeared, then disappeared, as though he was enjoying the pause, savoring the anticipation like a fine wine.
Message:
"Haha, you will understand it soon."
The words were light. Playful, even. But the implications wrapped around my ribs like barbed wire.
Made by someone I trust?
What the hell did that mean?
Was he working with someone I knew? Someone close? Someone who had access to my home? My life?
Faces flashed through my mind, neighbors, friends, old acquaintances, and with each possibility, the paranoia sharpened. My thoughts tangled and tangled until all I could hear was my own pulse.
Another buzz.
Message:
"Clean your wound and eat something. I'll get back to you tomorrow."
On the surface, the words were soft, considerate, almost caring. But there was something rotten in that kindness, something sharp hidden beneath it like a blade tucked under silk. He wasn't asking. He was directing. He was certain I'd obey.
And maybe, on some level, he was right.
My instincts screamed at me to do something, call the police, run to a neighbor's house, leave this place and never come back. But fear stitched hesitation into my thoughts. If he was inside my home earlier… if he was nearby now… if he knew about Jojo, dragging strangers into this could mean dragging blood with them.
I stood rooted to the floor, my eyes scanning every corner as though the walls could peel back and reveal someone standing behind them. The television continued to flicker and whisper in the background, casting warped silhouettes over the furniture. In the reflection on the darkened window, I imagined movement behind me. A figure. A face. Breath.
I forced my legs to move.
The walk to the kitchen felt like crossing a minefield. Each step was deliberate, my ears tuned to every insignificant sound, the hum of the light fixture, the soft click of the AC, the occasional groan of wood settling under the house. My nerves were stretched too thin, and everything felt like a warning.
The smell found me before I even crossed the threshold. Warm rice. Sesame oil. A whisper of spice. Normal things, comforting things, but in that moment, they turned to acid in my stomach. The bowl sat neatly on the counter, steam rising in lazy, delicate tendrils like fingers curling through the air. The scrambled eggs looked harmless, ordinary. A spoon waited beside it, placed so precisely it might as well have been staged for a photograph.
He, or they, had taken their time.
Not a chance in hell.
Keeping as much distance as I could, I grabbed the bowl with both hands. My fingers trembled so violently that some of the steam brushed my wrist like something alive. I walked it straight to the trash, flipped open the lid, and dumped the contents. The wet splatter hit the plastic with a disgusting slap, the mess sliding down into the darkness with a sticky smear.
My breath hitched. That's when I realized, my arms, my legs, even my jaw were shaking. I could barely feel the floor beneath me.
I turned away from the trash and went to the cupboard like I was moving underwater. My hands found a pack of instant ramen with the muscle memory of someone desperate for a task, any task, that proved they were still in control. I set a pot on the stove and filled it, but my grip was so unsteady I had to use both hands to keep from dropping it. The sound of the water hitting the metal pot echoed too loudly through the quiet.
The burner clicked to life. The flame bloomed. The noodles curled into the boiling water, softening in spirals, and for a few precious seconds, I clung to that small, stupid normality. The smell of seasoning replaced the eggs, and I let the steam fog my face like a curtain against everything else.
When I finally sat, the bowl of ramen trembled slightly in my hands before I set it down. My body was still wound tight, muscles coiled like springs ready to snap. I ate mechanically, bite after bite, not because I was hungry, but because doing nothing felt worse.
I tried to focus on the taste, the temperature, the texture, but every creak of the floorboards, every sigh of the pipes, every faint electronic hum sounded amplified, unnatural, alive.
And somewhere in that heavy silence, the question I had been trying to ignore slithered back in.
What if I wasn't alone?
After I finished eating, I powered off my phone completely and shoved it beneath a pillow as if burying it could somehow bury him too. But the silence that followed wasn't silence at all, it was a vacuum, an absence that pressed against my skin. The apartment felt bigger than it ever had, as though its walls had inhaled and expanded, leaving only shadows in the leftover space. Shadows that clung to corners and doorways and felt far too aware of me.
The shower became my only refuge. I locked the bathroom door even though I knew it wouldn't stop him if he'd already been here. I turned the water on as hot as my skin could handle and stepped under the spray. The heat scalded my shoulders, my back, my hands, but it didn't calm the tremors beneath my skin. I scrubbed hard, as if I could peel away the invisible fingerprints he'd left behind on everything I touched. The steam gathered thickly around me, fogging the mirror, curling into my lungs, almost suffocating. My fingers slipped against the soap, my nails scraped my arms by accident. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what life felt like before tonight.
But every image , the grocery store, my lecture room, my morning coffee, Jojo curled against my legs , slowly warped in my mind until all I saw were shadows and screens and hands that didn't belong to me touching things that did.
By the time I finally crawled into bed, exhaustion had settled into me like wet sand. My sheets were cold, almost sterile, carrying only the faint ghost of detergent. I didn't bother turning off the lights in the hallway, or the TV I could still hear in some distant room. The low, distorted voices bled through the silence like a secret conversation I wasn't invited to.
I lay flat on my back, staring at the ceiling. The hum of the AC rose and dipped like breathing. The blanket felt too light, too thin to protect anything. I kept replaying the messages in my head, each word stretched and warped until the meaning felt worse.
I want nothing but to make you happiest.
The sentence should have sounded sweet. Instead, it coiled around my thoughts like a rope. This wasn't just admiration. This was obsession. Knowledge. Access. He knew things he shouldn't. Things he couldn't. Things no one but me, and maybe one or two people I trusted completely, would ever know.
I missed Jojo more than anything. His little body used to curl at the end of the bed, his fur warm beneath my hand when I reached down in the dark. Now, even thinking of him here made my chest clench. I wasn't afraid of being alone anymore,
I was afraid of what else might already be here.
Minutes passed, or hours. Time had stopped mattering. Every groan of the pipes, every soft shift of the wood, every flicker from the streetlight outside my window felt like a signal. My eyes burned from staying open too long, but sleep sat just out of reach, cruel and taunting.
I kept thinking: Is he still watching me? Is he outside? Inside? Waiting for me to close my eyes?
I told myself I had to be ready. For what, I didn't know. For him to reach out again. For the sound of a footstep outside my door. For the moment the television finally went silent.
But even as I braced myself, one truth smothered every other thought,
I wasn't alone. Not really.
And whoever shared this space with me, the intruder I couldn't see, hear, or name, had no intention of leaving.
That's when my phone buzzed.
The sound sliced through the silence like a blade. I jolted upright, heart slamming against my ribs. For a moment, I could only stare at the pillow where I'd hidden it, too afraid to touch it. Then I forced my hand beneath the fabric and pulled it out.
A new number.
Not the same one as before.
My breath caught. He had another line. Another mask.
I hesitated, then opened the message.
"Did you like the scrambled eggs I left for you in the kitchen?"
The room didn't just feel unsafe anymore.
It felt occupied.
To be continued