My hands went slick on the mouse. The words on the screen stared back at me, naked, abrupt, and wrong. For a second, the workplace seemed to tilt. I read the line again, hoping it would rearrange itself into something harmless, a glitch, a prank, a misunderstanding. But it didn't.
A sound escaped my throat, a strangled half-laugh that died before it found air.
"No, that's not possible," I whispered to no one in particular, my voice breaking the silence between cubicles. "Someone's playing a prank."
The logical part of me made a quick list, flag the email, report it to IT, forward it to HR, call Simon William. Each step sat neatly in my head like numbered boxes, but panic drowned them one by one. My past scraped against the inside of my skull, dragging out things I had buried, old rumours, whispered cruelties, that one night I'd promised myself I would never think about again.
The message felt like that past had just clawed its way out of the grave.
Nancy leaned over from the next desk, her brows furrowed. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," I lied, forcing a smile that tasted like dust. To admit anything else would mean surrendering, to the fear, to whoever had sent that email.
I closed the message and opened another, then another, pretending that busy fingers could drown out a racing heart. But even as I typed, that old, ghostly sensation returned, prickling, alive, the feeling of eyes crawling across my skin. It had haunted me for years. In elevators. At red lights. Inside my own flat when I checked the locks twice before bed.
Today, it felt sharper, fed by the words that still glowed behind the closed email.
I turned in my chair, scanning the room. People were bent over keyboards, their faces washed pale by blue light. Phones rang, pens clicked, printers hummed. No one looked at me. And yet… I felt seen.
The office suddenly seemed too small, too bright. I kept my posture neutral, fingers drumming a meaningless rhythm against the desk.
If there was a pattern, if the victims had only brushed past my life by chance, then perhaps invisibility was the safest thing I could cling to. But invisibility is fragile. It shatters the moment someone says your name, or sends an email like that one.
A cold line traced down my spine. I told myself to breathe, to act like this was any other morning. But my eyes kept darting back to the screen. Those words would not fade.
Stay away from him.
The phrase pulsed behind my eyelids every time I blinked.
Who was him? Julian George? Simon? Someone else entirely?
My thoughts spun until logic blurred at the edges. I reopened the email, searching for anything, a clue, a timestamp, a trace. But it was mercilessly brief, empty of anything but warning.
Delete it? That would erase the evidence.
Keep it? That meant keeping a ghost alive.
In the end, I saved it in a hidden folder and whispered a promise to myself, I would tell Simon when the office emptied, when I could speak without other people's voices overlapping mine.
Until then, I smiled when someone mentioned weekend plans. I answered emails. I pretended.
And I waited for the day to tilt into something that made sense.
____________
When my shift ended, I walked home through a city folding into night. Shopfronts threw rectangles of yellow light onto the damp pavement, the smell of rain mixed with fried food and exhaust. Somewhere, a street musician played a broken melody on his guitar.
My phone was warm in my palm, a small distraction as I scrolled through meaningless messages just to keep my hands busy.
Halfway down the block, that feeling crept over me again, the faint, crawling awareness that someone was watching. I stopped, turned slowly.
Behind me, the lane lay quiet. A cat slipped into an alley, a scooter idled near a dark café, two teenagers passed by laughing. Ordinary life. Nothing sinister.
And yet the air felt wrong.
I began walking again, quicker this time. My heels struck the pavement in a hollow rhythm that sounded too loud in the hush. Every few steps, I glanced over my shoulder, forcing myself to breathe evenly, to not run.
In the reflection of a shop window, I caught a glimpse of my own pale face,band behind it, a shadow. My heart stopped for a beat. Then the shadow resolved into parked cars, and I almost laughed from the relief that wasn't really relief.
The unease didn't vanish. It settled inside me like a pebble in a shoe, small, persistent, unignorable. I told myself it was just nerves. The email. The headlines. The way fear has a talent for finding shape in empty air.
Even so, I kept my thumb resting on Simon's number in my phone, as if the contact itself could ward off danger.
__________
Across town, in a room lit only by the cold flicker of a television, Edward Lamson sat on the edge of his bed. The remote hung loosely in his hand. The screen wasn't tuned to the news, or a movie, or any known channel, only to her.
Every movement of Anna Slora filled that private feed, where she walked, whom she spoke to, when she came home.
He leaned closer as she turned the key in her door, as she stepped into the small living room she thought was safe. A faint smile curved his lips.
With a click, he switched the feed.
Now her bedroom.
Then her kitchen.
Tiny cameras, hidden in corners, behind vents, inside picture frames, fed him her life in real time. She had no idea they existed. But sometimes, he thought, she felt them. That restlessness in her shoulders, the way she looked over her shoulder for no reason. It thrilled him.
Steam filled the screen as she stepped out of the shower wrapped in a towel, her hair damp against her skin. He pressed his thumb against his lower lip, eyes hungry.
When she reached for her nightclothes, she did what she always did, turned off the light first, as though darkness might grant her privacy.
He hissed, a quiet sound of irritation, then chuckled to himself. The laugh came low, curling like smoke.
"I can't wait anymore, Anna," he murmured, voice barely above a whisper. His eyes never left the black screen.
To be continued