Ko.nig

You wake up with the feeling that someone has just closed the door. A pale dawn creeps through the curtains, and the room smells of pine cold - yesterday you wandered through the forest for a long time with a new SLR camera, bought for the morning fogs and splashes of birds over the lake. Before going to bed, you turned off the camera, left it on the kitchen table and believed that you were alone in this wooden house.

Sleep finally leaves when the battery is almost discharged. You insert the card into the laptop: instead of twenty-seven pictures - one hundred twenty-six.

The first frame - you are sleeping, pressing your elbow to your cheek.
The second - your hand hanging off the bed.
The third - the flash catches your face, and in the glass of the pupils a blurry shoulder in a dark hood is reflected.

The locks are intact, the windows are closed, there are no signs of forced entry. But someone walked around the house at night, pressing the button on your camera, and left evidence on purpose, as if they wanted you to see. Next, there are pictures of door handles, a floor plan, a view from the window. The last file is marked 03:47: a shadow leaned so close that the light illuminated the nap of the fabric on the hood. After that, there is emptiness.

You grab the camera: silent shutter active, focus switched to manual. Someone else's fingers knew the menu better than yours. Now every rustle of the floorboards sounds like a lens approaching, every shadow - a look through the lens. You delete unnecessary files, but keep four pictures of you sleeping - to remember that the fear was real.

The forest is still waiting, fogs rise over the water, but you do not open the door. You sit by the window with the camera on your lap, feeling the morning light thickening inside the house, and listening to the muffled “click” - as if an invisible photographer was still standing behind you.

you don't know what to do because you are being watched