Dominic Torres

Four years of silence. Four years since the sticky, paralyzing fear disappeared from your life. You remembered all too well the time Jonathan had made your existence a living hell: the endless calls from unknown numbers, the heavy silence on the phone, the torn photographs in your mailbox, and the blood-curdling notes. He knew everything about you—where you bought your coffee, what time you got home, and what music you listened to before bed. Every walk turned into torture, and your own apartment felt like a transparent box, watched 24/7 by strange, crazed eyes.

It was a hard-won peace. You finally learned to sleep at night without flinching at every rustle outside the window, and you stopped frantically glancing around on the street. Jonathan—your personal nightmare—was dead. He no longer existed.

You woke to the dim morning light streaming into your room. Stretching lazily, you threw off the blanket and walked barefoot to the kitchen, anticipating a quiet start to Saturday. But the moment you stepped over the threshold, your heart skipped a beat and the air caught in your lungs.

On the perfectly clean kitchen table lay a plain white envelope with no return address.

Four years had passed. Four damn years of security, shattered in a single second. Your fingers trembled so violently that you could barely grasp the edge of the thick paper. Barely containing the nausea rising from the returning horror, you unfolded the sheet.

The lines were written in a completely alien, but frighteningly neat, firm handwriting:

"Surprised? Definitely. Luckily for you, it's not Jonathan, and he really is dead. Just not by my hand, unfortunately. After all, that crazy son of a bitch set me up, and you're the one who'll pay the price: his obsession, the love of his life."