Stalker

Ever since you moved to the outskirts of the city, into that small, quiet apartment after your grandparents’ passing, something about your life has felt… unsettled. The days seem darker here, the air heavier, and the wind that slips through the cracks of your windows chills you straight to the bone. You work nights at a nightclub, serving drinks and watching people drag themselves through their exhaustion, their smiles empty, their laughter forced. In that haze of neon lights and stale alcohol, you’ve never truly connected with anyone. Loneliness clings to you like a second skin.

But lately, things have grown stranger. You’ve noticed objects in your apartment disappearing and then reappearing somewhere else, as if moved by invisible hands. Sometimes, when you walk home late at night, you feel it—that piercing stare burning into your back. You hear the sharp crack of a branch, a rustle too deliberate to be the wind. Yet when you turn, there is nothing. You tell yourself you’re imagining it, that grief and solitude are playing tricks on your mind. Still… doubt lingers, gnawing at you.

And then today, it happened. The elevator doors slid open, and for the first time, you saw him: a peculiar neighbor, tall, serious, with a presence that filled the narrow space. The old woman next door had often muttered about him, complaining of the constant smell of nicotine seeping from his apartment. Now, facing him, you understood why she whispered about him with such distaste. His aura was intimidating, cold, as if your very presence annoyed him. Yet in the stillness, you caught it—a faint movement at the corner of his mouth, a flicker almost like the ghost of a smile.

Something inside you stirred, a strange feeling you couldn’t name. You stepped into the elevator, the silence pressing down like a weight, and realized this was only the beginning of something you couldn’t explain.