For weeks, I knew I was being stalked. It started with my bras. Everything I’d meticulously sorted by color had been sifted through and returned out of order, unwrinkled, but… changed. And they felt different. Like they’d been washed with the wrong detergent, or touched with soapy hands.
But it wasn’t just that. There was a wrongness in my apartment. The floor creaked randomly. One day I found a large handprint on my mirror that hadn’t been there when I left for work in the morning. There was an odor, too, one I’d only smelled at funeral homes before.
Then one night I woke up to the feeling of hot breath in my face, like a dog was inches away, panting at me. I sat up and heard a thump and something landed on my floor.
“Go away!” I screamed as footsteps retreated into the distance.
I turned on all the lights and found the room empty, but I never did go back to sleep.
The next morning, I stepped out of bed and felt a sharp pain in my foot. Looking down, I found a sharp, needle-like object embedded in the floor. I took it to the bathroom to look at it under stronger light and realized that the needle turned transparent when viewed from certain angles.
I tried to look online, but I couldn’t find anything like the needle. Then, in the middle of my next search, my router went out.
The sounds mostly came at night, but then things started happening in the daytime too. A pair of my running sneakers disappeared right after a jog. And then, when I was showering, I heard someone whisper, “Oh my god, you’re so beautiful.”
I screamed and screamed and screamed.
The next morning, I bought a gun. The guy at the store, a bearded fatherly type, tried to sell me on a 9mm that looked like a toy, but I sprung for a Sig Sauer 365, complete with a 10 + 1 magazine. I hadn’t gone shooting since my dad had taken me to the range back in my teens, so I figured I might need a few shots.
That night, I slipped the gun under my pillow and went to sleep.
I woke up to the feeling of someone stroking my bare shoulder. My hips felt pinned to the mattress. I cried out in panic and pushed up as hard as I could. I heard a grunt, and then something grabbed my wrists and pushed me down. I felt the wet of lips on mine.
Then I swung my knee up and felt it collide with something soft. I heard a groan, and then something thumped on the hardwood beside the bed. I reached over, grabbed my gun, and shot at the groan until my clip was half-empty.
There was a hacking cough. And then a voice begging. “Wait. Please. Don’t. I love you.”
I emptied the rest of the clip and the voice was gone.
There’s a warm wet pool on my bedroom floor now. I’ve been trying to mop it up, but it’s hard, because there’s nothing to see. Then there’s the invisible thing. It’s a little bigger than me, and I’m not sure how I’ll possibly lift it.
A few minutes ago, as I was looking for my mop in the garage, another strange thing happened. My front door slowly opened and closed. I heard a few sets of footsteps enter. They walked to my bedroom. Since then, I’ve been hearing the sound of tape unrolling and bottles spraying.
They’re cleaning up, I realize.
But what I don’t yet know is if I’m part of the mess.
[deleted] t1_izaort6 wrote
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