It took me six blocks to realize that I was being followed.
I’m an office worker in the city. I spend my days sitting down, hunched over stacks of paperwork in a cramped cubicle, and I rarely have the energy to exercise once I return home for the day. In an attempt to combat my sedentary lifestyle, I like to park my car a few streets away from my building. It’s a fairly safe area, or so I had always thought, and I had never run into any trouble prior to last night.
Yesterday was brutal—I arrived at the office at nine in the morning and didn’t finish my tasks until 10:30 at night. After sitting for so long, I decided to maximize my steps by zig-zagging through the streets. I took a left, another left, a right, and then another right, and it’s thanks to these unnecessary turns that I noticed a woman trailing me. She stayed half a block behind me, and although I only got a brief glimpse of her when I made a turn, I could tell that there was something off about her. She walked at a brisk pace, as though she had somewhere urgent to be, but why would she take such a strange route if she were in a hurry? Once I arrived at my car, she sped up significantly, calling out to me in a soft, shaky voice.
“Um … excuse me?”
The woman, who looked to be fairly young, stepped tentatively into the glow of the streetlight. She wore several long coats, all layered atop one another, but her thin hands and hollow cheeks betrayed her bulky silhouette. She had a scarf around her neck and a thick hat atop her head, and I remember finding it odd that she wore so much clothing on such a warm night.
“Could you help me out? Please?” She continued walking towards me as she spoke. In fact, she didn’t stop until she was practically leaning against my passenger’s side door. I watched her carefully from the other side of my car, my hand poised on the driver’s side door handle.
“Are you alright?”
The woman shook her head fervently. “No, no I’m not alright at all. I need help getting home. I can’t walk any more.”
“Bus stop’s a few blocks back the way we came,” I offered. Clearly, she was looking for a ride, but I wasn’t too keen on letting a perfect stranger into my car. She shook her head again, even more violently this time, and began to round the car, closing the distance between us.
“I can’t take the bus.”
“Why? You need money?”
“No! You don’t understand. There’s someone after me, I—I need to get out of here.”
“Then call the police or something.”
“I’ve tried. I’ve tried and tried and tried and they don’t believe me. Please, you have to help!” At that last word, she lunged forward, reaching out to grab my hand in a crushing grip. In the brief moment before I yanked my hand away, I was struck by how wide her eyes were, and how her pupils were so dilated that I couldn’t even make out the color of her irises.
“Hey,” I said, lightly shoving her back. “If there’s someone after you, then call the police. If you need to get home so bad, then take the bus. Take an Uber. Take one of those damn rent-a-scooters for all I care! I’m sorry, but it’s not my problem.” I opened my car and lowered myself inside, locking the door as soon as I pulled it shut. She watched me in disbelief, standing stock-still in the middle of the street. As I drove away, I watched her motionless shape get smaller and smaller in my rear-view mirror. She never took her eyes off my car.
The rest of my evening was uneventful. I made dinner, showered, watched some TV, and tried to forget about the woman. Something about her had shaken me, and the fact that I live alone wasn’t helping to soothe my nerves. I felt justified in my decision to not give her a ride, but I knew that there was more I could have done. Maybe I should have called the police on her behalf, but she seemed adamant that they wouldn’t be able to help her. Oh well, I thought as I collapsed into bed. I’ve never felt unsafe in the city. I was sure that the woman would be alright.
This morning, I awoke to birdsong and warm sunlight streaming in through my windows. I smiled as I stretched, enjoying the tranquility. My mind filled with ideas of how best to spend my Saturday, but before I could make any plans, I noticed two things. The first was a strange smell. It was a difficult scent for my sleep-addled brain to identify—dirt, maybe, or some kind of mold. All I knew was that it was unpleasant. The second was a tickling sensation on the back of my neck, like someone was running a feather across my skin. I rolled over in bed to investigate, and for a moment, I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.
There was a person lying next to me. They laid face-down with their arms tucked under their torso. They looked to be fairly petite, although since they were mostly under the covers, it was hard to tell where exactly their body ended. Long, brown hair fanned out in all directions, covering the sides of their face, their neck, and their upper back. The few slivers of skin I could see through the blanket of hair were so pale that they were almost white.
It took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn’t dreaming, but once I did, I shot out of bed, tripping over my own feet as I scrambled towards the other end of the room. How long had that person been lying beside me? How had they gotten into my home in the first place? The thought of a stranger creeping into my house in the middle of the night and getting into bed with me made me feel sick, but I didn’t have time to dwell. I had to call the police. My gaze drifted towards the top of the bedside table where my phone lay charging.
Although I’m a large guy, I was reluctant to get close to the stranger again without anything to defend myself. Exiting the room, I made my way towards the kitchen to grab a knife. I felt oddly unsteady on my feet as I walked, almost as though I were hungover despite not having drunk anything the night before. I procured a chef’s knife from the cutlery block, and the weight of the weapon in my hand gave me the courage to walk back into my bedroom, where the intruder remained asleep. At least, I hoped that they were asleep. Maybe they were just pretending to so that they could surprise me once I got close. I imagined them smiling into my pillow, listening to my every step as they waited for the right moment. Pushing the horrific image from my mind, I held my breath and made my way over to the bedside table. The intruder didn’t stir, and although they remained face-down, I couldn’t help but feel as though I were being watched. I grabbed the phone from the table and backed out of the room as quickly yet quietly as I could. Once I made it into the hall, I turned and ran towards the front door.
That strange, wobbly feeling never left me, even as I stepped into the sobering cold of the early morning. It was far too chilly to be outside in nothing but boxers and a t-shirt, but I was too grateful to have made it outside unscathed to care. I continued running until I made it to the edge of my front lawn, at which point I immediately dialed emergency services
I paced around as I waited for an operator, my body overflowing with nervous energy. After what felt like far too many rings, I lowered my phone from my ear to ensure I had dialed the correct number. When I did so, I noticed something bizarre: stamped into the flesh of my palm was a semicircle of small but deep divots. I turned my hand over, and there on the other side was a matching arc of puncture marks. They almost looked like …
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” The voice of the operator shook me from my thoughts.
“There’s someone in my bedroom. In my bed. I woke up and they were just … there. I live alone and don’t know who this person is.”
As I explained the situation, a car that I recognized as my neighbor’s made its way down the road. It seemed to slow down significantly as it passed, and I realized that I was still holding the knife in my hand. I dropped it to the floor, cringing at how I must have looked pacing around half-naked and armed.
“Where are you currently?” The operator asked. “Are you still in the house?”
“No, I’m outside.”
“Very good sir. Can you provide a description of the intruder? Do they have a weapon?”
“I only got a good look at the back of their head. They’re white with long brown hair but I can’t tell you much else. I think it’s a woman, but they’re asleep face-down so it’s hard to tell.”
“… Are you sure they’re asleep?”
What?
I looked towards my house just in time to see a smiling face duck beneath my bedroom window and out of view. I flinched backwards on instinct, unfortunately losing my grasp on my phone in the process. Narrowly missing the soft grass, the phone landed screen-down on the edge of the curb before ricocheting off into the middle of the road. I retrieved it before any cars ran it over, but the damage was done—the screen had fractured into a spiderweb and the phone itself was glitching out, swiping back and forth across my homescreen and opening and closing apps at random. I cursed as I tried and failed to navigate the phone via its unbroken edges. Not only had I essentially just thrown away a few hundred dollars, but I had hung up before I told the police my location. I looked back towards the house and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
As I clutched my broken phone, the fear that had consumed me gave way to anger. What the hell was I running from, anyway? I’m 6’4 and 220 lbs. Was I really about to give that pasty-ass psycho free reign of my home while I waited for help to arrive? Deciding that the answer was a definitive no, I plucked my weapon out of the grass. Spinning the knife into a reverse grip, I strode back towards the front door, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.
“The police are on their way, asshole,” I shouted into the stillness. Somehow, my house felt larger than normal. My words seemed to echo down the corridor, though aside from my own voice, the house was completely silent.
Before I walked down the hallway to my bedroom, something caught my eye. There’s a small mirror mounted on the wall in my entryway, perfect for making sure I looked presentable before leaving for work. I hadn’t taken note of my reflection before, frantic as I was to exit the building, but when I took a moment to look in the mirror, I saw three jagged scratches running the length of my left cheek, from just under my eye to my jawbone. I was too hopped-up on adrenaline to notice them before, but they began to sting as soon as I saw my reflection, as though I had made them real by acknowledging their existence. Certainly, those scratches were the work of the stranger in my bed. Why they would do such a thing, I wasn’t certain. But perhaps I was about to find out.
Each step I took towards my bedroom did more to shake my resolve than the last. There was someone in there, I was sure of it—I felt the same innate sense of wrongness one gets when they know they’re being watched. Or followed. Once I made it to the end of the hallway, I readied myself for a fight, and peered around the corner.
My closet door was open, as was my window. But far more unsettling than the yawning emptiness of my closet and the curtains billowing in the breeze was the fact that the figure was still in my bed. They had not moved an inch since I ran. They had not moved an inch this entire time.
Are you sure they’re asleep?
Walking to the edge of the bed, I reached out my free hand and, grasping a bony, pale shoulder, turned the figure’s torso onto their back. The head did not follow.
There is no intruder in my bed, but there is a decapitated corpse. It’s been hours now, and I have yet to work up the nerve to turn the head face-up. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to call. My story is completely outlandish; I highly doubt the police will believe that I had no part in the murder of the person in my bed, especially after my neighbor spotted me with scratches on my cheek and a knife in my hand. I can think of no one to turn to, no one who can help without condemning me to either a prison cell or an insane asylum. Somehow, I have to fix this. I have to, whether that means disposing of the body myself or catching a murderer who seems to have disappeared into thin air.
At present, I have only a single clue—a message carved neatly into the clavicle of the victim, reading:
your problem now