Two months ago, I woke up to find a note on my bedroom desk. It just said: “Yes.”
I live alone in a big apartment complex, so my first thought was that it had to have been the work of a neighbor. Which sort of creeps me out. I mean, I’ve never seen a single one of them carry bags of groceries into their apartments. I’ve carried thousands of bags like that myself. There’s probably 50-60 occupants here so you’d think you’d see one of them back from a shopping run every now and then, but no.
The handwriting is quite neat. Okay, so I’ve been a bit lonely. The pandemic hit me like a bag of sad bricks. I work at a call center where I spend all day conducting surveys and we have semi-transitioned to work from home—my days are spent talking to people who feel personally insulted that I’ve reached out to them and my nights are spent gaming with people who insult me, personally. What I’m saying is that there’s not much romance, or even potential for it in my life at the moment. Which is probably why I convinced myself that the note must have been delivered by a girl in my building who had a secret crush on me.
“Yes.” as in “Yes, I am in love with you. Yes, I can’t wait to be with you. Yes, you are definitely not a crazy person.”
So I did a little sleuthing.
The buzzer tags on our building are for the most part written freehand. I brought my presumed love note down with me and I began comparing. That was when I realized it must have been written with a quill. It didn’t look like any of them. They were written with pens and pencils, so they didn’t have that calligraphic charm.
A part of me was worrying over the obvious: how did this person get into my apartment? But loneliness has a way of messing with your brain, especially when you’re twisting things to lessen it. In hindsight, that should have been my main concern. I should have gotten the hell out of that building on day 1.
A couple of uneventful weeks passed. I left the note up on my fridge, fastened with a turtle magnet (the cutest one in my collection). Then the second note arrived.
“Why?”
This one was a headscratcher. Again, beautiful calligraphy. But this wasn’t an affirmation. This was a question, addressed to me. Why? Why what?
I had built up a picture of this girl. She was really into Edgar Allan Poe. She had a pet raven. She wrote long letters to her friends with ink and quill. She had tattoos, probably.
Again, I know what you’re thinking. And I was starting to think that myself. But I wasn’t ready to give up on ink girl.
I thought it made sense that the second note referred to what I did with the first one: I hung it up on the fridge. This goth stalker girl who kept breaking into my apartment probably thought that was weird, so I decided to write her a note in return.
“Because I wanted to see it every morning :)” was what I ended up writing. I am cringing so hard at my past self right now that I’m sure there’s a risk of a black hole spontaneously forming. Best case, I had a home invader. Or, no. Best case was carbon monoxide poisoning.
The same night I left that note, I stumbled upon this Reddit post on /r/legaladvice. A guy was convinced someone was leaving him post-it notes in his apartment and it turned out he was suffering from CO poisoning, which gave him memory loss. He had even set up a webcam and everything.
It really felt like this was the answer. I ordered a CO detector online. I wasn’t sure if the smoke detectors worked for CO as well, but it later turned out they did and they were working as normal. Before I learned that, though, I set up my webcam to take pictures of my desk at 1 min intervals.
02:57? Nothing.
02:58? A fresh note, resting on the desk.
I don’t just have a lock on my door. I have bolts on the inside. After watching those webcam images I just became more confused and, finally, scared shitless.
Whoever this was, they were fast. They got in, dropped the note, and got out. It definitely wasn’t my landlord either—she moves like a jar of cool molasses. So … who was it?
It was at this point I convinced myself that I had to be the culprit. I was the goth stalker girl all along. Right? It made sense. Only, I didn’t own a quill. Or ink. And I sure couldn’t write in calligraphy.
“I agree.”
This note sent a cold shiver down my spine. The lettering was more intricate. It wasn’t my handiwork, that was impossible. And me suffering from some sort of poison-induced amnesia had been my ‘good’ alternative for what might be going on.
I’ve never been a gun guy. I have a hunting knife a sweet-hearted redneck uncle gifted me a way back, though. It’s on my nightstand. It’s been there for a while now.
The idea that finally broke me, the obvious explanation, made me want to vomit: someone was living in my apartment. Hiding out of sight.
I have a big pink suitcase sitting in my living room because I haven’t bothered putting it away since Christmas. It’s big enough for a person. The day when I received the third note I stared at it for the longest time, trying to spot whether it moved ever so slightly. I felt like if I opened it, it would all become real. Some skinny bald man would jump out, with fevered eyes, and he’d grab onto me.
With the hunting knife in my hand, I slowly pulled the zipper. Then it started moving. It fell over and I screamed. I stabbed it through the exposed zipper hole for several seconds before I realized it was empty. It fell over because it was so light.
I have never felt that type of deep paranoia before, the kind that washes over your entire being and changes how you see the world. Every little object becomes alive. As I kept making the rounds, examining every possible hiding place in my apartment, I felt like I was getting closer. By narrowing down the possibilities, I was preparing for the inevitable. He was inside the sofa. A cabinet. Under the floor. But I made it through my entire apartment without finding a quill-bearing squatter. It was empty. It was just me, my hunting knife, and the notes.
The fourth note arrived:
“I will find you and I will kill you.”