The realization didn't just hit me, it crashed through my skull like a block of ice dropped from a rooftop. My lungs forgot how to work. Air lodged halfway up my throat and burned there, sharp and unmoving. My eyes jerked around the room, tracking every corner, every shadow, every harmless object that suddenly felt like it had teeth.
The familiar space didn't look familiar anymore. The wardrobe loomed like a body pressed against the wall. The curtains hung too still, like someone was holding their breath behind them. Even the armchair stretched out at an angle that made it seem like it had shifted when I wasn't looking.
Before I even tried to move, my body betrayed me. A tremor rolled through my arms and legs as though my bones were vibrating. My heart wasn't beating, it was malfunctioning. It tripped over itself, stumbled, paused, then slammed against my ribs like it was trying to dig its way out.
I forced myself to turn, inch by inch, terrified of what waited behind me, but somehow more terrified of staying rooted to the spot. My eyes landed on the bathroom door. It was cracked open, just enough to show the edge of the mirror inside. The glass reflected a thin slice of the room at my back, like an eye peeking from a keyhole.
Had he seen me in there?
Was he watching me wipe my face?
Has he watched me change? Sleep? Cry?
The questions didn't feel like thoughts, they felt like confessions I didn't know I was making. A hot, oily wave of nausea churned through my stomach, rising so fast I had to clamp my lips shut to stop myself from gagging.
I stepped forward. One slow, dragging step. Then another. The floor creaked under my heel, and the sound detonated in my ears like a gunshot. Every noise in the house sharpened, the hum of the Ac, the tick of the clock, the faint groan of the pipes. Even the air seemed to whisper as it moved past my ear, like someone exhaling right beside me.
My fingers clenched around my phone until the edges dug into my skin. My knuckles went bloodless, stark against the trembling of my hands. I didn't know if I meant to call someone or smash the device into the nearest wall.
When I reached the bathroom doorway, I froze. My hand hovered inches from the light switch, shaking so violently I could see the motion in the corner of my eye. My pulse thudded in my fingertips, in my temples, in my throat. I didn't want to go in. I didn't want to see what might be lurking in the mirror's reflection. I didn't want proof.
But I needed it.
Because if there were cameras, if he could see me right now, this wasn't just fear anymore.
It was a hunt.
And I was already in the center of the trap.
My phone buzzed in my hand, and I flinched like someone had fired a gun next to my ear. A stupid vibration, just a soft hum against my palm, and it still sent a jolt through my spine.
Another message from him.
Message:
"Hahaha… What are you thinking? I've not installed cameras in the bathroom. I've not stooped this low yet."
The words were supposed to be reassuring. They weren't. They were a confession wrapped in mockery.
He didn't deny it. He just narrowed it down.
There was a camera. Maybe more than one. Somewhere in my house. Watching me. Recording me. Listening to the way my breathing hitched.
My whole body wanted to recoil, to scream, to rip the place apart until I found every hidden eye. But I knew he was watching, that was the worst part. Every reaction I gave him was entertainment.
So I swallowed the panic clawing up my throat and forced my features to flatten. I lowered myself onto the couch slowly, trying to look casual, relaxed, normal. My heart was anything but. It thrashed inside my chest like it was trying to punch its way out.
I typed with steady fingers that didn't feel like mine.
"How can I trust your words?"
Then I waited.
The seconds dragged by. The screen stayed blank. No bubbles. No typing indicator. Nothing.
Maybe he expected something else from me, wild eyes, frantic pacing, tearing open drawers, crawling under furniture to hunt for cameras. Maybe he wanted the trembling, broken version of me he thought he owned.
But all he saw was stillness. Me sitting there, phone in hand, calm as a corpse.
And that must have rattled him.
I didn't blink. I didn't breathe too loudly. I just stared at the screen, waiting, knowing exactly what I was doing.
Finally, his name appeared again.
Message:
"How about we build mutual trust? You do something I ask, and I'll reveal all the places I've installed a hidden camera…?"
My jaw locked so tight a headache sparked behind my eyes.
This fucker.
He wasn't some amateur creep fumbling his way through obsession. He was calculated. Observant. Smarter than most people gave stalkers credit for. He knew I was bluffing, testing him, trying to flip the fear back onto him. And before he even considered playing along, he wanted proof. He wanted me to perform. To convince him I wasn't rattled by the thought of his eyes on me.
And I knew exactly what that meant.
Whatever he asked next wouldn't be small. It wouldn't be reasonable. It would be the kind of command meant to corner me, something humiliating, something impossible in any normal circumstance. Something that would tell him exactly how much control he really had.
I leaned back into the couch and let my head rest as if my mind were somewhere far away. I stared blankly at the ceiling, like I was drifting in thought instead of holding myself together by a thread. Then, slowly and deliberately, I lifted my phone in front of my face and typed,....
"Okay. What do you want me to do?"
I hit send with a calm hand, then closed my eyes and pinched the space between my eyebrows, forcing my expression into the shape of stress, not fear. Tension, not panic. Something believable. Something he could study from behind whichever lens he was hiding behind.
He wanted a show?
Fine.
I'd give him one.
I'd act exactly the way he expected. And then I'd use it against him.
The buzz came faster than I anticipated. The vibration startled me so violently the phone slipped from my hand and hit the cushion.
For a heartbeat, I couldn't look. The sound of that message felt heavier, wrong, like it carried weight instead of words.
No.
I must have misread that. I had to.
I picked the phone up slowly, my pulse thundering in my ears. My eyes scanned the screen once. Then again. Then again, slower this time.
Two words.
Two word crawled under my skin, burrowing deeper the more I read.
And I wished I hadn't asked.
Message:
"Kill Ryan."
The words landed like a physical blow. They were short, brutal, and absolute, a command disguised as a joke, or a promise. For a moment the room tilted. I swallowed until my throat ached, like trying to force a stone down past a locked jaw.
The careful mask I'd been wearing cracked. The calm I had manufactured spilled out in waves I couldn't control. My face betrayed me, the muscles around my mouth tightened, my eyes went glassy, and heat prickled at the back of my neck. Anxiety and revulsion rose together, sharp and hot, and I felt the breath catch in my chest.
Before I could form a reply , before I could even decide whether to scream, to call someone, to delete the number and burn the phone , another message appeared.
Message:
"I was kidding. I will do that by myself. You don't need to dirty your hands for someone like Ryan."
The second text was softer in tone but twice as dangerous. A joke, then a confirmation. He didn't need me to participate, he'd already set the machinery in motion. The implication coiled through me like ice, he could act, and he would act, whether I consented or not.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard and trembled. Anger flared, sudden and bright, quickly submerged by a deeper, colder fear. If he planned to kill Ryan, if he actually meant it, then proximity and knowledge made me complicit in ways I couldn't afford. Every breath felt heavy with possibility , with what I'd do next, with what he might do in the seconds I hesitated.
I forced myself to think, not react. Panic was what he wanted, proof for his cameras, an unraveling for his entertainment. So I breathed, controlled and shallow, counting heartbeats like a metronome. I needed a plan, a single rational move in a room that felt suddenly full of eyes.
The phone vibrated again, but I couldn't bring myself to look. Whatever came next would decide whether I could stay two steps ahead, or whether I had already walked onto a stage with no exit.
I unlocked my phone and saw another message from him.
Message:
"Are you scared? That's more like my Venisa. Always pretending to be brave when she isn't in real life."
His tone was smug, casual, the kind of cruelty that made my skin crawl. I stared at the words until the letters blurred, then forced myself to type.
Me:
"What do you mean? You're joking, right?"
His reply took a few minutes to come. Those minutes stretched long enough for imagined horrors to seed themselves in my mind.
Message:
"Do you think I'd joke about what I hate the most? Venisa, Ryan doesn't deserve you. He won't love you the way you need to be loved. Didn't you cry so much because of him today? I wanted to kill him the moment he entered your house without your permission. I'm a human too, I don't want to kill anyone, but if someone lays a hand on you, he will face the same consequence as Jacob."
The words hit like ice. I read them again, slower this time, searching for any misstep in spelling that would make this a sick prank. There was none. The threat sat there, simultaneous and plain.
Jacob.
My stomach dropped. Jacob's name knocked the air out of me. My memory scrambled, flashes of arguments, of that day when Jacob and I fought, when Jacob got physical. Had he done something to Jacob? Had Jacob been punished because of some small fight over something that doesn't concern this stalker?
My pulse hammered. I tried to piece together anything I knew about Jacob that might explain why this stranger would use him as an example, why he'd promise consequences.
Images flickered through my mind, Jacob's face when someone told him yo stop the fight, the way his jaw had folded in on itself when he swallowed down his pride, the way his eyes had looked a moment before I turned around. I forced my breath slow, trying to steady the panic that wanted to spill out of me in a scream.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I wanted to ask a thousand things at once, What did he do to Jacob? Where is Jacob now? But each question felt like handing more ammunition to a predator whose only pleasure was watching me unravel.
Instead I typed one single line, each letter deliberate, measured.
Me:
"What did you do to Jacob?"
The message left my phone and hung in the dark like a dare. The room seemed to lean closer, eager for his answer. Outside, the house breathed and settled, as if hiding a thousand small movements from whatever eyes watched from the shadows.
His next reply would tell me whether Jacob was fine or, and whether I had already been pulled into something far darker than surveillance and voyeuristic cruelty.
My phone buzzed in my hands, the vibration sharp and deliberate , like it was daring me to look. Daring me to face the truth I had just asked for. But for a long moment, I couldn't move. I couldn't even breathe properly.
Tears I hadn't noticed gathering finally spilled over, one drop at a time splashing onto the screen. My hands trembled so violently the phone shook with them. My heart felt the same , frantic, uneven, slamming against my ribs as if it wanted out.
I thought I was ready. I thought I could handle whatever he said. But wanting the truth and surviving it were not the same thing.
My vision blurred. The lights in the room smeared into streaks as I tried to unlock my phone. The screen rejected me again and again , my fingerprints too slick, too shaky, too drenched in sweat to register. I tried harder. It denied me again. My breath hitched.
On the final failed attempt, the screen flashed,
Try again in 30 seconds.
I froze.
Maybe the phone was protecting me from the answer. Or maybe it was just delaying the inevitable.
I pressed my palms to my knees and forced myself to count. One… two… three… I tried to match numbers to heartbeats, but my pulse was too fast, too loud. My mind kept flashing images of Jacob, of that day, of the fight, of things I never imagined could matter this much.
When the timer ended, I tried again.
This time, it unlocked.
My thumb hovered for only half a second before I tapped his chat. The message waited like a trap already sprung.
Message:
"I killed him."
The world tilted sideways.
No.
No, no, no,
It couldn't be true.
I shook my head, backing away from the screen as if the words could crawl out and touch me. I forgot, stupidly, completely , that he was still watching. Watching my eyes widen, my throat close, my denial spill across my face like blood.
Somewhere, beyond the walls I couldn't see through, beyond the cameras I hadn't found yet, he was studying every twitch of my expression. Memorizing the fracture lines.
And I had just shown him terror in its purest form.
I forced myself to gather what was left of my courage and typed again, fingers clumsy and blunt with shock.
"I'm not in the mood for jokes. Tell me honestly, what did you do with Jacob? Seriously."
The words felt inadequate. They were a small, fragile lifeline thrown into a dark well. I knew someone had beaten Jacob after I fought with him. He went missing that day, and I never saw him again. So clearly something had happened to him, but he should at least still be alive.
He's a dick, the worst guy I've ever met , but that doesn't mean I want him hurt or, worse, dead over something so small. My heart grew impatient waiting for the next response. My phone buzzed, though I already saw his message because his chat was open.
My heart kicked against my ribs like a trapped animal. Each second stretched, thin and taut, until my nerves hummed with it. I leaned forward without thinking, my face a mask I could no longer smooth, waiting for the reply that would prove whether my worst fear had teeth.
My phone buzzed. I saw the message before my palm actually moved, because his chat was already open, because I'd been staring at empty space and willing words into being.
Message:
"So you'll believe me after his dead body is discovered? Okay, just wait till morning."
The screen went cold and small in my hands. The sentence landed with the simplicity of a verdict. He'd set the time. Morning. As if it were a show on a schedule.
For a second everything else fell away, the hum of the refrigerator, the familiar ache in my shoulders, the threadbare pattern of the couch. Only that message remained, pulsing like a threat in the center of my vision.
I wanted to scream, to make noise that would tear through whatever distance separated us. But I realized with a horror so precise it made my teeth ache that noise was exactly what he wanted. Panic was his currency. He'd already watched me crack once, he wanted to watch me shatter.
Instead, I pressed my thumb to the phone and watched the screen glow. The house around me felt too small, too thin, like tissue paper between me and whatever steps he had taken.
Morning. The word echoed in my head, stupidly mundane and monstrously specific. I had less than a night to do anything, anything at all. To call someone. To find Jacob. To stop a thing I didn't even know how to stop.
But most of all I felt something colder than fear: a sinking, awful clarity that suggested I had already been chosen as much as Jacob had. That this man wasn't just tormenting me for sport, he was orchestrating an end, and we were all unwilling actors on his stage.
My hands shook so badly I dropped the phone on the cushion. It bounced once, quiet and shameful, like the last small sound in a room about to be emptied of everything that mattered.
To be continued