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9

LIA

My legs shook as I leaned against the wall, trying to get my bearings.

He was here.

It didn’t feel real.

How could he be here? How could…

I couldn’t even think. My mind was going crazy. Perhaps I had imagined it?

I shut off the water with a shaky hand and wrapped a towel around myself. My movements were slow as I got out of the shower, trying hard not to collapse to the floor right there and then.

He was… he was gone, wasn’t he?

He had to be.

I peeked out of the bathroom, but there was no sign of anyone being there besides me.

No sign of him.

As if I had imagined it.

It had to be, right?

My lips trembled. Even I could hear the lie in my thoughts.

I was afraid to leave the confines of the bathroom, which I knew was stupid. If he was still around, the last thing I wanted was to be trapped in a small, enclosed space with him. I just couldn’t make myself move.

My feet felt like they were stuck to the ground, and my heart felt like it was moments away from fluttering outside of my body. I wouldn’t survive. How could you survive without your heart?

Nausea built, and it was taking everything in me not to curl up on the bathroom floor. What was I supposed to do?

Weapons.

I needed weapons… something, in case he came back. I needed to protect myself. But how?

I gasped when my eyes landed on my mirror, taking in the letters there.

MINE

I didn’t write this. That sick fucker did. And it didn’t take a genius to know what he meant.

I was his.

I closed my eyes, trying not to panic. And when I opened them again, the word was still there, even if water had dripped down from the bottom of the letters, making it look like some sort of prop for a horror movie.

I swallowed, but my throat felt dry. Leaning back against the wall, I stood there and stared at the word. I didn’t know how long I stood like that. But it was long enough for the letters to evaporate, erasing the physical reminder of an experience that, for the most part, still didn’t feel real.

This couldn’t be happening to me, could it?

How could this happen to me?

Mutely, I moved to my room. I was alone in my apartment once more, even if it didn’t feel like it. It felt like there were eyes on me, burning my skin from the inside out, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

This must be what hell feels like.

What had I done to deserve this?

I pulled on my clothes with shaky hands and grabbed my phone. I didn’t hesitate. I immediately put the call in and held my breath while waiting for the line to pick up.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I shut it as my eyes prickled with tears.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” the woman operator asked through the line.

“I, uh, I need to report… I have a stalker.”

* * *

It felt like forever, sitting on my couch and waiting for the police to show up.

I went back and forth the entire time, half convincing myself it had been nothing more than my imagination to knowing full well it was a very real, very terrifying reality that someone had been in my apartment, in my bathroom, and watched me as I showered.

A tremor of disgust ran through me, and it was taking everything I had to keep the nausea at bay.

I looked down at my hand, the tremors noticeable until my vision went blurry, and I could no longer see anything through the tears.

How could this be happening to me?

It was silly to think only bad things could happen to other people and not me, but my life so far had been normal.

This…

This wasn’t normal. And I didn’t know how I was supposed to react.

A knock on the door had me feeling faint. I got up on shaky legs and moved to open it. Two stoic-faced police officers stood there, one man and one woman.

“Hello, this is Officer Geoffrey,” the male officer said, pointing to the woman beside him. “And I’m Officer Stevens. We got a report of a break-in?”

I licked my parched lips and nodded. “Please come in.”

They walked inside, their eyes taking in my apartment, and there was a part of me that felt like they were judging me for it. I didn’t know why, considering it appeared to be a pretty normal apartment—at least, I thought so.

But under their scrutiny, I felt like I had forgotten to put something away, a bra or something. It was stupid. That was probably not what I should be focused on at this moment. I led the officers to the couch in my living room while I sat on the recliner, facing them.

They looked at me expectantly.

I hadn’t thought they would arrive here with friendly smiles, but I had expected them to not be so… cold.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened?” Officer Geoffrey said, with about as much warmth as the iceberg that sank the Titanic.

I blinked and, for the first time, wondered if I had made a mistake calling the cops. It felt like they wouldn’t be much help, and I might have just angered my stalker by calling. I mentally shook my head. No, it was a good idea to call. If nothing else, then to have this on record. But this whole interaction…

I robotically told them all that had been happening to me, from the moment I suspected there might be a stalker to the bathroom scene and the letters written on the mirror from the condensation that had no doubt evaporated at this point.

Officer Stevens got up to check out the mirror when I finished recounting my story, leaving Officer Geoffrey and me in the living room, silently staring at each other.

What was happening with these cops? I knew the NYPD was usually busy, given how populated New York was, but this was… strange.

“Do you have any idea who might be behind this?” Officer Geoffrey asked finally when her partner returned.

I mutely shook my head.

“Can you give us a description?”

“The man is tall,” I said, thinking back to the memory of him standing there in my bathroom. “Broad shoulders. Muscular build. He was wearing a dark gray sweatshirt… the hood was pulled up over his head, so I didn’t get to see his face…”

I trailed off, knowing my description was in no way helpful. Judging by the look on their faces, they thought so, too.

I closed my eyes. “I don’t have any new information to give you. It’s not like the man was going to show me his face so I could describe it to a sketch artist,” I said.

They shared a look. “We can take a picture of the mirror and perhaps see if we can find any prints, but there isn’t much else we can do,” Officer Stevens said.

I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what more I could have said at that point. I felt like I had just invited strangers into my home so they could judge me, and not officers who would be able to help.

“He was wearing gloves,” I said, remembering that much. There would be no prints.

Again, they looked at each other. “We’ll keep this in the report, but there isn’t much we can do at this point.”

I shook my head and looked away. It felt like there was something they could do… scour the streets, give me protection, or hell, even comb through the security cameras. But it was all resources they weren’t willing to give up for little ole me, and I couldn’t think of anything I could say to them.

“I understand,” I said, deflating a bit.

They stood. Officer Stevens pulled out his card and handed it to me. I grabbed it, not feeling much. It all felt like nothing but an out-of-body experience. That I wasn’t really the one in this messed-up reality—it was someone else, and I was merely nothing more than a spectator.

“Call us if any new information comes up,” he said.

I didn’t answer him.

They left after that, closing the door behind them. It only took me a few minutes of sitting in my quiet apartment for me to remember to get up and lock the door.

The lock latched into place, and a memory struck me.

I had to unlock the door for the officers when they came by.

I gasped and stepped back from the door, taking it in. There was no damage. No signs of a break-in.

In fact, I was a hundred percent sure I had locked my door when I came home tonight. So how had the man been able to get into my apartment without breaking down the door somehow?

I moved to all the windows around my apartment. I was on the third floor and didn’t know much about scaling a building. I didn’t think it would be impossible, but not easy. Besides, all my windows were locked.

There was only one explanation.

The man had a key to my place.