Page 31 of Don’t Watch Alone

Six Months Later

I feel suffocated by the overwhelming silence in this room, a heavy, persistent pressure that makes breathing difficult.

People like to say that time heals all wounds, as if months passing can mend the kind of gashes left in a soul.

They’re liars. Every morning I wake up, and I’m reminded that I am not who I was before that night.

Whatever pieces of me survived are rough and very unfamiliar, and I can feel the parts that died that night that I’ll never get back.

When the investigation finally ended, when the cops completed the mall murders like it was some open-and-shut case on paper, I thought I was ready.

I thought I had already lived through the worst of it.

But the truth cut deeper than a knife ever could.

Reading the final report, hearing the facts spoken aloud with that impersonal, distant tone; God, it was worse than the screams, worse than the chase, worse than every moment of that night when I thought my heart might burst from fear.

Because the truth gave the monster a face, and that face knew mine.

Robert. His name alone makes me sick. It wasn’t random; it wasn’t some horrible twist of fate where I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He chose me. Me. As if I were a prize to win, a fixation to satisfy his inner demons.

He circled my life, stalking me for years, biding his time to turn me into his fearful masterpiece.

And that mall, the place I thought was harmless and full of ordinary life, became his setting of cruelty.

And then Christian—Christ, Christian. He wasn’t even the mastermind behind all of this, just a shadow feeding on someone else’s sickness.

He followed Robert like a stray dog, eager to taste blood, eager to make his own real-life slasher movie.

No special effects, no fake screams. Our fear, our pain, our blood; that is what the thrill was for him.

They turned our lives into their entertainment, and their evil laughs are something that chills me even now, like I can feel their breath in the dark corners of my apartment.

The sickness comes fast, the way it always does when I let myself remember that night for too long.

Andy had warned me, and I brushed him off like an idiot.

Don’t go to the movies, Blaiz, he said. I didn’t listen.

I was too busy thinking that I was untouchable, too eager for popcorn and a jump scare that I could laugh at later.

Tony was thrilled as well, and God, I wish I could return and erase that night, so he would still be here.

Tony. It’s as if I’m ripping open my chest whenever I think of his name.

He should be here, lying on the couch, teasing me about my cooking, rolling his eyes at the way I can’t fold laundry right, planning our next dumb trip.

He should be living life right now. He should be here laughing at my jokes.

But his absence is a scream inside me that won’t stop, a hidden wound that never heals.

The world feels colder without him; it’s like the lights are out and the switch is broken.

I am on the floor in my apartment because standing up is hard sometimes, surrounded by a life that stopped existing without the dignity of dying alongside me.

Before me, the wall is covered in old photos—him and me at the lake, in the kitchen, together grinning about a cake I made, capturing our entire, shared, uncomplicated existence.

My hand touches one frame; the glass feels cool against my fingers.

It’s our last anniversary. The way he’s laughing with his head thrown back, and his eyes crinkled at the corners, just so full of life, it all feels like a cruel dream now.

While holding the photo, a tear comes out, landing on his face, distorting his smile into a warped and wet mess, making him look like he’s crying too. I wipe it away, but it doesn’t matter; the twisted reality is burned into me. This is all that’s left.

I now realize that grief doesn’t just go away.

It doesn’t fade. It becomes the air I breathe, the heaviness in my chest, the rhythm of my heart.

It teaches me how to keep moving with half a soul and no directions.

And the girl I used to be—the one who loved horror movies and believed bad things happened to other people—she’s gone.

She died at the mall that night, somewhere between the screams and the murders, and the person left behind is a stranger that I am still trying to learn how to carry.