Page 49 of Don't Watch Alone

And Andy. Quiet, weird Andy, who showed up at my work and warned me not to go to the movies tonight. How the hell did he know? What did he see or hear?

And Mary. Sweet, Mary. Harmless. Unaware. They stuffed her in a fucking freezer like she was some kind of garbage. She didn’t even know them, so she didn’t deserve what happenedto her.

A loud knock cuts through the confusion in my mind, and then a voice: “Miss, I’ve got an update for you.”

I stare at him, my body heavy with exhaustion and anger and something uglier; something colder. “Update? Or are you here to slap cuffs on me because I killed the monsters who were trying to cut me open?” My voice cracks. “They murdered every single person in that mall. I didn’t fucking do it.”

The detective shows no reaction. He steps closer. “No one’s charging you with any kind of crime. We searched Christian and Robert’s homes. There’s something we found in Robert’s place I thought you needed to see.”

He hands me a thick stack of photographs, and my fingers grip around them. I flip through them slowly, each one cutting into me deeper than the last. My face. Again and again. Walking into work. Leaving my apartment. Talking to Tony at the fair last year. Different days. Different clothes. Different angles. I’m being watched. I was being watched.

For years.

My stomach is turning into a chaotic form of knots as I flip through the photos, then I freeze. One of the pictures isn’t just of me; Andy is in it. He’s in the background, out of focus, but it’s him for sure.

“That’s Andy,” I whisper. “Why is he in some of these? He was one of the victims... he warned me... I thought he was just some weird stalker. A customer of mine said she went on a date with Andy once and found a whole room full of pictures of me.”

The detective nods slowly. “Robert and Andy were roommates.”

“What?” My voice explodes out of me. “Fucking roommates?!”

“Yeah,” he says. “So the photos your customer saw? They were probably Robert’s. Andy might’ve just been caught in the line of fire. Hell, maybe he was trying to protect you.”

I don’t know what to say. My head’s spinning. The horror that’s been suffocating me all night shifts—not just fear, but confusion, regret, guilt, all twisted into a messI can’t begin to understand. Was Andy stalking me, or was he watching them?

And Mary... why her?

The detective reaches into the folder one last time, removes a folded piece of paper, and hands it to me as if it were a sacred object. I take it and unfold the note.

In case I’m dead, I need someone to know. I tried to stop Christian and Robert, but they threatened to kill me if I opened my mouth. They took Mary by mistake—they thought she was Blaiz. Once they realized it wasn’t her, it was too late. They couldn’t let her go.

The words become blurry, and I can’t see straight. My name. Mary’s death. Andy’s last confession. I sit still, gripping the paper as the room seems to be shrinking around me, making it hard to breathe. This nightmare... it isn’t over. Not really. Christian and Robert might be dead, but they didn’t just leave behind blood and trauma—they left behind the kind of damage that changes a person forever.

And I’m not who I was before tonight. I can feel it deep down in me, inthe way I breathe. Something is broken inside me. Something that won’t ever heal.

Because after what happened in that mall… I don’t think I’ll ever be whole again.

Epilogue

Six Months Later

Ifeelsuffocatedbythe 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 aloudwith 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 turnedour 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 colderwithout 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.