Page 30 of Only for Him

Nothing was missing or broken, and I put it down to exhaustion and changed the locks.

That turned out to have been a waste of time and money. Because every time I come home, the door is already unlocked.

Two days later, a coffee mug moved. Just a few inches, enough for me to think I’d imagined it. But when I touched the mug, it was warm, like it had just been used.

I started keeping a log of similar incidents, each event dated, time-stamped, and annotated in shorthand only I can read.

5/31 17:45 – toothbrush moved to opposite side of sink

6/3 04:37 – running shoes laced up at foot of bed

6/4 19:11 – pillow flipped

Page after page, little acts of trespass. Each entry is a little more frantic, the handwriting smaller, the lines pressed so hard they leave their imprints on the next page.

The way he’s slithered into these rooms just to move things around feels like a mirror of my interior landscape. Little bits of me that have been stationary for so long are suddenly coming to life. I can hardly even call themminenow that his touch is starting to turn them into something unfamiliar.

Then came the flowers.

It started with a single red rose, laid across my bed like a punctuation mark. The next time, a pair of lilies, the pollen dusting the sheet with orange. Then a tight bouquet of something pale and tropical, the petals sweating through the paper wrap.

I don’t even own a fucking vase.

I’m sure he’s well aware of that.

The worst was the tampons he dropped off last night.

I found the box on the bathroom sink and my period started this morning, two days early like it’s been trained. The note taped to the box was a single word, in the same neat letters as his messages carved on bodies: “PREDICTABLE.”

I nearly puked, not from fear, but from the feeling of my own body betraying me. The same way it betrays me when these invasions light a fuse inside me, sizzling up my spine and constricting my senses until I’m nothing but a grave waiting to be filled.

My discovery of each present is accompanied by a message to the burner phone. It’s how I know that he’s watching. He knows when I’m home. He knows when I walk into the bedroom or the bathroom. And every time that screen lights up with the same text, I can’t help feel my own heart skip a beat in anticipation:

Did you like my gift, little viper?

I never reply, but I keep the phone charged. He sends me other things, too: artful snapshots.

Of me, naturally.

My face in the window, tilted towards the sun. Me leaving the bodega, Clear plastic cup of iced coffee at my lips. My profile as I look over my shoulder before entering the precinct. No matter where he takes a picture of me, he always takes it when I’m lookingatthe camera so that I have to look into my own eyes.

So that I can see myself the way he sees me.

Slowly, my fear and unease become polluted with a thrill that buzzes in my teeth, and I find myselfhopingthat he’ll show up.

He’s not here, not yet, but the possibility is as tantalizing as a physical touch. He knows the pressure point, the spot just under the rib where fear turns to exhilaration. And he touches it each time he violates my privacy just a little bit more.