Page 11 of Hunting Harbor

It's mine.

I sink my face into the pillow and hug the photograph to my chest. Whoever it was—whatever ghost left this little offering behind—they must really know me. And then, because I can't let it go but also can't stand to keep looking, I slide the picture into the nightstand and close the drawer. I shiver at the thought of it being so close. I shiver at the thought of it not.

I try to ignore it. I try to pretend it isn’t burning through me like it wants to eat my heart. But it’s all I can think about. That photograph. Those hands. So I pace around the apartment and hold my breath at the sound of every creaking floorboard. The same uneasy feeling follows me like a shadow, the sense that nothing is in its place. That someone else’s eyes have been here, running up and down the walls. There are little signs of it everywhere. But instead of calming my nerves, they set fire to my thoughts.

The first is the mug, my favorite chipped one with a rainbow heart. It sits by the edge of the kitchen counter, facing the wrong direction.

Or the right direction if it wasn’t mine.

Or if someone else put it there.

This is not helping, I think, setting it down and picking it back up, like that will make it magically turn itself around again. What if I imagined it? What if I'm so inside my own head that I don’t know which way is up? What if that's exactly what they want?

I swallow the sound that rises in my throat.

Someone else’s fingerprints are on this. I could go to the cops.

If I wanted.

Which I don’t.

They saved me.

I’m unraveling, I think, feeling that tight pull in my chest where air is supposed to be. Unraveling, unspooling, untangling everything I’ve worked so hard to knot back together. But I look around the apartment again and know that something is off. That it’s not just my brain turning somersaults inside my skull. Someone has been here. That must be it. That must be the answer.

But if I face that terribly obvious truth, then I must also face the fact that they pushed their cock inside me.

Which, to be fair, sleeping me got a lot more action than awake me. I hadn’t been laid in months. Maybe even a year.

I turn to face the window.

Then I face my hallway table.

A drawer, exactly one inch open.

And I know, I know, I never leave it like that.

I shut it, then yank it back open. Shut, then open. Again, again, again. A raw, wild movement that finally—finally—loosens the grip of fear enough to let me breathe.

But I hold that breath and keep moving. I sweep through the apartment, my thoughts dragging behind me like torn pieces of tissue paper. I look at every surface. Under. Around. Above. If someone’s been here, I need to know. If someone knows me, I need to be sure.

I sink into my knees in front of the bookshelf, where things usually make sense. Where things are exactly as I left them. And now? Now they seem shifted. Rearranged by a ghost. Alphabetical order out of whack, spine colors all mismatched. These little reminders everywhere. Little signs. And that dark little part of me that loved the photograph wants to know more.

But I don't let it.

I get up.

I stand and tell myself I'm going to the kitchen to make tea.

And I tell myself I'm going to my room to write.

And I tell myself this is all one huge misunderstanding, that it's nothing, that I’m fine. But I know I'm not. And I know it's not. Because the front door catches my eye, and I can't stop staring, and there's a lock that needs to be checked.

I twist the bolt until my fingers ache.

The windows, too.

Once.

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