Page 5 of Twisted Obsession

After all, there was no point in alarming the asshole of his imminent demise.

Five, six, seven–

The guard at my back fell to the ground.

I didn’t need to check his body to know a perfectly round hole would be pierced through his temple straight to the other side. An odd angle, but a recognizable one. The last four guards each wore a hole like it.

The first I studied, tracing the edges with my fingertip, painting the whirls there a shade of tainted red.

The next day a part of my illusions within my studio also seeped red throughout one corner. I left the colour on the grayscale as a reminder of what was hidden, what was missing from my reality.

Life, or the lack thereof.

I smiled, tilting my head back into the waning winter sun. The campus was mostly bereft of students and the professors knew well enough to leave me to my own devices.

I had my own form of protection, after all. My own guard, though I suspected he saw me as an easy version of his prey.

Keeping my steps light, I walked across campus, knowing his eyes were on me. Somehow, under his obsessive gaze, I knew nothing would touch me. He wouldn't allow it.

And somehow, so wrongly, that branding of possession...it felt safe.

***

The facade of securitylasted until nightfall. Until I sat in my window at eleven o’clock, watching the stars flicker above muted city lights, haunting strains of Christmas carols filtering across the open spaces, the star twinkling its fake lights in the neon tree set in the central plaza. Late shoppers wandered freely with only a few nights until the event was over and the town returned to a muted semblance of itself.

Until I realised that he wasn’t there on his rooftop, where he was supposed to be. The man sent to kill me.

Predictability was both a comfort and a curse.

Twirling a fresh wine glass in my fingers, filled with black vodka this time, I searched the nightscape for his familiar form, but there was nothing there. No one.

The city was empty of my stalker.

Fear gripped my stomach. Somewhere along the last month I taught myself to rely on the regularity of this man and tonight...was different.

I spun the glass in my fingers, allowing the disgusting liquid to slosh across my chest, staining the white silk nightie with its spaghetti straps I replaced the night he shot the glass I held. Small scars decorated my otherwise unblemished skin like a necklace, marking me with his present of the season.

My heart pounded in my chest as I tried to regulate my breaths. A quick glance across at my door showed dual shadowed feet either side. My guards stood there still, but my stalker was missing.

Where are you?

Why aren't you there?

Was this recompense for disappearing that night? I broke my routine, slipping from the windowsill to slip into the bathroom, cleaning myself and my glass up before one of the guards inquired of the noise.

Guards, a joke in itself.

If he shot me, they would leave me to bleed out on my cheap carpet in the shitty apartment I wasn’t allowed to change.

A different sort of prison, one where I wasn’t permitted to hide in illusions of my own creation, and so I hid in his instead.

My stalker.

What’s your name?

I speak in our odd relationship, which became a one sided affair. He watched me; I waited, seeking contact when he appeared. But only when he wished. He killed for me, but I couldn’t find his hiding spot.

The first three times, I tried.

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