Page 6 of Drawn to Death
I grab the first clean clothes I can find. Jeans, an old t-shirt, the blue sweater from yesterday. Don’t even bother with my hair.The morning air slaps my face when I step outside, and I suck in a breath, trying to get the taste of bile out of my mouth.
The city is already up and moving, people hustling to jobs or appointments, faces set in that practiced, blank look. I walk without a plan, just letting my feet go, trying to lose myself in the rhythm. But today, the crowd doesn’t give me its usual comfort. Every person I pass seems to look at me a second too long. Every traffic camera feels like it turns my way. Every shop window reflects not just me, but the space behind me, as if someone could be standing there, just out of sight.
I stop at the crosswalk, waiting for the light. There is a presence at my shoulder, a warm breath, a faint shift in the air. I turn, expecting someone, but it’s just a woman with her phone, a businessman fiddling with his tie. Nobody is looking at me. Nobody cares.
“Get it together,” I whisper. “You’re not that interesting.”
But the feeling won’t go. Everything sharpens: the edges of buildings slicing the sky, colors buzzing with too much intensity, sounds coming at me so clear I can pick out single conversations from blocks away.
It is overwhelming. I spin around and start back toward my apartment, walking faster, almost running by the time I reach my building. Up the stairs, two at a time. I fumble my keys at the door, suddenly desperate for the safety of inside.
I stop, hand on the knob.
My door is locked, exactly as I left it. Still, something is off. The weight of it, maybe. The way the key turns, that slight drag, as if someone has opened it and closed it again while I was gone.
I push the door open. Stand on the threshold, looking around.
Nothing is obviously wrong. My drawing table is right there by the window. My tea mug, untouched. Laptop humming on the coffee table. The apartment is quiet, just the tick of the clock and traffic somewhere below.
But something has changed.
Entering the apartment, I close the door, leaning back against it for a second. The air smells different. Not a lot, just a faint edge of something sharp and clean, like expensive soap or aftershave.
My eyes do a sweep, picking up little things. The curtains are drawn halfway across the window, perfectly straight, which I never bother with. A pencil on the drawing table has been turned, the point facing north now instead of east, where I always leave it. The tea mug is two inches over, lined up with the edge of the table. The fire escape latch is crooked.
And there is the crumpled sketch I tossed toward the trash last night, now smoothed out, lying flat on the floor. Like someone has picked it up, looked at it, and put it back down with some kind of care.
“I must have done it myself,” I say, but my voice sounds weird, like I don’t believe it. I was tired. Maybe I don’t remember.
But I never straighten up. My apartment is a reflection of my mind: chaotic, cluttered with half-formed ideas and abandoned projects. I don’t align curtains or position mugs with mathematical precision.
I crouch to retrieve the sketch, and something catches my eye under the coffee table, a tiny glint of metal where no metal should be. I drop to the floor, peer beneath the edge, reach for the unfamiliar object.
It’s smaller than my fingernail, a hard nub that might be the edge of a screw, or a button, or something else entirely. I scratch at it with my nail. It doesn’t move. Is it part of the table?
A chill runs through me. I stand up too fast, my head spinning, and start a systematic search of the apartment. I check obvious hiding places first: under cushions, behind curtains, inside cabinets. Then I move to less likely spots. I run my fingers alongthe tops of door frames, examine the undersides of furniture, peer into air vents.
Nothing. Just dust, lost pennies, and the detritus of solitary living.
No evidence. No proof that anyone’s been here but me.
But the certainty just keeps growing, minute by minute, like it has a pulse. The air feels off. It’s like the room has been poked through, turned over, cataloged by eyes that aren’t mine.
I have an overwhelming urge to flick the catch on the fire escape all the way across.
I go back to my drawing table, and drop into the chair, suddenly wiped out. The sketchbook I’ve left open stares up at me, the drawing I uploaded that morning. The man on his knees, face twisted with fear. Only now that it’s daylight, I see something I missed in my pre-dawn rush.
In the shadows behind the man, pressed so deep into the dark I’d skipped right over it, is another shape. Watching. Not fully drawn, but there if you look for it, a suggestion, hiding in the places I’ve left blank, where my hand just… hasn’t gone.
Someone else has been in the room with the dying man. Someone who stood in the dark and watched.
Maybe someone is watching me, too.
I run my fingers over the page, feeling the grooves where I’ve pressed too hard, the smooth spots where I’ve erased and started over. The paper feels real, solid, even though my head is spinning.
“If someone was here…” My voice sounds small, shaky, barely a real sound in the apartment. “Why didn’t they hurt me?”
The question just hangs there. The apartment goes still, like it’s waiting for an answer I can’t give.
