7 True Coworker Horror Stories | "The Person at the Desk Beside Me Wasn’t Normal" 😱 That Will Make You Side-Eye Every Office Smile

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And I was only working there part-time to help pay my way through community college. The job was nothing glamorous, but the money was decent, and most of the people I worked with were pretty laid back. The only exception was Nathan. He had joined the staff about two months after I did, and from the very beginning, something about it made everyone uneasy. He was around 35 and always seemed to wear the same faded blue polo shirt. He even wore it on his days off when he would occasionally show up at the store for no apparent reason. He also had a habit of talking to himself while he worked. It wasn't the ordinary kind of muttering people do when they're trying to remember something. Nathan would carry on entire conversations, responding to things no one else had said. As the weeks passed, his muttering became worse, and the subject was almost always the same. He believed the managers were conspiring against him. He complained that they deliberately assigned him the worst shifts and were trying to force him to quit. Julie our assistant manager once tried to speak to him about it. She approached him carefully and asked whether everything was all right at home or whether he needed his schedule adjusted. Nathan merely stared at her with his vacant grey eyes and told her that she was part of the conspiracy, too. He accused her of documenting everything he did so management could build a case against him. After that conversation, Julie began arranging her schedule so she wouldn't have to work the same shifts as Nathan. I noticed that several other employees started doing the same thing. I couldn't afford to avoid him, though. I needed the hours and Saturdays were our busiest days. They were also when we earned the best tips from helping customers load heavy equipment into their vehicles. So I continued working alongside Nathan, keeping as much distance between us as possible, without making it obvious that I was avoiding him. That particular Saturday began like any other October weekend. Parents crowded the store to buy soccer equipment for their children, hunters stocked up for a deer season, and the usual weekend chaos filled every department. Nathan had been assigned to the camping section while I was working in athletic footwear. Our departments were close enough that I could still hear his constant muttering from three miles away. By noon the store was completely packed. I was helping a mother find cleats for her twin boys when I noticed Nathan's voice becoming louder. He was talking about respect and saying that everyone would soon discover what happened when they pushed someone too far. He kept repeating that this was the day everything would finally change. The mother must have heard him as well because she tightened her grip on her son's hands and asked whether we had the cleats in the stock room. It was obvious that she simply wanted to get away from Nathan's section. About 20 minutes later, Robert the store manager passed through the camping department while making his usual rounds. He carried a clipboard and stopped periodically to inspect the displays. Nathan watched him walk by. I could see Nathan's jaw repeatedly tightened and relaxed as though he were chewing on words he desperately wanted to spit out. Robert never even looked at him. He simply wrote down a few notes about the camping display and continued on his way. Nathan followed him with his eyes, gripping a price gun so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He placed the price gun on the counter with deliberate care and headed toward the rear of the store. At first I assumed he was going on his break, but there was something unsettling about the way he walked. His movements were purposeful and almost mechanical, and I continued watching until he disappeared through the employee doors. When he returned five minutes later, he was carrying his personal backpack. That immediately struck me as strange because employees were required to leave their bags inside their lockers during their shifts. I was ringing up a customer at the footwear register when I heard the first crash. It sounded as though someone had knocked over an entire rack of baseball bats. That unmistakable metallic clatter echoed through the store. Another crash followed, then another, and finally the sharp sound of breaking glass. Customers began glancing around nervously. I rose onto my toes and tried to see over the surrounding displays. That was when I spotted Nathan in the camping aisle. He was systematically sweeping entire shelves of merchandise onto the floor. His face was completely expressionless, as if he had fallen into some kind of trance. A Coleman lantern struck the tile and exploded, scattering pieces of glass in every direction. Parents were already grabbing their children and rushing toward the exits. I reached beneath my register for the phone so I could call management. But then Nathan pulled something from his backpack that made my entire body stiffen. It was a box cutter, but not the ordinary kind we used to open shipments. This one was larger and looked industrial. Nathan held it in front of him and studied the blade as though we were seeing it for the first time. Robert came running toward the camping department, probably assuming there had been an accident, or that a customer was experiencing some kind of medical emergency. He slowed when he saw Nathan standing amid the destruction, surrounded by sleeping bags and shattered camping stoves, with the box cutter in his hand. Nathan, buddy, let's talk about this. Robert said in that artificial soothing voice managers are taught to use during training. Nathan laughed. It wasn't a normal laugh. It was a hollow, bitter sound that seemed to rise from somewhere deep inside his chest. "Talk." "Now you want to talk," he said. After months of writing me up for nothing, changing my schedule at the last minute, and giving all the good sections to everyone else, his voice became louder with every word. He waved the box cutter as he spoke, forcing Robert to take a step backward. "I know what you've been doing," Nathan continued. "I know about the file you're keeping on me. But guess what? Today I'm the one writing the performance review." One seconds the entire store descended into chaos. Customers ran for the exits, leaving their shopping carts behind. Some held up their phones and recorded Nathan even while backing away from him. I saw my coworker Brandon from sporting goods attempting to direct people through the side entrance. Kesha, who worked in customer service, was speaking urgently into her radio, most likely calling 911. Nathan advanced toward Robert, forcing him to retreat until he collided with an end-cap filled with protein bars. "Everyone always acted like I was invisible," Nathan said, like I was nothing. You scheduled me by myself on truck days. You made me clean the bathrooms when it wasn't even my turn. You laughed at me behind my back in the break room. He kicked aside one of the tents he had thrown onto the floor. Then he aimed the box cutter at the employees who remained frozen in place, watching him. "Oh, I heard all of you," he said. "I heard everything, Ashley making fun of the way I eat my lunch, Doug telling the new employees that I'm weird. All of you acting like you're so much better than me. My manager, Janet, suddenly appeared beside me. She grabbed my arm and hissed that I needed to get to the stock room immediately. But I couldn't make myself move. All I could think about were the countless times I had been alone in the store with Nathan. Nathan had been inventory shifts and closing shifts when only the two of us were there. He could have done something like this during any of those moments. Nathan must have noticed the movement near us because he abruptly turned in our direction. When he saw Janet trying to pull me away, his entire expression changed. "Janet," he said, "the queen of scheduling. You're the worst one of all. Making me work every single weekend, giving Ashley my shifts when I called in sick that one time, telling everyone I was on thin ice." He stepped toward us and that finally shattered my paralysis. Janet and I ran for the stock room. Behind us, I could hear Nathan shouting about respect, consequences, and how everyone would finally understand what they had done to him. The stock room was a maze of metal shelving packed with inventory. Janet led me deep into the back, toward the area where we stored surplus exercise equipment. We crouched behind a wall formed by several large treadmill boxes. That was when I realized I had left my phone beside the register. Janet still had hers, but her fingers were trembling so violently that she could barely unlock the screen. the sales floor. We could hear Nathan overtakes. turning more displays and screaming at anyone who hadn't managed to escape. "Where's Janet?" he repeatedly shouted. "Where's my wonderful manager who made my life hell?" The stockroom door had a small window. Through it I could see Nathan pacing near the entrance, still clutching the box cutter. Every so often he slashed at a rack of clothing as he walked past it. Police sirens were drawing closer, but from where we were hiding, they still sounded impossibly far away. Janet whispered into her phone as she spoke with the 911 dispatcher. She told them we were trapped in the back of the store that Nathan was armed and that he was specifically looking for us. Then the stockroom door handle began to turn. Janet and I pressed our bodies against the treadmill boxes and tried not to breathe. The door slowly opened and Nathan's footsteps echoed across the concrete floor. "I know you're in here," he said. His voice had become eerily calm, nothing like the frantic shouting we had heard moments earlier. You can't hide from consequences forever. That's what you told me, isn't it Janet? When you wrote me up for being five minutes late, when you said I needed to face the consequences of my actions, his footsteps drew closer. I heard him moving boxes and searching behind the shelving units. Through a narrow opening in the wall of boxes, I could see his feet just two miles away. Nathan was searching methodically, examining every possible hiding place. At the speed he was moving, he would discover us in less than a minute. Janet stared at me with wide eyes and pointed toward the emergency exit at the opposite end of the stockroom. Reaching it, however, would require us to cross a wide open area where Nathan would unquestionably see us. Suddenly, several voices shouted from the main sales floor. Police dropped the weapon. Nathan's footsteps stopped. For a moment, the entire stockroom fell silent, except for the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. Then Nathan laughed again. It was the same empty bitter laugh I had heard earlier. They don't understand either, he muttered. But he was moving away from us now, heading back toward the stockroom entrance. We heard him leave, followed by more yelling and repeated commands ordering him to get on the ground. Nathan shouted back at the officers, ranting once again about files, schedules and respect. Janet and I remained behind the treadmill boxes for what felt like hours, although it was probably only about 10 minutes. Eventually, a police officer found us and told us it was safe to come out. Nathan was already in custody. As the officers escorted us through the store, I finally saw the full extent of the destruction. Thousands of dollars worth of merchandise had been ruined. Displays had been overturned throughout the building. The box cutter lay abandoned on the floor near the camping department in the same area where the police had tackled Nathan. The store remained closed for three days while the corporate office decided how to handle the situation. Counselors were brought in to speak with all of us. I later learned that Nathan had kept a journal in which he recorded every perceived insult and every conspiracy he imagined was being carried out against him. Some of the entries went back months, long before he had even begun behaving strangely at work. Apparently he had been planning the incident for weeks. He had deliberately waited for a busy Saturday so he could cause the greatest possible impact. I couldn't return to work there. Every time I tried, I remembered the vacant expression on Nathan's face as he destroyed the store. I remembered the way he had searched for us in the stock room, hunting us aisle by aisle. I quit two weeks later and found a job at a coffee shop downtown. Janet transferred to another store in a different state. Eventually, the sporting goods store reopened with an entirely new staff who had no idea what had taken place inside that building. Sometimes I drive past it. From the outside, it looks completely ordinary, filled with bright lights and colorful sales signs. Whenever I see it, I think about how quickly an ordinary Saturday can become the worst day of your life. I think about how someone you work beside every day can be carrying so much anger inside them without anyone truly seeing it until it finally explodes. Story two. The auto repair shop stood on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama, which between a laundromat and a pawn shop as though someone had added it there as an afterthought. It had four service bays. Concrete walls covered in faded blue paint that was peeling away in sheets and a sign out front that flickered every time it rained. That was where I spent most of my time that summer. I was 26 and had been working there for about eight months. Mostly performing oil changes and break repairs. I saved every dollar I could, hoping that I might be able to open a shop of my own someday. Frank the owner rarely appeared unless it was time to collect money or complain about how much everything cost. He left the actual work to the three of us. Karl, an older mechanic who kept his head down and rarely spoke. Me and Tommy who had joined us about two months before that Thursday afternoon in August when everything went wrong. The humidity had been vicious that day. It was the kind of heat that made breathing feel like drowning and transformed the asphalt outside into a rippling mirage. When Frank first hired Tommy, he had seemed normal enough. He was a little rough around the edges, but that wasn't unusual among mechanics. Tommy stood approximately six feet two inches and had the build of a former linebacker who had let himself go. His thick forearms were covered in old tattoos that looked as though someone had given them to him in a kitchen using a sewing needle in India ink. His face seemed to carry stories no one would want to hear. Deep creases surrounded his bloodshot eyes. His nose had obviously been broken and rearranged more than once, and his jaw constantly tightened and released even when he was attempting to relax. What truly drew your attention, however, were Tommy's hands. They were enormous scarred things with the knuckles the size of walnuts. Those knuckles were permanently swollen and discolored after years of striking things they never should have touched. For the first few weeks, Tommy was actually fairly easy to work with. He brought gas station coffee for everyone in the mornings and told jokes that were only half insulting. Then, sometime around his third week, something inside him shifted, like a gear suddenly slipping out of place. He began arriving at work wreaking of Jim Beam and Marlbrose, while lying underneath vehicles he would talk quietly to himself. The first serious incident occurred on a Tuesday morning. A socket wrench flew past my head and struck the drywall hard enough to leave a hole. Tommy claimed it had slipped out of his hand. I knew that wasn't true, because I had watched him draw his arm back and deliberately throw it after fighting with a rusted bolt for no more than five minutes. Carl continued working on his Honda as though nothing had happened. After that morning, however, I noticed his shoulders tense every time Tommy walked past his service bay. The following week, Tommy got into an argument with a customer over a repair bill. Their voice is steadily rose until Tommy was screaming about respect and complaining that no one appreciated quality work anymore. Frank had to come to the shop and calm the situation. He gave the customer a discount solely to convince him to leave. Even then, Frank didn't fire Tommy. He said skilled mechanics were difficult to find and suggested that Tommy might simply be dealing with personal problems. "We all go through something, right?" Frank said. Then he left us alone with Tommy again. Tommy spent the remainder of the day slamming cabinet doors and kicking toolboxes. By his sixth week, working beside him felt like being locked in a cage with a rabid dog that simply hadn't bitten anyone yet. He arrived later each day, sometimes not showing up until noon. His workloads looked as though he had slept in them and there was dried vomit on his steel-toed boots that he never bothered to clean. The odor coming from him had changed, too. It was no longer only the smell of alcohol and cigarettes. There was now something sour and rotten beneath it, like meat that had been left outside in the sun. Tommy lost at least 20 pounds. His appearance deteriorated from merely rough to almost skeletal. His cheekbones protruded like blades beneath his gray skin. The most frightening part was watching him repair vehicles while he was in that condition. His hands trembled so violently that he frequently dropped a bolts into engine compartments. He would then spend 20 minutes trying to retrieve them while quietly cursing in an uninterrupted stream of threats aimed at people who weren't even present. One afternoon, I heard him carrying on an entire conversation while working beneath a Chevy. When I looked under the vehicle, I discovered that he was completely alone. He was lying there arguing with empty air about money someone supposedly owed him. That Thursday began quietly, which should have been my first warning. Tommy hadn't arrived by lunchtime and Carl and I were finally able to get some work done without dodging airborne tools or listening to drunken rambling. At around three o'clock that afternoon, a customer arrived to collect their Ford. I was completing the paperwork when Carl tapped me on the shoulder. The expression on his face made him look as though he had just witnessed someone die. "I'm leaving right now," he said. "You should too." Before I could ask him what was wrong, Carl had already grabbed his jacket and started walking toward his truck. Through the open service bay door, I saw Tommy's battered Silverado entering the parking lot. The truck moved crookedly across the pavement and clipped the corner of our dumpster with a crash that sounded like thunder. Carl accelerated out of the lot so quickly that his tires left marks on the asphalt. The customer glanced at Tommy as he stumbled out of the Silverado, muttered something about returning the following day, and practically sprinted toward their own vehicle. Tommy remained in the parking lot for at least a minute. He swayed like a tree caught in a storm, pressing one hand against his truck to keep himself upright. His other arm hung beside him, and he was holding something I couldn't clearly identify. His shirt had been torn open across the chest, revealing a fresh gash that was still bleeding. His left eye was swollen completely shut and modeled purple and yellow, resembling a piece of rotten fruit. He repeatedly touched one of his pockets, apparently checking to make sure something was still inside. Then he would scan the parking lot as though he expected someone to leap out or not attack him. When he finally headed toward the shop, his walk became purposeful and determined in a way that didn't match his obvious intoxication. He entered through the service bay door and stopped, his silhouette framed by the afternoon sunlight. That was when I saw what he was carrying in his right hand. It was a rouga revolver, similar to the one my grandfather had once kept inside his nightstand. Unlike my grandfather's gun, however, Tommy's was scratched and battered, with electrical tape wrapped around the grip. "Hey buddy," he said in a thick slurred voice. "We need to have ourselves a conversation about respect." The bay door began descending behind him. I realized he must have pressed the control button as he came inside. The heavy metal door sounded like a coffin lid closing. It gradually blocked the afternoon sunlight until the shop's fluorescent bulbs became our only source of illumination. Tommy moved farther into the building, steadying himself against the hood of a white camera and leaving bloody handprints across its paint. The revolver remained pointed mostly toward the floor, but his finger rested directly on the trigger. He repeatedly tapped it as though keeping time with music only he could hear. "Where's Carl?" he asked, and then he released a wet choking laugh. "Doesn't matter. Carl's a coward. Always was. But you're still here. That means something." He stopped approximately ten feet away and leaned against a tool cabinet. His entire body was trembling. It wasn't fear causing it. The shaking came from whatever combination of substances was battling inside his bloodstream. Then his odors struck me at full force, whiskey blood sweat, and something chemical that smelled as though he had been inhaling paint thinner. Tommy, I said, struggling to keep my voice steady while every part of my brain screamed at me to run. There was nowhere for me to go. The bay door was closed and Tommy stood between me and the shop's only exit. He tilted his head like a confused dog. Then he lifted the revolver. He didn't point it directly at me, but he didn't aim it away from me either. He simply held it up almost as though he wanted to show it off. "Fourty dollars," he said. "That's all I needed. Forty dollars to make things right. And Frank told me no. Said I hadn't earned it yet. I've been here for eight weeks breaking my back, and he can't front me forty dollars." Tommy struck the tool cabinet with his free hand. Several tools fell to the floor, and the resulting crash reverberated through the sealed shop bouncing off the concrete walls. "But that isn't even the real problem," he continued. "The real problem is what I heard all of you saying. Yeah, I heard you. Talking about me like I'm some kind of joke. Poor Tommy. Drunk Tommy. Crazy Tommy." His one functioning eye moved wildly around the shop, focusing on things that didn't appear to be there. Maybe he really was seeing something. He started pacing, dragging his feet in a slow, shuffling walk while the revolver swung at his side. Every few steps he would stop and stare at some random object, a wrench lying on the ground, an oil stain on the concrete, or the calendar hanging on the wall. The calendar featured a bikini model and was still turned to May, even though it was already August. "My ex-wife used to look at me exactly the way you're looking at me now," Tommy said. He made that wet laughing sound again. Like I'm some kind of animal. Like I'm dangerous. Well, maybe I am dangerous. Maybe that's what a person has to be to get some respect around here. He whirled around without warning, nearly losing his balance before catching himself against a jack stand. The revolver discharged once, the bullet struck the Pepsi machine in the corner and tore a hole through it. Inside the enclosed shop, the gunshot was unbelievably loud. It felt as though someone had detonated a bomb inside my skull. My ears began ringing. For several seconds I could see Tommy's lips moving, but I couldn't hear anything he was saying. When the ringing finally diminished, he was laughing as he watched Pepsi spill from the damaged machine and spread across the floor. "Didn't mean to do that," he said. "Or maybe I did. It's hard to tell anymore." The following 20 minutes seemed to last for hours. Tommy shifted between rambling about his ex-wife, talking about the children who refused to speak to him, and describing a fight he had apparently gotten into at a bar the previous night. That fight seemed to be the source of both the wound across his chest and his swollen eye. He ordered me to sit on a milk crate beside the back wall while he continued pacing through the shop. Sometimes he aimed the gun at me. At other moments he pointed it at himself. Occasionally he simply waved it through the air as though he had forgotten he was holding it. His emotions moved through a repeating cycle. First he would become furious and start shouting about respect, money, and frank. Then his anger would collapse into sadness, and he would nearly begin crying as he spoke about his children. After that came the paranoia. He accused me of secretly calling someone. He claimed I was setting him up and that I was part of a conspiracy with Frank to have him fired. The most terrifying moments were the silent ones. Tommy would stop speaking and stare at me with his one open eye. The revolver would become perfectly still in his hand, and it looked as though he were trying to reach a decision. During one of those silences I heard sirens somewhere in the distance. Tommy heard them too. His entire body stiffened and he looked at me with an expression of absolute betrayal. "You called them," he said. It sounded more like a question than an accusation. The sirens grew steadily louder and were unquestionably heading toward the shop. I could almost see Tommy assembling the possibilities in his mind. Carl might have contacted the police after leaving. The customer could have called them. Someone nearby might have heard the gunshot. Tommy back toward the controls for the bay door keeping the revolver aimed at me. His hand was shaking even more violently than before. "This ain't how it was supposed to go," he repeated. "This ain't how it was supposed to go." The sirens were directly outside now. Through the small window in the bay door I could see flashes of red and blue light washing across the shop's walls. Tommy looked at the door, then at me, and finally down at the weapon in his hand as though he had only just remembered he was carrying it. For one awful moment I thought he might shoot me simply to prove a point. I also thought he might turn the gun on himself to escape whatever was coming next. Instead he did something I will never forget. Tommy walked to the workbench and placed the revolver on it with extraordinary care as though the weapon were made of glass. Then he sat on the floor with his back pressed against the wall. "Tell them I didn't hurt nobody," he said. He began to cry. Enormous gasping sob shook his entire body. "Tell them I just needed $40." Approximately 30 seconds later, police officers entered through the door with their weapons drawn, shouting commands. Tommy remained on the floor with both hands resting on top of his head, sobbing. The officers handcuffed him and pulled him outside. Through the window I watched them place him in the back of a patrol car. From the moment Tommy had first entered the shop, the entire ordeal had lasted perhaps 45 minutes. To me it had felt like an entire lifetime. I gave the police my statement and called Frank to explain what had happened. Then I drove home and sat alone inside my apartment until sunrise, attempting to understand everything I had just experienced. I never returned to that repair shop. Frank mailed me my final paycheck. I later heard that he closed the business because he could no longer find decent employees. About six months afterward I read in the newspaper that Tommy had received a three-year sentence for aggravated assault and unlawful imprisonment. The article also stated that, in addition to his alcoholism, he had been struggling with a methamphetamine addiction. That explained both the chemical odors surrounding him and his increasing paranoia. I never learned whether Tommy received any help while he was incarcerated. I don't know whether his children never spoke to him again or what became of him after his release. Sometimes I drive past the building where the repair shop once stood. It is a cell phone store now. Whenever I pass it I think about that afternoon. I think about how $40 in a broken man carrying a gun changed everything. Story 3. The parking garage beneath my office building was illuminated by yellow lights that made everyone look ill, as if we were all suffering from jaundice. Most evenings at approximately 630, I would ride the elevator down to level B2. My battered corolla was always waiting in space 47, directly beside a concrete support pillar that someone had spray painted with the words Dave Sunks several months earlier. The medical billing company where I worked required us to stay late on most nights. Insurance claims weren't going to file themselves. By the time I finally left the office, the garage was generally deserted except for a handful of vehicles belonging to the cleaning staff. I remember that particular Tuesday in November because my phone had run out of power. I couldn't listen to the true crime podcast that usually accompanied me during the walk to my car. Instead I heard footsteps echoing behind me. Hearing someone else walking through the garage wasn't unusual. What bothered me was that those footsteps remained perfectly synchronized with mine. I increased my pace to test them. Whoever was behind me immediately matched my speed, as though they didn't want me to realize I was being followed. When I reached space 47, Kevin from the data entry department was standing beside my driver's door. He simply stood there with both hands tucked into the pockets of a pair of khaki pants that were much too short for him. The pants exposed his white tube socks and his worn out new balance sneakers. There was an expression on his face that I had never seen before. It wasn't quite a smile. His mouth kept shifting in a strange way, almost as if he were practicing several different expressions and couldn't decide which one to use. Kevin held a thermos in one hand. It was one of those old plaque models that looked as though it had come directly from the 1980s. He kept striking it lightly against his thigh in an irregular rhythm. Tap, tap, pause, tap, tap, tap. When Kevin realized I had noticed him, he took a step backward. He didn't move far enough to let me reach my door though. He was still blocking it. Just wanted to make sure you got to your car safely, he said. His voice sounded unnatural, like he had practiced the sentence hundreds of times in his head, but still hadn't learned where to place the proper emphasis. The worst part was the way he said your car. He stressed those words as if he possessed some private knowledge about it. It made me wonder whether he had stood beside it before, touched it, or looked through its windows when I wasn't there. I mumbled that I was fine and attempted to squeeze past him. Kevin shifted his weight just enough to make getting around him uncomfortable. The thermos continued tapping against his leg, tap, tap, pause, tap, tap, tap. From that close, I could smell his breath. It carried the odor of stale coffee mixed with the butterscotch candies elderly people keeping glass bowls. The security guard leaves at six o'clock, Kevin said without any prompting. As though that were crucial information I needed to know. But I stay until seven most nights, sometimes 715. I've noticed that you usually leave around 630. My chest tightened as he casually listed those times. He had been monitoring me. Somewhere inside his head, Kevin had created a schedule of my movements. I finally forced my way around him. My keys were already in my hand, positioned between my fingers the way my mother had taught me. While I struggled with the lock, Kevin remained beside me, tapping the thermos and watching me fight with the driver's door handle, which always became difficult to open when the weather churned cold. Over the next several evenings, I began changing the time I left the office. One night I departed at 615. Another night I waited until 645. Once I deliberately stayed until 730, hoping the delay would confuse him. It made no difference. When I appeared somewhere in the parking garage every single night, sometimes he stood beside the stairwell door, examining the fire extinguisher as though it were the most interesting object he had ever seen. On other occasions he positioned himself two vehicles away and pretended to search for something inside a car that definitely didn't belong to him. I knew what Kevin drove. It was an old van, and I had once seen him loading boxes of paper into it during lunch. He never approached me directly again, but he was always somewhere nearby. He watched me with a vacant expression, looking as if he were patiently waiting for something to happen. I also began using different routes through the garage. Sometimes I rode the elevator to B1 and walked back down to B2. Other times I cut through the reserved parking spaces, even though doing so added approximately five minutes to my walk. Nothing helped. Kevin would appear somewhere along whichever road I chose, as though he had memorized the entire structure, and already knew every possible path I could take. After approximately a week of playing this cat and mouse game, I decided to stop driving and take the bus instead. My apartment was only four miles from the office, and the number 19 bus stopped directly outside our building every 20 minutes. I told myself I was doing it to save money on gas. I even purchased a monthly bus pass of the decision would feel financial instead of motivated by fear. On that first Monday, an enormous sense of relief came over me as the bus pulled away from the curb. Kevin was nowhere inside. At that hour there were very few passengers aboard. Aside from me, there was a teenager wearing enormous headphones, and an elderly woman knitting would appear to be the longest scarf in the world. For the first time in several days, I allowed myself to relax. I watched the city block slide pass through the scratch bus windows. I got off at Cedar Avenue and walked the three blocks to my apartment. I even stopped at the corner bodega to buy milk without constantly glancing over my shoulder. On Tuesday evening, I repeated the same routine. I remained at my desk until 640, walked directly past the elevator that led to the parking garage and headed outside to the bus stop. The number 19 arrived exactly on schedule. Its doors opened with their familiar wheezing sound, and I climbed aboard and scanned my pass. I selected a window seat near the middle of the bus and took out my phone, mindlessly scrolling through things that didn't matter. Two stops later, at Riverside and Third, I happened to glance up. Kevin was lowering himself into a seat four rows behind me. He carried the same plaid thermos, holding it on his lap with both hands as though it were something precious. He wasn't even attempting to conceal the fact that he was staring directly at me through the space between the seats. Our eyes met in the reflection of the window. Kevin didn't look away. Instead, he raised the thermos slightly in a kind of distorted toast. Then he took a slow drink without breaking eye contact. The following three stops felt as though they lasted for hours. Ever someone entered or exited the bus, I hoped Kevin would abruptly decide that he needed to be somewhere else and get off. He never did. He remained in his seat, occasionally taking tiny sips from the thermos. When we reached Monroe Street, I made an impulsive decision. I jumped up and hurried toward the rear exit just as the doors were beginning to close. I managed to squeeze through and heard the driver shout something after me, but I was already on the sidewalk. I immediately began walking quickly in the opposite direction from the one the bus was traveling. I crossed through a pharmacy parking lot and slipped inside a laundromat. From behind its fogged window, I watched the number 19 disappear down the street. I waited there for 15 minutes. Then I requested an uber using a fake pickup point located three blocks away. I made the driver circle the surrounding streets before finally taking me home. The trip cost me $18, but it felt worth every dollar. When I reached my apartment, I locked the deadbolt and wedged a chair beneath the door handle. I hadn't done anything like that since my first week of living alone. On Wednesday morning, I went to human resources. Brenda from the Human Resources Department worked in an office decorated entirely with motivational posters and succulent plants. The plants were clearly artificial, but for some reason she watered them anyway. I attempted to describe what had been happening without making myself sound paranoid. I explained that Kevin was following me, appearing everywhere I went, and making me uncomfortable. Brenda arranged her face into what was supposed to be an expression of concern. I could tell, however, that she had already classified the situation in her mind as office drama that wasn't truly her problem. She asked whether Kevin had ever threatened me. I said no. She wanted to know whether he had touched me or said anything explicitly inappropriate. Again, I had to say no. Brenda suggested that Kevin might simply be socially awkward. Perhaps he had a crush on me and didn't know how to express it appropriately. Some people just don't understand boundaries, she said, as though that somehow made his behavior acceptable. She promised to have a gentle conversation with him about maintaining professional distance. But afternoon, Kevin didn't return from lunch. His desk remained vacant. His computer monitor stayed dark, and the lighthouse calendar beside it was still turned to January 2015. For two days, there was no sign of him. I began to think that human resources might have handled the situation correctly after ball. Perhaps Kevin had been transferred to another location. Maybe he had decided to quit rather than face the embarrassment of being confronted about his behavior. I started driving again and even returned to my former parking space. Number 47 beside the pillar mark Dave Sucks. On Thursday night I stayed late to finish an enormous group of claims that had to be submitted by Friday morning. The office was completely silent except for the hum of computers and sleep mode and the fluorescent light in the break room that always flickered. At approximately eight o'clock I finally shut down my computer, collected my belongings and walked toward the elevator. Level B2 was entirely deserted. There were only rows of empty parking spaces beneath the yellow lights, which stretched long shadows across the concrete. My footsteps echoed throughout the garage as I approached my car with my keys already in my hand. It was when I noticed something beneath one of my windshield wipers. It wasn't a parking ticket or an advertising flyer. It was a manila folder identical to the kind we used at the office to organize insurance claims. Inside were photographs. There were dozens of them, all showing me from different angles and distances. Judging by the settings and the changes in my clothes, the pictures have been taken over a period of months. One photograph showed me sitting at my desk. It had apparently been taken through the office windows from the building across the street. There were pictures of me buying coffee at the shop downstairs. Those had been taken from inside the shop, probably from one of the corner tables I had never paid any attention to. Another image showed me waiting at the bus stop. It had been taken from across the street with a zoom lens powerful enough to capture the title of the book I was reading. The photographs taken outside my apartment were the ones that made me stop breathing. There were pictures of me carrying groceries up the front steps. There was one of me checking my mail while wearing pajama pants and an old college sweatshirt. There were photographs taken through my living room window at night, showing nothing more than my silhouette against the blue light of the television. At the bottom of the stack I found a bus schedule. Every route I had taken was highlighted in yellow. Beside each highlighted route someone had written observations and impossibly neat handwriting. Gets off at Cedar Avenue, walks three blocks north, sometimes stops at corner store, buys milk or bread, never alcohol. I called 911 while standing there in the parking garage. The photographs were scattered across the hood of my car like evidence arranged at a crime scene. The dispatcher repeatedly asked whether I was in immediate danger. I don't know, I kept answering. How could I possibly know when you could be anywhere, watching me right now? Two police officers arrived within 10 minutes. One was an older man with a gray mustache who looked exhausted. The other was a younger woman who appeared to genuinely care about what had happened. They examined everything in the folder. They took their own photographs of the photographs and questioned me about Kevin, our workplace, and every previous interaction I could remember. The female officer told me that his behavior represented a textbook escalation. She believed Kevin's two-day absence after his conversation with human resources had probably been spent planning this. He might even have been following me more intensely during that time to obtain the most recent photographs. The officer said they would locate Kevin and bring him in for questioning. They advised me to spend the night with someone else and to apply for a restraining order first thing the following morning. I drove directly to my sister's house in Oakwood which was 40 minutes away. During the entire trip, I repeatedly checked my rear-view mirror for any sign of Kevin's old van. At 2 o'clock that morning, the police found the van parked three blocks from my apartment. Kevin was sitting in the back surrounded by what the officers described as surveillance equipment. It was essentially a camera fitted with a telephoto lens, along with notebooks containing detailed records of my daily routine stretching back six months. For six months, Kevin had been documenting every pattern in my life while I barely knew he existed. He was arrested for stalking. The investigation also revealed that he had been fired from two previous jobs because of similar behavior involving female co-workers. A judge issued a permanent restraining order against him. Kevin was sentenced to 18 months in county jail and ordered to undergo mandatory psychiatric treatment. I never returned to that office. I resigned by email that weekend and asked my sister to collect my belongings from my desk. I moved into another apartment, changed my phone number, and even deleted most of my social media accounts. Sometimes I still find myself checking whether someone is walking too close behind me. Whenever possible, I parked near security cameras. The detective assigned to the case told me that Kevin had been planning something. He believed the folder was probably intended to frighten me into confronting Kevin alone, although the police never discovered exactly what Kevin planned to do afterward. I don't think I want to know. Story 4. I've been working as a delivery driver for approximately five years, spending most of that time covering the suburbs surrounding Phoenix, Arizona. Everything happened in September 2023, just as the summer heat was finally beginning to ease, and people could step outside without feeling as though the air itself was suffocating them. I was 34, divorced and living alone in a one bedroom apartment near the distribution center where I collected my packages every morning. My life wasn't exciting, but it was stable. I generally completed between 40 and 50 stops each day, received reasonably good tips and knew most of my regular customers by name. The job also kept me occupied enough that I didn't have to spend much time thinking about how empty my apartment felt whenever I returned home. By then I had become completely accustomed to my routine. I drank coffee at 5 a.m., loaded the delivery van by 6, completed my route around 3 p.m., went home, opened a beer, watched television, and repeated the same process the following day. Everything changed when the company hired Adrian. He started on a Monday morning. The first thing I noticed was that he looked as though he hadn't slept for several days. Adrian had deeply set gray eyes that never remained focused on any one thing for very long. Whenever someone asked him a question, he had a habit of rubbing the back of his neck before answering. Our supervisor assigned him to me for training. He told me to teach Adrian how everything worked for a week or two until he was ready to receive a route of his own. Adrian was quiet to an almost uncomfortable degree, but he worked harder than most new drivers. Other beginners complained about the weight of the packages or how difficult some addresses were to locate. Adrian never complained. He simply nodded and lifted whatever needed to be moved. His hands were thick and heavily calloused. They looked like the hands of someone accustomed to genuine physical labor. Unlike the soft hands most new employees had when they began working with us. When I asked about his previous job, Adrian said he had mostly worked in construction. Then he immediately changed the subject and began asking me about the fastest routes through the surrounding neighborhoods. We settled into an unusual rhythm surprisingly quickly. Every morning Adrian was already standing beside my van when I arrived at the depot. He always wore the same faded baseball cap, pulled low over his forehead, and an ordinary gray hoodie. Even when the temperature was still 90 degrees at dawn, he helped me load the van without waiting to be asked. He organized the packages by neighborhood with such precision that his method actually saved us time. As we drove between stops, Adrian stared silently through the passenger side window. Occasionally, he pointed out shortcuts I had never noticed despite having driven those streets for years. He possessed an almost unnatural ability to remember a house after seeing it only once. He recalled which homes had dogs, where individual customers preferred their packages to be placed, and which properties had security cameras. At the time I assumed he was simply extremely detail-oriented. I even wondered whether he might have served in the military. Adrian never joined the other drivers for lunch. He always claimed that he had brought food from home, although the only things I ever saw him eat were protein bars he carried in his pocket. After that first week, Adrian received a root of his own. We continued traveling to and from work together to save money on gas. He told me he lived somewhere beyond my apartment, but he always asked me to leave him at a strip mall approximately two miles from my building. According to him, his girlfriend met him there and drove him the rest of the way home. The arrangements seemed to work well. Adrian contributed $20 for gas every week. He always paid in cash using crisp bills that appeared to have come directly from an ATM. During those drives, he gradually began sharing more about himself. He said he had moved to Arizona from Colorado because he needed a fresh start. He mentioned that his former girlfriend had really done a number on him, but he never provided any specific details. It was just enough personal information to make him seem like any other man attempting to escape a painful relationship. He also knew an astonishing amount about baseball. Adrian could spend hours discussing statistics and players I had never heard of, and those conversations made the morning commute pass more quickly. The incident that should have warned me occurred about three weeks after he started. Although Adrian already had his own route, he had been temporarily assigned to help me with mine that day. We were making deliveries in an affluent neighborhood in the Scottsdale area, the kind filled with enormous homes, circular driveways, and perfectly maintained desert landscaping. I parked the van and carried a package to one of the houses while Adrian waited inside the vehicle. When I returned, he was sitting low in the passenger seat with his cap covering most of his face, almost as though he had fallen asleep. Then I noticed him watching a house on the opposite side of the street through the side mirror. He wasn't merely glancing at it. He was studying the property intently. When I asked whether something was wrong, Adrian quickly straightened in his seat. He said he thought he had recognized someone he knew from Colorado and wanted to avoid an awkward encounter. His explanation seemed reasonable at the time. People constantly encountered pieces of their former lives in Phoenix. It was a city where everyone seemed to come when they wanted to reinvent themselves. Adrian remained unusually quiet for the rest of the day. He also kept checking his phone, which struck me as odd because I had never seen him use it before. It wasn't a smartphone like everyone else carried. It was a cheap prepaid phone. It truly began to disturb me as Adrian's knowledge of houses where we had never made deliveries. We would pass a property and he would casually make a remark such as, "They installed that new fence last month," or "that family is normally gone on Wednesdays." Whenever I asked how he could possibly know those things, he dismissed the question. Sometimes he claimed he must have covered that neighborhood while working with another driver. Other times he said he was probably confusing the property with one on a different street. Adrian had a way of speaking that made me question my own recollection, as though I were the one remembering everything incorrectly. After that, I began observing him more carefully. He became nervous around certain intersections and repeatedly suggested alternate routes whenever we approached the wealthy subdivisions on the eastern side of the city. Adrian always claimed that his routes had less traffic, and most of the time he was right. Still something about his behavior felt intentional and calculated. It was almost as though he carried a mental map of specific areas he needed to avoid. Six weeks after Adrian joined the company, I was sitting in my living room after work. I was only half paying attention to the local news while scrolling through my phone. The station began broadcasting a report about a series of home invasions that had occurred during the previous several months. Most of the targeted houses were in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. The exact areas Adrian consistently wanted us to avoid. The reporter explained that the burglaries appeared highly coordinated. They always took place when the families were certain to be away, suggesting that the person responsible knew the resident's schedules. Then the station played surveillance footage. The video was grainy and recorded in black and white, but the man in it moved exactly like Adrian. He had the same purposeful stride, the same slightly hunched shoulders, and the same habit of turning his head to scan his surroundings. Even then I tried to convince myself I could be mistaken. Then the report showed a clearer image captured by a doorbell camera. A bandana concealed the lower half of the suspect's face, but his gray eyes were unmistakable. They were the same eyes that had been sitting approximately two feet from me in my delivery van every morning. My entire body became rigid. I rewound the news report at least 15 times, repeatedly comparing every visible detail. The suspect's height matched Adrian's. His build was identical. Even the way he positioned his hands while walking was exactly the same. According to the reporter, the suspect was considered armed and dangerous. He had been connected to at least 12 robberies in which more than $200,000 in cash, jewelry and electronics had been stolen. During one invasion, a homeowner returned unexpectedly. The suspect beat him so severely that the man spent three days in the intensive care unit. The report also stated that the FBI had become involved because the crimes crossed state lines. Apparently a series of burglaries carried out with the same method had occurred in Colorado before abruptly stopping for months earlier. Around the same time Adrian claimed he had moved to Phoenix. I remained in my dark apartment trying to comprehend what I had learned. For six weeks I had been driving around with this man. He knew where I lived. He knew my routine and had been inside my van dozens of times. The following morning he would be waiting beside that van as if nothing had happened. I didn't sleep at all that night. Every possible option replayed inside my head. I could call the police immediately. I could confront Adrian. I could simply refuse to go to work. But what if I was mistaken? What if the similarities were nothing more than a terrible coincidence? And if I was right, Adrian already knew my schedule and my address. He had spent weeks sitting only inches away from me. At approximately 3am I decided to behave normally. I would go to work, wait until I was safely separated from Adrian, and then contact the authorities. My phone was fully charged. I saved the number for the FBI tip line and wrote down every suspicious detail I had noticed about Adrian in case fear caused my mind to go blank. When my alarm sounded at five o'clock I was already dressed. I had been dressed for an hour. Driving to the distribution center felt unreal as though I were observing myself from outside my body. At every red light I wanted to turn around and go home. Instead I continued forward, reminding myself that I only needed to survive one more morning. After that I would never have to see Adrian again. He was already at the depot when I arrived. Adrian stood in his usual location, leaning against the wall near the area where I normally parked. Something about him was different that morning. He wasn't wearing his familiar grey hoodie. Instead he wore a black jacket I had never seen before, and both of his hands remained inside its pockets. When he saw me he pushed himself away from the wall and approached. Rather than giving me his usual half-hearted morning greeting, he looked directly into my eyes. "We need to talk," he said. His voice sounded different too. It was lower and much more controlled. Adrian suggested that we sit inside my van for a moment before clocking in. He said there was something important he needed to tell me. Every instinct in my body screamed at me to run. However, Adrian was standing between me and the depot entrance, where the other drivers were beginning to gather. I unlocked the vehicle and we both climbed inside. Adrian settled into the passenger seat where he had sat every morning for six weeks. This time I was painfully conscious of how easily he could reach me if he chose to. He remained silent for what seemed like an eternity, although it was probably no longer than ten seconds. Adrian stared through the windshield at the depot before finally turning toward me. "You watched the news last night," he said. "It wasn't a question. I started to deny it but he raised one hand to stop me. I saw your van outside your apartment when I passed around midnight," he continued. Your television was on. I could see the news through your window. My mouth became completely dry. Adrian had been watching my apartment. He removed both hands from his pockets. To my relief they were empty. Then he rubbed his face as though he were exhausted. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said, "but I need you to listen." He admitted that he was the man the police were searching for. He confirmed that he had committed those crimes but insisted he was finished. He said he was leaving that day. A bus bound for Mexico was departing at noon and he intended to be on it. According to Adrian, he needed one final normal morning at the depot to make certain that no one was monitoring him. He explained that he had been surveying houses during our delivery routes. The job provided him with the perfect excuse to study residence habits and schedules without attracting suspicion. The stolen property had already been sold and the money had already been moved. The only thing Adrian needed to do now was to disappear without drawing attention. He claimed he had chosen to tell me because I had treated him decently and hadn't asked too many questions. Adrian slowly reached into his jacket. My entire body tensed but instead of producing a weapon, he removed an envelope stuffed with cash. "There's $8,000 in here," he said, placing the envelope on the dashboard. "It's yours if you stay quiet until tomorrow. But then I'll be across the border and this will become someone else's problem." He told me that if I contacted the police immediately, he had friends who knew my address and understood my routine. Adrian never directly described what those friends might do, but his meaning was unmistakable. If I waited only 24 hours, he promised that our paths would never cross again. Then he did something that still appears in my nightmares. He smiled. It was a genuine smile and he told me I was the only person in years who had treated him like an ordinary human being. Adrian opened the passenger door, stepped out of the van and walked across the parking lot toward the street. I watched until he turned the corner and disappeared. Then I sat alone in the vehicle. staring at the envelope for another ten minutes. Finally, I called 911. The FBI arrived within an hour, but Adrian had already vanished. Agents located the apartment he had rented under a false name. It had been completely empty to accept for a mattress lying on the floor and a wall covered with photographs. The pictures showed houses along our delivery routes. Every property had been marked with schedules and detailed notes. They never captured Adrian. The envelope containing the $8,000 remains in evidence. Sometimes I wonder whether I should have accepted the money and remained silent. Regardless, I resigned from the delivery company that same day. Since then, I haven't been able to get inside a vehicle with a stranger. Story 5. The fluorescent lights in the east wing of Mercy General always flickered sometime between 1 o'clock and 3 o'clock a.m. I had been working there as a janitor for approximately six months when everything fell apart that night in early June. The pay was respectable, better than what I had earned at the warehouse, and working overnight at it another $1.50 per hour. My name is Grace. I was 34 divorced and raising two children by myself. The night shift fit my situation perfectly. My sister stayed with the children while they slept, and I could return home in time to help them get ready for school. Hospitals develop a rhythm of their own after dark. There is the constant pulse of medical equipment beeping, nurses speaking in hushed voices, and the occasional code blue that sends everyone racing down a hallway. When I first started, my supervisor, Gloria, assigned me to work with a man named Victor. He had been employed at Mercy General for approximately three years, and knew every section of that enormous building as intimately as the veins on the backs of his hands. Victor was the sort of person whose presence was easy to forget. He was of average height, with brown hair that always seemed damp and pale gray eyes that rarely met yours during a conversation. For the first several months, nothing seemed particularly unusual. Victor and I divided the floors between us and met in the basement cafeteria for our break at around 2am. We exchanged stories about the strange things we had witnessed during our shifts. Hospitals attract unusual people at night, grieving relatives, intoxicated patients, and doctors surviving on their fifth cup of coffee. Eventually, however, Victor became the strangest part of my nights. I began noticing small things about him that didn't make sense. He would vanish for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, always returning with an excuse about inspecting supply closets or assisting the maintenance crew. Whenever we worked on the same floor, I occasionally caught sight of him slipping into areas the janitorial staff was an authorized to clean. I saw him near the records room in the pharmacy storage area, even though both required key cards that neither of us possessed. The way he moved through the hospital bothered me as well. Everyone else's shoes squeaked against the polished floors. Victor seemed to glide silently through the corridors like smoke. What truly made me suspicious was his behavior around the security cameras. Like every hospital, Mercy General had cameras throughout the building. They were mounted in the hallways beside the elevators and near every nurses station. One night while mopping the cardiac unit on the third floor, I noticed Victor moving in an unusual pattern. He would walk normally for several steps, suddenly lower his head and shift to the left, pause beside a doorway, and then continue. Initially, I assumed he might have a back problem. Then I began studying the locations and angles of the cameras. Every movement Victor made kept him inside their blind spots. He knew precisely where each camera was aimed and exactly where he needed to stand to remain invisible. I casually asked him about it once while we were emptying trash cans. Victor stared at me for a long time before saying that he didn't like being watched. Something in the way he said it persuaded me to abandon the subject immediately. That particular night in June began like any other. I clocked in at 11 pm, collected my cart from the supply room, and checked the assignment board. Gloria had assigned both Victor and me to the fourth floor, which housed the psychiatric ward. It wasn't my favorite part of the hospital. There were locked doors everywhere in tiny observation windows in the rooms, but work was work. Victor was already on the fourth floor when I arrived. He stood at the opposite end of the corridor near the emergency exit. He wasn't cleaning or moving. He was simply staring at something on the floor. I called his name and asked whether everything was all right. Victor turned his head only slightly, allowing me to see his profile beneath the dim emergency lighting. Then he raised one finger. Wait, the psychiatric ward was unusually quiet that night. Most of the patients had either been sedated or were already asleep. The nurses had gathered around their station to deal with some kind of paperwork emergency. For that moment, Victor and I were alone in the long sterile corridor. I pushed my cart toward him. Its wheels squealing against the waxed floor. As I drew closer, I finally saw what had captured his attention. Patient files were scattered everywhere. There were dozens of them, spread in a semicircle around Victor's feet as if someone had thrown them onto the floor in a hurry. Some pages were photocopies, while others were original documents printed on Mercy General's official letterhead. I could see medical histories, psychiatric assessments, medication lists, and personal information. Those were records we had absolutely no authorization to examine, much less scatter across a hallway. Victor wasn't wearing gloves. He stood over the papers with his bare hands hanging beside him. His fingers twitched faintly, almost as though he were counting something silently. The emergency exit behind him had been propped open with a wooden wedge. Humid night air drifted into the corridor, carrying the distant sound of sirens from the city below. "Victor, what the hell is this?" I whispered. I glanced toward the nurse's station to make certain no one was approaching. He didn't respond immediately. He continued staring at the documents. Then he slowly crouched and began collecting them. His movements were careful and deliberate. He didn't hurry like someone who had been caught doing something wrong. Instead, he worked methodically. As if completing the steps on a private checklist. While gathering the documents, Victor separated them into three stacks. He wasn't arranging them alphabetically or by room number. He was using some other system I couldn't understand. He picked up each file, examined it quickly, and placed it in one of the three piles. His lips moved continuously as he whispered something too quietly for me to hear. When he finished, he rose with the sorted files pressed against his chest. For the first time that night, he looked directly at me. His gray eyes held no fear, embarrassment or guilt. He appeared completely calm and almost satisfied. "You didn't see anything, Grace," he said flatly, as though he were delivering a weather report. "You were cleaning the West Wing. You never came down this hallway." Victor stepped toward me. I instinctively retreated, causing my cart to rattle between us. He held the files tightly against his chest. One patient photographed protruded from the stack. It showed a young woman with hollow eyes and tangled hair. These people don't matter to anyone. Victor continued tilting his head slightly. They don't receive visitors. Their families never call. They're already ghosts. Just bodies occupying beds. He slipped his free hand into his pocket. For one terrifying second, I thought he was reaching for a weapon. Instead, he removed a small digital camera, an outdated model from years earlier. "I document them," he said. Someone should remember that they existed. The way he spoke made my stomach turn. This had nothing to do with preserving the patient's memories or displaying some distorted form of compassion. I had worked at the hospital long enough to recognize the type of patient's Victor had selected. Every one of them was a young woman suffering from a severe psychiatric disorder. They were heavily medicated and often unable to speak. They were patients who couldn't report anything unusual that happened to them. Even if they attempted to complain, the staff would probably dismiss their accounts as delusions. I remembered all the times Victor had disappeared during our shifts and all the restricted areas I had seen a mentor. He had gained access to the pharmacy storage room in the medication dispensary. My mind began assembling connections I desperately didn't want to make. "Victor," I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. "What do you do with those files and photographs?" He smiled. It was a small private smile like the expression of someone discussing a hobby that filled him with pride. "I visit them," he said simply while adjusting the files in his arms. "During my breaks, when the nurses rotate shifts at 3am, there's a 12-minute period when the ward is essentially unmontered. Security performs its rounds at 2.45 and doesn't return until 3.30. I know because I've been timing them for months." He described the schedule with complete detachment, as casually as someone explaining when a bus was expected to arrive. The medications they're taking Haldall, Thorizzie. out of Ann. At those doses, they can't form new memories anyway. Even if they could speak, they wouldn't remember. Victor removed one particular file from the stack and held it up. Room 4B. I knew the patient in that room. Her name was Maria. She had been admitted two months earlier. No relatives were listed in her records, and she experienced severe catatonic episodes. She had an episode last week, Victor said. Scratched her own arms until they bled. At least that's what the report says. The meaning behind those words struck me like ice water. I thought about Maria's scratches. The unexplained bruises nurses occasionally discovered on other patients, and the sudden changes in behavior that everyone attributed to their psychiatric conditions. How long had Victor been doing this? How many overnight shifts had I worked while he did? God only knew what to defenseless patients. I wanted to run, scream, or alert the nurses, but Victor and I were alone in that corridor. He stood between me and both possible exits. The emergency door behind him opened into a stairwell that was locked from the outside during the night. My only real path outlit passed him toward the nurses station. "I should return to work," I said, tightening both hands around my mop handle. The West Wing isn't going to clean itself. Victor slowly shook his head and advanced another step. No grace. First we need to understand each other. He paused. "You have two children, Lillian James, correct? They attend Riverside Elementary. Your sister watches them at your apartment on Bower Street, Unit 4C. His threat couldn't have been clear. My entire body stiffened, but I forced myself to remain calm and think. Behind Victor, farther down the corridor near the nurses station, I saw a shadow move. Someone was coming toward us. Victor must have noticed the direction of my attention because he quickly glanced behind him. It was Dr. Harrison, the attending physician on duty that night. He was approaching with a clipboard in his hand. Victor transformed instantly. He casually tucked the files under one arm, retrieved cleaning supplies from his cart, and turned toward me with an entirely different expression. He suddenly appeared tired, approachable, and completely ordinary. "Hey, Grace. Can you help me inventory the supply closet when you're finished?" He called loudly enough for Dr. Harrison to hear. The doctor barely looked at us as he passed and continued toward the locked section at the far end of the ward. As soon as Dr. Harrison moved beyond hearing distance, Victor's face returned to its cold, calculating expression. "You're intelligent, Grace," he said. Intelligent enough to understand that no one would believe you anyway. One janitor accusing another without evidence. Your word against mine. He tightened his grip on the records. I've worked here for three years. My record is perfect. I helped the nurses volunteer for additional shifts and never complain. He was right, and that was the most frightening part. Who would believe me? Over the years, Victor had constructed a perfect disguise. He was the quiet, dependable janitor who knew every part of the hospital and was always willing to help. I was the newcomer, a single mother who desperately needed the job and had argued with Gloria about my schedule only the previous month. Still, I couldn't allow him to continue harming those patients. Victor walked past me and entered the supply closet while still carrying the files. At that moment, I made my decision. I waited until he was completely inside before moving quickly toward the nurse's station. Pamela, the head nurse, was there finishing some paperwork. I told her there was a water leak inside the supply closet and that maintenance needed to respond immediately. She contacted them without questioning me. I then went into the bathroom and used my phone to document every detail I could recall. The Times Victor had mentioned, the room numbers, and Maria in room 4b. I sent everything to my sister with a message. If anything happens to me, send this to the police. When the maintenance workers arrived, they discovered Victor inside the supply closet with the patient records. He attempted to explain the files by claiming that he had found them scattered in the corridor and brought them into the closet for safekeeping until he could return them. Hospital protocol left maintenance no choice. Any violation involving confidential patient records required them to notify security in the night administrator. While Victor was being questioned, I went to see Maria in room 4b. She was awake and staring at the ceiling. Both arms were bandaged because of the injuries that had supposedly been self-inflicted. I couldn't be certain, but when I leaned closer and whispered that she was safe now and that someone was looking out for her, I swear tears rolled down her cheeks. Security reviewed recordings from the previous week. Victor had exercised tremendous caution, but he hadn't been perfect. The footage contained brief glimpses of a mentoring patients' rooms during the unmontered periods he had described. It also showed him gaining access to the medication storage area with a key card he had somehow duplicated. The police arrested Victor that morning just as our shift ended. The investigation that followed revealed the full scale of what he had been doing. Authorities discovered hundreds of photographs on his computer at home. He had also maintained detailed notes about each patient's medication schedule. Investigators found evidence that Victor had been selling some of the medication he stole. Several patients displayed signs of abuse that the staff had previously blamed on their psychiatric conditions. Maria and four other women were transferred to another facility where they could receive appropriate care and undergo proper evaluations. I remained at Mercy General for another month, but I couldn't escape the memory of that night. Every shadow in the corridors reminded me of Victor. Every silent moment made me wonder who else might be concealing their true nature in plain sight. Eventually I accepted a daytime position at a clinic across town. The clinic paid less, but the peace of mind was worth the difference. Gloria called me a few weeks ago. She said Victor had accepted a plea agreement carrying a 15-year sentence and mandatory psychiatric treatment. She also told me that three other hospitals in the state had begun investigating similar incidents from the years when Victor had worked at those facilities before coming to Mercy General. I still think about those patients, especially Maria. I hope they have managed to find at least some degree of healing. Now whenever I meet someone new, someone quiet and helpful who seems to know just a little more than they should, I remember that night and trust my instincts. Story 6 I was hired at the distribution center approximately five months ago. After a friend told me the company was desperate to find people willing to work the night shift. The salary covered my rent with money left over. For the first time in a while I no longer had to sleep on other people's couches or share a bathroom with three roommates. My shift lasted from 4pm until midnight, which was perfect for someone who had always hated mornings. I could visit the gym around noon when the only other people there were retirees. I could buy groceries without battling the afterwork crowds and still have enough time to play video games before leaving for my shift. The warehouse itself was enormous, probably comparable to three football fields placed together. Towering metal shelves seemed to continue forever beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting. Most employees were men around my age, all attracted by the same thing, reasonably good money without the need for a college degree or a necktie. There were perhaps six or seven women divided among the different departments. That was how Diane entered my orbit, although describing it that way makes it sound as though I noticed her before she noticed me. Diane worked in inventory control. Her position required her to roam constantly through the warehouse with a tablet, scanning barcodes and adjusting the inventory totals. She had distinctive Auburn hair that changed depending on the light. Sometimes it appeared copper-colored, at other times it looked almost like rust. Her oversized tortoise shell glasses magnified her eyes, making them appear larger than they probably were. I estimated that she was in her early thirties, although it was difficult to tell her precise age. Diane moved between the aisles with calculated accuracy, as though she were memorizing every shelf number in the location of every box. During our breaks she occupied the same place without exception. The corner table beside the vending machines positioned so she could face the entrance. Her lunch never varied. She brought a turkey sandwich divided into perfect triangles, an apple cut into exactly eight pieces and arranged in a circle on her napkin, and a bottle of orange juice that she shook precisely three times before opening. None of those details seemed significant at first. They became important only later. Once I had a reason to notice patterns everywhere. The first time I encountered Diane away from work was at my gym fitness zone, approximately six weeks after I started at the distribution center. I was halfway through a bench press set when I noticed her rust-colored hair in the mirror. Diane was using the treadmill directly behind me. She wasn't jogging or even walking quickly. She moved at a steady measured pace while staring directly ahead. She was also wearing the same glasses she wore at work, which seemed unusual during exercise. I assumed she must have joined recently. The gym wasn't large and I had never seen her there during the three months I had been attending. As I left I gave her a courteous nod. Diane smiled in return. It wasn't a broad smile, only a slight lifting at the corners of her mouth, and she never altered the rhythm of her steps. I didn't give the encounter much thought. Everyone needs somewhere to exercise, and fitness zone was the least expensive gym within 10 miles of the warehouse. Two days later I was completing my weekly shopping at the Kroger on Hillrest. I had headphones in and was standing absent mindedly in the cereal aisle, trying to choose between the store brand and paying an additional $2 for the name brand version. When I reached for a box on the upper shelf I nearly collided with someone. It was Diane. She carried a shopping basket containing exactly three products, one loaf of wheat bread, a package of sliced turkey from the deli, and a single bottle of orange juice. She released a quiet laugh that sounded more like an exhalation, and remarked that we apparently followed the same shopping schedule. Her basket seemed strangely empty for a grocery trip, almost as though she had entered the store solely to purchase those three specific items. We spoke for approximately 30 seconds. The conversation covered the weather, our work schedules, and how busy the supermarket became on weekends. Then I excused myself and continued shopping. When I reached the registers 15 minutes later, Diane was still at the self checkout station with the same three items and nothing else. After that the coincidence is accumulated rapidly. On Saturday morning I saw her at the laundromat. She appeared to be washing one load of dark clothing while reading a paperback. The book's cover had been folded completely backward, preventing me from seeing its title. Sometimes when I stopped at the subway near my apartment for dinner, Diane was seated in the booth beside the window. She ate her six inch vegetable sandwich in the same controlled manner, taking bites that appeared identical in size. I even spotted her at the gas station beside the highway exit I regularly used. Diane was filling her beige Altima while I went inside to buy energy drinks for my shift. Every time we encountered each other, she acknowledged me with the same restrained smile or a small wave. She behaved as if repeatedly encountering a coworker in every part of your private life were completely ordinary. It began to feel like one of those old espionage films in which the same person is always visible somewhere in the background. The difference was that Diane made no attempt to conceal herself. She remained plainly visible, deliberately present, as though she wanted to be certain I noticed her. Nothing about her conduct at the warehouse changed. She continued making her inventory rounds, sitting at the same corner table during breaks, and following her precise lunch ritual. However, I began observing other details. Diane sometimes passed my forklift even when the surrounding section didn't require an inventory count. Her breaks began overlapping with mine more frequently, even though inventory control employees were allowed to choose flexible break times. I occasionally caught her watching me from across the warehouse. She never tried to disguise it. She simply stared with a flat, impossible to read expression behind those magnified lenses. During a smoke break I told my coworker Paul that I kept encountering Diane everywhere I went. He shrugged and said she appeared lonely and probably didn't have many friends. But lonely people don't appear at your gym, supermarket, laundromat, and gas station within a single week. Then I discovered her in the parking lot of my apartment complex. I arrived home at approximately 12.45 AM after my shift, exhausted and ready to collapse into bed. Diane's beige ultima was parked three spaces away from the spot I normally used. She sat behind the wheel with the engine switched off and the interior light illuminated, writing something in a small notebook. My complex contained 40 apartments, and all visitor spaces were located on the opposite side of the property. There was no legitimate reason for Diane to be parked in the residence section. I remained inside my car for a full five minutes waiting to see what she would do. Diane continued writing. Occasionally she raised her head and looked toward my building before returning her attention to the notebook. Eventually I got out and walked past her vehicle while pretending to examine my phone. She didn't lower her head or attempt to conceal herself. Diane simply looked at me through the windshield and offered that same slight smile. I continued into my building and watched her from my second floor window. She remained in the parking lot for another hour before finally driving away. After that night I altered my routines. I visited the gym at different hours, stopped shopping at Kroger, and began traveling across town to Target, and followed alternate routes home from work. For approximately a week those changes seemed successful. I didn't see Diane anywhere outside the distribution center. I finally started relaxing. Perhaps I had overreacted. Maybe all those encounters had genuinely been coincidences. Then on Friday morning I walked outside and discovered a folded sheet of paper tucked beneath my windshield wiper. My first thought was that it must be a parking citation, although the lot had no parking restrictions. The paper was made from cream colored stationery. The expensive textured kind that you can feel beneath your fingertips. I unfolded it and found a seven word message written in extremely neat precise handwriting. Why are you avoiding me? There were security cameras at the entrance to my apartment complex. When I asked the maintenance staff to review the recordings however, they informed me that the cameras had been inoperable for months. That same afternoon I took the note to human resources along with a written record of every occasion on which I had encountered Diane away from work. The human resources manager was a tired looking woman named Carol. She read everything while tapping her pen against the desk in an irregular pattern that increased my anxiety. Carol asked whether Diane had threatened me, attempted to enter my apartment, or made physical contact with me. I answered no to all three questions. She looked at me as though I were wasting her time. Carol said she would speak to Diane about respecting professional boundaries. However, because there had been no explicit threats or harassment inside the workplace, she claimed there was little else she could do. She recommended contacting the police if I felt unsafe. The officers were even less helpful. They explained that shopping in the same stores and attending the same gym didn't legally constitute stalking, particularly because Diane and I worked at the same location. The younger officer actually laughed and said I should feel flattered by the attention. When I returned to work that night, Diane behaved as though nothing had happened. She followed the same routines and moved through the warehouse with the same precise mannerisms. During our break however, she abandoned her usual corner table and sat two tables away from Paul and me. She neither spoke to us nor looked in our direction. Diane simply ate her perfectly arranged lunch while reading the same paperback with its cover bent backward. Paul kept attempting to discuss the previous night's game, but I couldn't concentrate. All I could hear was Diane chewing, small intentional bites that seemed far louder than they should have been. When the break ended, she rose, walked past our table and dropped another folded piece of cream-colored stationary beside my energy drink. The message read, "Carol called. I'm sorry you feel uncomfortable. I just thought we were becoming friends. Can we talk after shift?" I looked up to respond, but Diane was already walking away. Her measured stride carried her into the maze of inventory shelves. I didn't remain there to speak with her after work. The moment midnight arrived, I practically ran to my car. I watched my mirrors throughout the drive home and locked the deadbolt immediately after entering my apartment. At approximately 2 a.m., I heard footsteps in the corridor outside my door. They were slow and deliberate. The footsteps stopped directly in front of my apartment. There was no knock and no other sound. Only a presence that seemed to press against the other side of the cheap wooden door. I held my breath and stared at the shadow visible beneath the narrow gap. It remained perfectly motionless for what must have been 10 minutes. Then the footsteps began again and gradually receded down the hall. I didn't sleep that night. I sat on my couch with a baseball bat across my lap and my phone prepared to call 9-1-1. The following morning, I found another message that had been pushed beneath my door. You left so quickly. I brought you coffee, but you weren't available. It's getting cold outside. You should wear a jacket. I noticed you never dress warmly enough. That final line disturbed me more than anything else. Diana had been watching closely enough to know what I wore to work every day. I resigned from the warehouse that Monday. I didn't provide two weeks notice. I claimed there was a family emergency and never returned. I moved into my parents' home two towns away, changed my telephone number, and deleted all my social media accounts. Three months have passed and I still inspect parking lots for beige altimas. My chest still tightens whenever I notice Auburn hair in a crowd. Last week, my mother mentioned meeting a pleasant woman at the supermarket who had recently moved into the area. According to my mother. The woman worked in inventory control, and it asked whether our family knew of any companies that were hiring. She had distinctive reddish hair, thick glasses, and a very polite precise manner of speaking. Before I could stop her, my mother gave the woman information about my father's company. I'm currently searching for apartments in another state, somewhere as far away from here as possible. Sometimes paranoia isn't paranoia at all. Sometimes someone genuinely is watching you, memorizing your routines, and recording them in perfect handwriting while sitting only three parking spaces away from the place where you leave your car each night. Story 7 Every morning at Bean & Leaf, the barista prepared my oat milk latte before I even reached the counter. That was how predictable my life had become after two years at the law firm. I visited the same coffee shop, ordered the same drink, and occupied the same booth beside the window, where I reviewed case files before continuing to the office. Bean & Leaf was tiny, containing perhaps eight tables altogether. Local artwork covered the walls and was replaced every month. The worn wooden floor creaked in all the appropriate places. Most mornings the cafe was nearly empty except for a few familiar customers, a man who completed crossword puzzles in ink, a woman who brought her laptop and typed furiously for exactly one hour, and the owner's ancient beagle which slept beside the entrance. That morning in March I walked inside and saw Stephen from the litigation department sitting in my booth, something tightened inside my chest. He wasn't doing anything objectively wrong. Stephen merely sat there with his phone in a cup of black coffee, still seeing him occupy my personal morning refuge maybe want to turn around and leave. Stephen had a way of taking up more space than his body actually required. He had transferred from our downtown branch six months earlier. While everyone else at the firm appeared to disappear into the beige walls and great carpeting, Stephen always remained noticeable. It wasn't a positive quality. He was noticeable in the same way as a picture frame hanging slightly crooked. Once you saw it you couldn't stop looking at it. Stephen wore brown suits that produced a faint swishing noise whenever he walked. He always carried a leather messenger bag that appeared older than I was. He also hummed quietly beneath his breath. The melodies had no recognizable tune but they remained trapped in your mind for hours afterward. The litigation department occupied the third floor. I worked on the fifth floor, handling real estate contracts. So for several months Stephen and I rarely encountered one another outside an occasional elevator ride. Recently however he had begun appearing everywhere. He was beside the printer whenever I needed to make copies. He appeared at the water cooler during my breaks and even at the sandwich shop across the street where I regularly purchased lunch. At first I convinced myself that the encounters were coincidental. Chicago was an enormous city but office employees tended to visit the same nearby businesses. Perhaps our meeting at the coffee shop had been accidental. Maybe Stephen lived in the neighborhood or had an early appointment. When he began making remarks about my clothing I dismissed them as uncomfortable attempts at casual conversation. That's a lovely cardigan he said one day beside the copy machine. It really brings out the green in your eyes. He stood close enough for me to smell stale coffee on his breath mixed with something minty. Probably a piece of gum he had been chewing for far too long. On another occasion while we waited for the elevator he looked down at my feet. Those shoes look comfortable. I bet you do a lot of walking. I walked too particularly in the mornings. It clears my head. Every observation was accompanied by an intense stare as though he were attempting to memorize my face. Whenever Stephen spoke he leaned slightly forward. He reduced the space between us inch by inch until I had to move backward or sideways simply to breathe comfortably. By the third week the pattern was impossible to dismiss. Stephen knew small details that caused my scalp to prickle. Difficult morning he remarked one day after my train was delayed. You normally arrive by eight o'clock but it's almost eight fifteen. Another time he commented "You switched from salads to soup. Good decision. It's supposed to become colder later." He spoke as though we were friends who regularly shared details of our schedules. In reality we had never held a genuine conversation beyond his unsettling observations. Bethany my coworker in the neighboring cubicle noticed his behavior as well. Bethany had a theory about practically everything. That Stephen guy asks about you constantly. She told me one afternoon while we organized discovery materials. Yesterday he wanted to know whether you were dating anyone, whether you lived alone, and what neighborhood you lived in. Bethany said she had refused to provide him with any information. He kept pushing, she continued. He claimed he wanted to recommend a good restaurant near your apartment. On the morning everything escalated, Stephen was already inside bean and leaf when I arrived at 715. I was earlier than usual because I had awakened feeling anxious and hadn't been able to fall asleep again. This time Stephen wasn't occupying my regular booth. He sat in another one that directly faced the entrance. The moment I entered he raised his coffee cup as though we had arranged to meet. Great minds think alike. He called loudly enough to make the barista look up from the espresso machine. I collected my latte and immediately left without sitting down. My appetite had completely disappeared. The walk from bean and leaf to the loft has generally took 12 minutes. That morning I followed a longer route through the park and checked behind me every block or so. Fog covered the city. It was the kind of weather in which sounds carried strangely and footsteps seemed to echo from every direction. I repeatedly imagined that I could hear the soft swishing of Stephen's brown suit behind me. By the time I reached my desk my shoulders ached from tension and my coffee had gone cold. At approximately 11 a.m. I was concentrating on a purchase agreement when something compelled me to look up. It was the instinctive sensation that someone was watching me. Stephen stood at the entrance to our floor's open office area. He wasn't moving. Both hands were inside his pockets and he simply stared in my direction. Access to the fifth floor was restricted. A key card was required to open the stairwell door and the elevator buttons wouldn't even allow someone to select our floor without authorization. When our eyes met Stephen smiled and approached my desk. He removed a manila folder from beneath his arm. "Bethany asked me to bring this upstairs," he said. Stephen placed the folder on my desk with deliberate slowness, allowing his fingertips to linger against the paper. "Bethany was sitting at her desk in plain view, typing on her computer while wearing her noise-cancelling headphones. She didn't ask you to bring me anything," I said, trying to prevent my voice from trembling. Stephen tilted his head without losing his smile. "I must have misunderstood," he replied. "Anyway, since I'm already here, I was wondering whether you'd like to have dinner tonight. There's a new restaurant that serves authentic Ethiopian food. The atmosphere is very intimate. I firmly declined and turned back toward my monitor." Stephen didn't leave. He remained beside my desk for another 30 or perhaps 40 seconds, breathing and occupying the edge of my vision. When he finally walked away, Bethany removed her headphones and rolled her chair toward me. "What was that about?" she whispered while looking toward the door. "How did he even get up here?" I opened the folder and showed her what was inside. It contained only one blank sheet of paper. That afternoon, Bethany and I reported the incident to human resources. We sat inside the human resources department's sterile white office while I described the entire pattern. Stephen, appearing everywhere I went, has remarks about my routine and his unauthorized presence on our restricted floor. The human resources manager was a woman named Dwy, who always wore pearls and spoke in a slow, carefully measured voice. She took notes and promised that management would speak with Stephen about professional boundaries. Will document everything Dwy explained as she slid a workplace harassment pamphlet across her desk. But without her direct threat or physical contact, our options are limited. The conversation with Stephen apparently occurred the following morning because his demeanor had completely changed by lunchtime. His exaggerated friendliness disappeared and was replaced by something much darker. When he passed me in a corridor, he muttered comments just loudly enough for me to hear. Some people can't accept a compliment. Paranoid much. He began using the stairs directly behind me. Stephen followed so closely that I could hear him breathing and feel the vibrations from his footsteps. Once in the parking garage, I found him leading against my car while examining his phone. I stopped several feet away with my keys already positioned between my fingers. Stephen looked up with an expression of exaggerated surprise. "Oh, is this your car?" he asked. "I'm only waiting for my uber. The reception is better here." The nearest designated uber pickup area was beside the building's main entrance, nowhere near the employee parking section. But what could I prove? Stephen had stood beside my vehicle. He had used the same staircases I had. Every incident remained within a grey area where he could offer a seemingly plausible explanation. Then came the Wednesday that changed everything. I had taken half the day off to deal with a plumbing problem in my apartment. The building superintendent was supposed to arrive sometime between noon and 4 p.m. The usual window that forced you to wait around for hours. My building was one of Chicago's converted six flat properties. You could hear every footstep from the apartment above. Smell whatever your neighbors prepared for dinner. And listen to the radiators clang all winter as though someone were striking them with a wrench. I lived on the second floor in apartment 2b. My windows faced the alley, and my front door had three separate locks that I had installed myself after moving in. Around 2 p.m. I was eating leftover Chinese food and reviewing lease agreements on my laptop when I heard footsteps in the hallway. Footsteps weren't unusual. What disturbed me was that they stopped immediately outside my door. There was no knock and no doorbell, only silence. When I looked through the peephole I couldn't see anyone. Whoever was standing there had positioned themselves just beyond my field of vision. After approximately two minutes the footsteps moved away. A moment later I heard the building's front door slam. I nearly persuaded myself that it had only been the plumber having difficulty locating the correct apartment. Still something compelled me to open the door and investigate. A cream-colored envelope had been taped to the door at eye level. My first name was written across it in block letters. My stomach seemed to fill with ice water. I carefully removed the envelope, looked along the empty corridor, and quickly stepped back into my apartment. Then I secured all three locks. The envelope contained a single sheet of matching cream-colored paper with a typed message. You looked beautiful this morning in your blue dress with the tiny flowers. The way the sunlight hit your hair at the coffee shop was like watching a honey pour from a jar. I know you feel it too. This connection between us. Stop fighting it. I can be patient but not forever. P.S., your cat looks lonely when you're at work. Maybe she needs a friend. My cat. Steven knew about Pepper. I immediately thought about the windows and ran to inspect them. The fire escape passed directly beside my bedroom window. From the alley anyone could see into my living room whenever the curtains were open. I called the police while pulling every curtain shot. My voice trembled as I described the situation to the dispatcher. Two officers arrived approximately 40 minutes later. One was a younger man who wrote down what I told him. The other was an older woman who repeatedly checked her watch. They read the message and examined the envelope. Then they asked whether Steven had ever explicitly threatened me with violence. "He's watching my home," I repeatedly said. He knows about my cat. He entered my building. The officers explained that I couldn't prove Steven had delivered the letter. Without evidence identifying him and without a direct threat of physical injury, all they could do was create a report. The older officer recommended installing security cameras, changing my routine, and possibly staying with friends for a while. These types usually escalate, she said quietly while her partner spoke over the radio. Document everything. Apply for a restraining order if you can. After the officer's departed I called the officer and said I would be sick for the remainder of the week. I emailed the police report number to human resources and began searching for new apartments on my phone. Pepper curled beside me, completely unaware of why I kept checking the locks. I barely slept that night. Every sound from the street and every creek of the old building settling made me jump. At approximately 3 a.m., I heard something that caused me to grab my phone and begin recording. Someone was walking on the fire escape. The footsteps were slow and intentional. They stopped directly outside my bedroom window. A shadow moved across the curtain and remained there for approximately ten seconds before continuing onward. My recording captured the metallic groan of the fire escape beneath someone's weight. It also captured a sound resembling fingers being dragged across the window glass. I called 911 again. By the time the officers arrived, whoever had been outside was gone. The following morning I packed a bag and went to stay with my cousin in the suburbs. I submitted my two weeks notice by email and began completing the paperwork needed to request a restraining order. The law firm attempted to persuade me to remain. Management offered to transfer Steven to another branch, but I had already decided that I was finished. Bethany later told me that the company had discovered an entire folder inside Steven's desk. It contained photographs of me copied from the employee directory and my social media accounts. Some of the pictures appeared to have been taken from across the street with a zoom lens. Steven was fired. As far as I know, he never experienced any meaningful legal consequences. Two months later, I moved to another state and changed the names on all my social media accounts. And now I inspect every window twice before going to bed.