Fear is surly coil of a thing. It's careful to wrap you in it's midst, making sure you choke and drown in it's slick oil of this grotesque feeling. It's like looking in a black, hazy funhouse mirror, fooling your brain into thinking it's going to die, making your heart nearly beat out of your chest, that surely to kill you than your wildest imagination...

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I whirl around quickly, my heart thumping hard against my chest, threatening to jump out. I put my hand on my heart as if merely touching it would calm it down out of spite. I only find Owen behind me, looking at the sunset. From his distance, he couldn’t see the Chicago streets and buildings, the windows of the tallest glinting with the beautiful palette of colors hanging over the city. I take a quick sigh of relief and drop my hand back to my side, offering him a kind smile.

“Hey, I wanted to say a quick sorry for the outrage earlier.”

“Yeah it’s uh, it’s no biggie! I was stepping on toes there.” He gave me a kind smile in return and nodded toward the skyline view. “Certainly is pretty, isn’t it?”

I nodded as I turned from the window to him quizzically. “What’s your last name?” I blurt out, pulling hard at the chance he’s not who Percy mentioned just days before. He looked at me slowly as if he were picking apart my question with splayed confusion and amusement on his face. After what felt like a thousand years of the silence growing thick between us, he laughed and held out his hand for me to shake. Surprised by this odd and sudden gesture, I take it and he shakes it firmly.

“The name, sweet one, is Owen Layhe. It is such a pleasure to meet you…” He trails off, searching for a name. Laughing, I play along. “The name, odd one, is Veronica Grayson. It is such a pleasure to meet you finally.”

Beaming, He drops my hand and rakes his through his hair, turning to grab his briefcase- who still owned those- and begins to leave.

“H-how long have you worked here?” I ask suddenly, stammering a bit. A part of me blooms with confusion. The Veronica everyone knows never stammers. She’s all business. Never wavers, no matter how difficult a case or how disturbing a trial is. I look up at Owen and he has frozen mid-step, hesitating a moment too late before he replies, “I’ve been here for about a couple of months now.”

Once he says this, I notice he tenses up in just the slightest of ways. The burst of confusion from my outburst begins to ebb away and bubble into suspicion. “Oh, really?” I ask, trying to gain some leeway with him. “And what cases have you gotten so far?” I take a step closer to him, now fully brooding in a familiar feeling of satisfaction. I seem to have caught an animal in a trap. And he’s shaking in his shoes. Before I can ask another question to divert the silence, he takes off running and my feet naturally follow in pursuit. Idiots, I think. They always try to run. And they end up surprised when they get caught.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Amused by this particular chase, I begin to gain on him, growing closer with each step. He starts to slow down some, clearly not used to running in a suit and he begins to get tired. Suddenly I stop and watch him continue on, heading toward the door that leads to the stairs. He shoves it open and faintly, I can hear the soft slap of his shoes hitting the stairs as he descends quickly. The door then closes, and the sound of the latch clicking shut echoes loudly through the empty hallway, the overhead fluorescent light humming, drowning out the now-growing silence. I let him get away. For the first time in my whole career, I've let someone get away. I turn around and walk back to the office, walking quickly.

Let him run because animals can only get so far.

Once I arrive at the office, I head straight for the window where I find the desk Owen put his briefcase on and I spot something rectangular lying on it. I laugh aloud at the absurdity of it. I found his phone! Animals get comfortable and then they get sloppy.

I pick it up and turn it on. I swipe upwards to unlock it but find it requires a fingerprint. I shake my head and turn the phone back off, holding up the now blank screen to the little bit of light left peeking through the window. I tilt it around for a moment when I finally see a fingerprint. Now giddy, I grab a roll of tape from the nearest cubicle and rip a piece off, sticking it carefully onto the fingerprint.

Once I power the phone back on, I stick the tape onto the fingerprint sensor and slightly press it down. After a couple of seconds, It lets me in and I quickly head over to Owen’s text messages. There isn’t any proof he could be my stalker - if you want to call it that - but he also didn’t have the same last name. But then again, why would he run once I started asking him questions? If he lied about who he really was, how hard was it for him to lie again?

Now, equally frustrated, I go through his messages. After a couple of minutes, I haven’t found anything. I look up from the screen and find it's almost pitch black, the only light coming from the busy night down below me. Sighing, I’m about to turn off the phone when I see a message pop up from one of his social media sites. His Twitter.

I click on it and look at his recent posts. My eyes widened slightly. They are all about me. Why are they all about me? I scan through each post, my eyes only skimming the ones that truly pop out.

“She looks so lovely when she sleeps. When she’s dreaming her eyes flutter like the softest wings of a butterfly.”

“When she’s getting coffee at the nearby coffee shop, She looks so at peace.”

~One Image Attached~

I shakily click on the image and what I see makes my heart stop. I’m sitting at a table, closest to the window, and eating a doughnut while sipping coffee. I’m looking out the window, watching people and cars go by. I look almost... Wistful and at ease.

Quickly, feeling hot tears sting my eyes, I shut off the phone but it doesn’t help. The picture of me in that shop is now seared into my brain. I quickly slip the phone into my purse and stalk off toward the elevator.

What’s going on with me?