Someone is watching me. The prickling feeling on my neck tells me that. My goosebumps don’t need to tell me who’s watching because that’s obvious. He’s been watching me for the last three years.

I walk as quickly as I can without running. I can’t hear his footsteps behind me which is a good sign but it would be difficult to hear anything over my sharp, quick breaths.

“I know you’re there,” I say, into the wet gloom of the street. For a moment, there’s nothing.

“I’m always here,” he replies. And he’s right. I look to where the voice came from but the streetlight’s glare only illuminates a small sphere below it and the only other light is the moon and its reflection in the puddles on the road. Four years knowing him, three years wishing I didn’t, so I know his face off by heart anyway.

“I could call the police,” I say to the darkness.

“You would have done it by now,” the darkness replies, his voice clipped, pronouncing each consonant. “If you didn’t still love me.” My heartbeat quickens into a pulsing beat. I don’t. I wish he knew that. No. He does know that. He just can’t accept it. It freaks me out to think about how twisted love can turn someone. When you break up, your heart’s supposed to break so it can reform to love someone else. It’s not supposed to keep living like some kind of unkillable monster. But his has.

“If you love me then why are you screwing up my life?” I say but I know the answer. There’s a shuffling sound as if he’s walking towards me. I step back but my foot lands, half on- half off the curb and I fall to the pavement.

“Because you screwed up mine. Because you took away everything that was mine.” The shuffling continues, getting louder until I can hear the quiet splashes of water as he steps in the puddles.

“I don’t belong to you,” I say. I need to stand up. To run. But somehow, I can’t. I feel paralyzed.

“That is the problem you see because I belong to you.” Cold water slips through my jeans, making me shiver. The phrase ‘you can’t run away from your shadow’ comes to me. I stand up and cling to the lamppost for support but it’s too late: he’s already reached me. He looks bad. Worse than last time. His voice is so prim; it gives the impression that he’ll be well kept with neat hair and maybe a shirt and tie. It was one of the things I loved about him. Was. But no. His hair is wild and black and his skin as pale as the clouds lined with moonlight but the bags under his eyes look heavier. All he was in high school has been sucked out of him. All the nervous first date laughs, all the notes in class smiles, all the pretty rich boy who needed to love is gone.

He reaches out for my hand and I snatch it back. “Don’t touch me.” Something passes through his green eyes. Disappointment maybe. He must be delusional. Maybe he had a vision in his mind that he would hold my hand and I’d be taken back to years ago when we thought we were endgame. He still thinks so but his hand felt cold and I have a new hand to hold now. I back up against the wall of a building to get further away from him.

“I don’t love you anymore,” I say, hoping to coax more disappointment out so maybe he’ll question what he’s doing but instead, I get anger. He pins my shoulder against the brick with such force I feel them scrape, wondering if there’s blood. I try to shove him off but his grip keeps me there, helpless. I kick his shins but it’s like he’s made of metal, like he’s felt so much pain that there’s no more left. I can’t imagine that.

“You do love me,” he shouts in my face. All I can see is his eyes. The green is electric and dangerous like the scales of a python. He shakes me hard. “You do love me. You promised to love me forever. Do you remember? You said you would always love me.” His voice is high at breaking point. I do remember but everyone breaks promises. Not everyone stalks their ex for three years. He leans closer to me so our faces are almost touching. I shove him off me again and this time he falters, stumbling back and hitting the lamppost with his back. I run away as fast as my water soaked jeans will take me, until I don’t think he’ll follow. I take out my phone and make a text.

Sheena’s black truck finds me and I stumble in front of the headlights. She looks at me like it's a dead badger in the middle of the road and not her classmate. She brakes and I climb in the passenger seat.

“You’re texting me again now, are you?” she says, eyes on the road. My eyes stay in the footwell. “I haven't told anyone else.” She nods, her hair coming out from behind her ears. She puts it back irritably.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“So the only point of my number still being in your phone is so you don’t have to tell your new friends that you’re being stalked,” she says, adjusting the rear view mirror. I look at her blue eyes and even icier expression. She’s still bitter. I lean back in my seat and look out the windscreen. In the distance, it is just black but as we drive, layers of foreground suddenly come into view, mostly bare tree branches framing the view through the glass that look as though they’ve been cut out from cardboard for a spooky scene in a school play or something.

“Come on Sheena. Don’t be like that. You’re still my friend,” I say but the lie tastes sour in my mouth. She still doesn't look at me so I stop trying.

Something jumps out at the car. Sheena hits the breaks as fast as she can. Her hair falls in front of her face when the truck jolts back. This time, she doesn’t bother to untuck it.

“Shit,” she says, opening her car door and running out.

“Did you hit it?” I ask. A more important question is what is ‘it’? I don’t want to look but my eyes have different ideas. The large bonnet of the truck veils the thing in a large shadow. Please don’t be human, I think. Please. I sit up in my seat to peer over the black metal. Even in the dark, it’s easy to tell that it’s not a person. My heart sighs with relief. Sheena gets back in the car, soaked from the rain that’s started to fall again. She doesn’t talk to me, she just drives. There’s a slight squelching noise as we drive over it and I try to pretend I didn’t hear it. Because I didn’t.

“What was that,” I ask. The only thing I hear after that is the dripping of Sheena’s hair onto the black leather seat and the imber of rain on the windscreen until she decides to regain use of her mouth.

“That was a deer. You would’ve known that if you had actually gotten out the car to help me move it instead of staying in here with your eyes squeezed tightly shut like a baby playing hide and seek,” she says. “But then again, you never liked being there for me, did you?”

“Ouch Sheena. That hurts.” Her method of punishment is simple but too effective. She gives you her silence, no eye contact, until you start wishing that she’d say something- anything. And then she does. She likes to keep you in her grasp for a while before she bites and it makes it so much worse.

“Good,” she says, pretending to adjust something. If she’s going to give me silent treatment then so be it. I turn the dial for the radio and the music comes on.

“Oh my god!” I say. “Do you remember Friday’s karaoke nights?” They were famous for being infamous. The memories bring a little bit of light to the gloomy night. “Snakes and stones never broke my bones!” I elbow Sheena to start singing but she just turns the radio off.

“Are you trying to make me hit another animal or something?” she says. “You’re such an insufferable brat, Victoria!” I somehow find it hard to believe that I’m the one being an insufferable brat right now.

“I’m just trying to rekindle our friendship,” I say. Why is she being so defensive tonight?

“Yeah,” she says. “Because you wanna burn something?” That’s not what I meant. She knows that. “Get out.” Her voice is high pitched as she says that.

I freeze for a moment. “What?” She gets out of the car again and opens the door for me. I scan her face to see if she’s serious. It’s pouring rain now, it’s dark and I’m being stalked. But it’s her car. I climb out and she slams it behind me before getting back inside and driving away. Dread creeps up my spine when I realize that I don’t know where I am. There’s no trail of pebbles or breadcrumbs leading anywhere. I can’t even follow my footsteps. So I follow my gut. I have to go back to that street because I don’t know my way around these woods. I walk in the opposite way Sheena drove off. The winding road has no junctions, at least not as far as I’ve headed. Soon I reach my marker- the proof that I’m on the right track.

I bend down to stroke her brown velvet flank. She looks alive. Like she’s only sleeping but she doesn’t move when I touch her. It’s hard to ignore the track prints pressed into her hind legs. One hoof has been shattered to black fragments over the road. Sheena was right, I think. I should’ve helped her move the deer. A salty drop of rain slides down my face and lands on the deer’s hide. There are no golden swirls that heal her like there would be in a disney movie because magic doesn’t exist and death is irreversible. But then again, so is everything you do. Her blinkless eyes look into my brown ones. I’ll move you now. I lift up her body and wince as her flattened legs peel off the road. She’s surprisingly light in my hands as I take her into the trees just on the side of the road. The rain water runs down my arms, dripping from the branches above me. Sheena’s warm and dry. I could be if I hadn’t turned on the radio. But I know it’s more than that. She’s annoyed at something that runs deeper than a matter of minutes. She’s angry about years. Years of betrayal, years of neglect, years of feeling worthless but all of that is her fault. She could’ve gotten new friends and gotten over it.

I lay the carcass on the leaves by a tree trunk, trying to position her so you can’t see where the tires branded her. There.

Another car drives up the road. Who drives this way? Then the car stops. It’s not a truck like Sheena’s. It’s white like a ghost and sleek. I recognise the number plate because it was one that stood out to me. SN14 KFS. The place I’d seen it before, I don’t remember. And then I do. The night comes creeping up on my brain, memories a montage. Passionate scenes. Then the door opens. I stay frozen next to the doe. Two deer in the headlights.