The third time the hallway light flickered, I stopped pretending I wasn’t counting.
Once. Twice. Pause.
The bulb buzzed, dimmed, then came back up in a sickly yellow that turned my front door into a mouth. The sound in the corridor went thin in that way it did before the elevator arrived, except I hadn’t pushed the button and it was almost midnight and everyone normal was already home.
I held my breath and listened.
Mara’s voice from earlier curled around the edges of my memory. "Chlo, if you call the cops again, they’re going to start charging you rent at the station."
Her joke had landed like a pebble in my stomach. Tonight, the pebble felt more like a stone.
Something scraped lightly outside, near the base of my door. Not metal. Not keys. Cloth against wood? A shoe, shifting weight.
"Nope," I whispered to nobody and turned off my living room lamp in one quick, guilty flick. My apartment fell into the soft gray of city spillover, streetlights leaking between the slats of my blinds and painting zebra stripes across the piles of books and half-finished sketches on my coffee table.
In the dark, every outline sharpened. The coat rack by the door grew shoulders. The arm of my sofa became a crouched stranger. My stupid heart launched into my throat, flinging itself against it like it could break out and sprint down the hall alone.
I crossed barefoot to the door, each floorboard memorized, each creak a note I could hear coming. I pressed my eye to the peephole and waited for the blur of movement that would both validate everything and undo me.
Nothing.
The empty hallway stared back—industrial gray carpet, beige walls, the red EXIT sign humming its electric whine. The light over my door flickered again, then steadied.
He was there. I knew he was there. Just out of range.
A low chuckle, close, too close, bled through the wood.
I jolted back so fast I slammed into the shoe rack, clattering sneakers to the floor. The chuckle stopped. The silence that followed had an edge—thin, deliberate.
My fingers shook as I reached for the chain. I didn’t undo it. I didn’t even touch the deadbolt. I grabbed my phone from the little dish where I always put it when I came in, like good habits could save me.
Fourth time, I thought, staring at the 9, the 1, the 1.
"They’re going to roll their eyes so hard they sprain something," I muttered. "You are going to be that girl, again, and they’re going to—"
Another sound. A light tap, higher on the door now, like a knuckle barely touching. Not knocking. Testing.
I hit call.
By the time I’d stammered out my address and that I had a possible prowler and yes, I’d filed reports before, and no, I wasn’t imagining it, I’d retreated to the middle of my living room, back toward the island in the tiny open kitchen.
"Officers will respond as soon as possible," the dispatcher said in a tone that sounded like a template. "Stay inside with the doors locked. Do not engage."
I hung up before I could apologize for existing.
The wait felt like hours. It was eleven minutes; I watched the clock. The sounds outside waxed and waned—small scuffs, a faint mutter I couldn’t quite make out. At one point, my door handle twitched, the metal giving a small, ugly click as if someone just wanted to feel it move.
