the porch light was off that night.
her neighbours were away at that time of year, and hers was the only house with the lights still on.
she was taking a shower.
not that i was spying on her. i would never do that.
but the bathroom window was open. anyone would have noticed. steam from the hot water fogged the glass, and a soft light glowed inside. scented candles. vanilla.
she was listening to the same playlist she always listened to.
i know because i found her spotify profile through a link attached to her twitter account. she never changed her shower playlist. the songs shifted places from time to time, but they remained the same. after a few months, i already knew what track would come next before it even started.
three days ago, i went to see her at work. it was a café in the city centre called be espresso. she didn’t see me, but i ordered the same thing she used to drink.
i can still taste it on my tongue.
when we first started seeing each other, she still lived in the flat on the street above mine. her hair was longer back then. she spent sundays walking her dog through the square.
six months later, i knew which shampoo she used.
she still didn’t know my name.
she turned the music down shortly after switching off the shower. she had washed her hair, despite usually doing that on tuesdays and fridays. she only washed it on other days when she was mentally exhausted or exceptionally dirty after work. she had the terrible habit of replacing water with dry shampoo.
i caught sight of her standing in front of the sink in a dressing gown, staring at herself in the mirror.
i knew her favourite songs.
i knew which shampoo she used.
i knew what time she usually switched off the lights.
and yet, i still wondered whether she liked what she saw when she was alone.
i lost sight of her when she left the bathroom.
she wasn’t on discord, as usual. she hadn’t started reading anything new either, because her last goodreads update had been a week ago, and she’d given a little life five stars.
funny. i saw the look on her face when she finished it.
i thought she might be cooking.
but she wasn’t in the kitchen either. we got home together that night. she hadn’t had time to eat beforehand. she’d never been one to skip meals. not during the week.
i checked the living room.
then the bedroom.
then the kitchen again.
i didn’t see her leave the house.
usually, she walked to the bus stop with that oversized bag hanging from her shoulder and her white headphones on. sometimes she called an uber. on sunny days, she cycled, but never if the journey was longer than seven kilometres. i learned that after a few months.
and today wasn’t a sunny day, obviously.
most people wouldn’t have noticed the difference. most people weren’t paying attention. she usually complained about work in the evenings. she’d log into discord, reply to a few messages, put on some melancholy playlist and pretend she wasn’t exhausted by the routine she worked so hard to maintain.
that night, nothing.
no music.
no lights.
no updates.
no shadow moving behind the curtains. the house felt smaller when it was empty. or maybe it was simply harder to watch when there was no one left to watch.
i know because she always did one of those things before bed. especially after long days at work.
and it had been a long day. the girl who ordered a cappuccino with no foam complained for five minutes. the man in the white shirt spilled sugar across the counter for the third time that week.
she left the café at 6:12 p.m. looking tired.
i saw it.
so where was she?
the obvious answer was that she was doing something i couldn’t see. but she didn’t usually drift from her routine. that’s one of the things i liked about her. while the rest of the world insisted on being unpredictable, she was almost honest. almost.
i waited ten minutes.
twenty.
thirty.
she still didn’t appear. strange. because she always appeared.
i only noticed the cold when the clock struck two in the morning. that’s when i started considering possibilities i would normally dismiss.
she had a large dog. not exactly aggressive, but large enough to make any stranger think twice before stepping onto the property.
smart.
she needed protection. the world was full of dangerous men. men who followed women home. men who hurt women because they thought they could, she had every reason to be careful. but i wasn’t one of those men.
i knew the dog’s name.
i knew which treats she bought for him.
i knew he was terrified of fireworks and hid beneath the table whenever he heard thunder.
he knew me. or at least he knew my presence. he hadn’t barked the last time i walked past the gate, that had to mean something.
i stood there for a few seconds, listening. nothing. no television. no music. no footsteps. just the dog.
the idea came to me at 2:17 in the morning, but it didn’t stay long. it vanished almost as quickly as it arrived. i should have gone home. that’s what any normal person would have done. gone to bed. woken up the next morning and discovered she was perfectly fine. but normal people don’t pay attention. normal people don’t notice when someone disappears from their own routine.
she was probably fine.
she was an adult woman, perfectly capable of surviving a night without posting on twitter, updating goodreads, or logging into discord to complain about work. the rational part of my mind knew that.
the other part kept staring at the house.
something was wrong. not wrong in the sort of way that makes people call the police or appear in the morning news. just wrong.
and it was that feeling that made me move forward.
the gate wasn’t locked. that was strange too. she usually checked it twice before going to bed. once when she came home, once before turning off the lights. i knew because i’d watched her do it dozens of times.
maybe she’d forgotten. it happened.
she forgot umbrellas in cafés. forgot books on buses. forgot to reply to messages for weeks at a time before suddenly reappearing at four in the morning as though nothing had happened.
but she didn’t usually forget the gate.
especially not after the burglary at the corner flat last year. she tweeted about it for three days. said she was thinking about buying a camera. she never did.
still, she started checking the gate twice. always twice. that night, not once.
i pushed it open slowly. the metal groaned louder than it should have.
i froze immediately.
waited. listened.
nothing.
no lights came on. no barking. no movement. only silence.
the dog remained quiet, that bothered me. not because i was afraid of him. because i knew him. or at least i liked to think i did.
i knew which commands he obeyed. i knew he hated vacuum cleaners. i knew he’d knocked over the christmas tree in december. she posted a photograph of the mess afterwards.
i still remember it. the broken ornaments scattered across the floor and the guilty look on his face. the caption complaining about how she’d spent an hour decorating the tree only for him to destroy it in less than thirty seconds.
the back door wasn’t locked either.
that should have convinced me to call someone. a friend, a relative, the police, anyone.
instead, i went inside.
the smell was the first thing i noticed.
vanilla. coffee. of course.
not the smell of freshly brewed coffee, but something older. something absorbed into the cupboards, the curtains, the wood of the kitchen table. the sort of smell that remains in a house after years of routine.
the kitchen was empty.
a mug abandoned beside the sink. two coffee pods on the counter. a shopping list pinned to the fridge. kitchen roll, beans, sugar. for a moment, i felt disappointed.
not because i genuinely expected to find her there. the rational part of my mind knew that if she were home, i would probably have seen some sign of it already. a shadow. a light. a movement behind the curtains.
anything.
but after watching that place from a distance, part of me still expected to find her. as though crossing the threshold would somehow make up for all the time that had passed. as though physical proximity could compensate for everything i’d never had the courage to do.
and that mug beside the sink.
blue.
the usual one.
she owned others, i knew that. some appeared occasionally in photographs. others sat inside cupboards i could now see for the first time, but this was the one she chose most often. i’d seen it beside stacks of books, next to her laptop during sleepless nights, balanced on armrests and windowsills and coffee tables. once it appeared in a photograph so blurred it was barely recognisable.
i recognised it anyway.
ridiculous, it was only a mug. and yet i stood there staring at it long enough to notice the faint coffee stain still marking the rim. for a second, i had the strange urge to touch it. to see whether it was still warm. as though that might tell me something. as though anything in that house could finally explain who she was.
then i saw the book.
it lay open on the couch, face down, its spine bent against the cushion. she hated doing that. she was always complaining about people who folded pages or forced books open. once she wrote an entire twitter thread about it. something about books being mistreated by people who claimed to love them.
and yet there it was, abandoned in the middle of a chapter.
for a moment, i imagined she’d left in a hurry.
perhaps she’d only stepped out for a few minutes.
perhaps she intended to come back.
perhaps that was why the house felt so strange. nothing about it looked abandoned.
the cushions remained exactly where they always seemed to be in photographs. the blanket still hung over one arm of the couch. a pair of socks lay curled beside the coffee table. a pen had been forgotten between the pages of an open notebook.
everything suggested continuation.
a life interrupted for a few hours. not days. not weeks.
some people leave traces of themselves wherever they go. she was one of those people. the entire room seemed built from small distractions. books stacked where they didn’t belong. empty mugs in unlikely places. papers scattered across random surfaces. a list of tasks pinned to the armrest. a charger abandoned near the television.
none of it matched the version of her i’d constructed in my head. i found that amusing. for years, i’d imagined her house the same way i’d imagined her.
carefully organised.
predictable.
methodical.
instead, it looked lived in. messy in small, human ways. and somehow that made her feel more distant, not less.
i couldn’t help smiling as i recognised certain objects. a polaroid i’d already seen on instagram. an old edition of a book she’d reviewed on goodreads. a scented candle identical to the one that appeared behind her in selfies.
it felt like walking through a memory that had never belonged to me.
the study was at the end of the corridor.
i almost didn’t go in. i’m not sure why. perhaps because i had already begun to realise that entering her house wasn’t teaching me anything. i’d spent years imagining that crossing the door would answer some question i’d never been able to name.
instead, i kept finding the same thing.
evidence that she existed.
nothing more.
the desk was covered in photographs. landscapes. friends. the dog. the café. i picked them up one by one. and then i saw the square.
the square.
i recognised it before i even picked up the photograph.
it was difficult not to, i had spent too much time there. it was close enough to see her windows. close enough to watch her walk the dog. close enough to convince myself that distance meant something different than it actually did.
the bench appeared in the left-hand corner of the image.
the tree behind it was bare.
winter.
it must have been taken months ago.
there was someone sitting on the bench.
nothing unusual about that. just a person, someone looking across the street. for a moment, i couldn't understand what felt wrong about it.
i looked again.
then again.
the composition was strange, the bench wasn’t centred. the tree wasn’t centred either. the photograph seemed to be focused on the person. i brought it closer, the coat looked familiar.
navy blue. a pale stain near the pocket.
my stomach tightened before i understood why.
i knew that stain. coffee. a particularly bad morning.
i’d tried to remove the mark and somehow managed to make it worse. the bleach stain remained. it had remained ever since.
i stared at the photograph.
the coat.
the stain.
the backpack resting beside the bench.
my backpack.
the person in the photograph was looking towards the corner.
towards the bathroom window. towards the porch. towards the house.
towards her.
i looked at it for far too long.
as though, if i stared hard enough, i could force the image to become someone else.
a stranger.
anyone else.
but it didn't change.
the coat was mine. the backpack was mine. the posture was mine.
the photograph showed exactly what i had been doing.
for a moment, the room seemed smaller. the air felt heavier.
i placed the photograph back on the desk. then picked it up again.
i wasn't sure why.
perhaps because i needed to be certain. perhaps because certainty felt safer than whatever was replacing it. that was when i noticed there was something tucked behind it.
a small piece of paper, folded in half.
for a second, i thought it was a receipt. or one of those notes people leave for themselves and forget about afterwards.
something ordinary. something that belonged to the rest of the house.
i slid it out from behind the photograph.
the paper was worn at the edges.
folded and unfolded enough times to soften. my hands suddenly felt clumsy. i don't know why. there was no reason for them to.
it was only a piece of paper.
i unfolded it.
there was a single sentence written across the middle.
nothing else. no greeting. no signature. no date.
just a sentence.
i read it once.
then again.
then a third time.
and still found myself waiting for the words to rearrange themselves. for my eyes to correct whatever mistake they had made. for the meaning to become something else. something harmless. something ordinary.
it didn't.
the note slipped from my fingers.
for a long time, i just stared at it. at the handwriting. at the shape of the letters.
i knew that handwriting.
i'd seen it on shopping lists posted online. on birthday cards in photographs. on the corners of notebooks. on scraps of paper left beside cups of coffee.
it was hers.
and somehow that made it worse.
because the alternative would have been easier.
the alternative would have been a joke. a coincidence. a misunderstanding.
instead, it was recognition.
she knew.
not recently. not last week. not that night. she knew.
the thought arrived quietly at first.
then all at once.
the curtains that closed without explanation. the lights switched off at odd hours. the photographs taken from unusual angles. the songs added to random playlists.
the windows left open.
coincidences.
that was what i'd called them.
i had spent all that time turning every unanswered question into a coincidence. every inconsistency into an accident. every possibility into something easier to live with. because the truth had never crossed my mind.
i had spent so much time watching that woman that i never considered the possibility that she might be watching me too.
the photograph still lay on the desk. the bench. the square. the coat. the stain.
myself.
for years i had imagined i was standing outside her life, looking in.
for years i believed distance made me invisible.
safe.
separate.
i looked towards the window.
towards the dark glass reflecting the room behind me.
and for the first time since i met her, i couldn't see her at all.
i saw only myself.
her handwriting imprinted in my mind saying
i started turning off the porch light so you'd have a better place to hide.
the antagonist is a reader-supported publication. to receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
i need the end
continueeeeeeeeeeeee pls sssssssssss