Page 103 of Letters From A Stalker

The neighborhood is still very much awake. Somewhere nearby, a garage door rumbles closed. A woman farther down the street is pulling a garbage bin toward the side of her house, and a dog barks behind one of the fences before being called inside. I feel spectacularly conspicuous. Still, I keep walking. Julia’s porch is empty when I reach it. I take the envelope from inside my jacket and place it against the bottom of her door, angled so she’ll see it the moment she comes home.

Little Ember.

The name looks almost too intimate sitting there in daylight. I force myself away before I can stare at it any longer and retreat toward the trees. This time, I don’t leave. The whole point of coming early was to know. Not simply whether she reads it, but whether she answers.

Daylight fades gradually around the street while I wait. Porch lights begin appearing between houses, cars return from work and the windows around me start glowing as people settle into their evenings. Julia’s house remains dark. I start wondering whether she’ll be late, and the fact that the thought irritates me is ridiculous enough that I nearly laugh. Then headlights turn onto the street. I know her car immediately. She pulls into the driveway, gathers her bag and a small grocery sack from the passenger seat and starts toward the porch. I know she notices the envelope before she reaches the steps by the way her pace slows. Then she looks toward the trees. Toward me.

Something hot and deeply satisfied moves through me. She can’t see me, but she knows where I might be now. Julia picks up the envelope and disappears inside. Lights come on through the house while I stay where I am. She moves through the kitchen first, puts away whatever she brought home and eventually disappears from view. I have no idea whether she has opened the letter. Waiting for that answer turns out to be considerably harder than writing the damn thing.

Darkness settles fully around the house and she appears in the living room with the black envelope in her hand. She sits on the couch and begins reading. Distance steals the smaller details from me, but I can see the way she grows still. When she finishes, she stays that way for a long moment. Then her head lifts, her eyes go to the window. This time, she isn’t searching because of an unexplained feeling she doesn’t trust. This time she knows.

Julia gets up and crosses the room toward the lamp beside the couch. My entire body tightens when her hand reaches toward it. If she turns it off, I leave. There is no argument to have with myself about that. I gave her a way to tell me no, and if she uses it, tonight ends here. I can see her fingers hover near the switch. For several seconds, nothing happens. Then her hand drops and so does my stomach because she just gave me the answer. I hang my head and pull my hands out of my pockets. That’s it. She said her peace.

I lift my head to turn around and walk back towards my bike when I catch it. The sight of her standing in the warm pool of light around her, watching through the window to where I’m standing. The lamp is on. For tonight, that is enough. Ghost settles beneath my skin with a satisfaction I don’t bother denying.

Good girl.

19

Julia

The lamp stays on.

I‘m staring through the living-room window toward the trees while the meaning of that decision settles somewhere between my ribs and refuses to become anything simple. He told me exactly what leaving it on would mean. There was no vague implication I could hide behind later, no room to pretend I misunderstood what he was asking.

If that light is burning, I’ll take it as your yes.

And apparently my answer is yes. The realization sends another wave of heat through me, followed almost immediately by the much more reasonable reminder that there is a strange man somewhere outside my house who has been watching me without permission for weeks. Both reactions exist at the same time, which feels profoundly unfair.There is nothing remotely normal about any of this. A man whose name I don’t know has stood somewhere beyond those windows and watched me move through my own home, seen me when I believed I was completely alone and then written about one of the most private things I could possibly do with enough detail that there was no mistaking what he had witnessed. That should disgust me enough to turn the lamp off.

Instead, I’m standing here wondering whether he can see me now. I move closer to the glass and try to look beyond my own reflection. The lights inside make it difficult, throwing the room back at me while everything beyond the reach of the porch light disappears into shadow. I can make out the lawn, several tree trunks and the faint outline of my neighbor’s fence farther down, but nothing that resembles a man. He could be almost anywhere out there. A nervous flutter rushes through my stomach that has absolutely no business feeling as much like anticipation as it does.

“This is so fucked up.”

My voice sounds strangely intimate against the quiet room, as though I’m admitting it to him instead of myself. Maybe I am. The letter lies open on the couch behind me. I don’t need to read it again. At this point, several lines have carved themselves directly into my memory, especially the ones I would prefer my brain stop replaying with quite so much enthusiasm. He wants me to touch myself knowing he’s watching, wants me to take my time. He wants to see whether awareness of him changes anything and because apparently whatever common sense I once possessed has left without giving notice, there is a part of me that wants to know too.

I step away from the window. Not because I’m turning him down, but because I suddenly resent the idea that he might think asking is enough to get exactly what he wants. If I’m going to do this, then it is going to happen because I chose it, not because a black envelope arrived and some unseen man decided what my evening should look like. So I go to the kitchen. If he really is standing out there waiting, he can fucking wait. The thought makes the corner of my mouth lift before I can stop it. I pour myself water, put away groceries that have already been put away once and spend an unnecessary amount of time rearranging things inside the refrigerator as though yogurt placement has suddenly become a matter requiring serious consideration. I check my phone, do some light doom scrolling on Instagram and wipe down a section of the counter that was already clean. All the while, I remain acutely aware of the lamp burning in the living room. It feels almost like another person occupying the house with me, a quiet presence sitting just beyond the edge of every ordinary thing I do.

Eventually I return to the couch. The letter is exactly where I left it so, I pick it up and let my eyes find the lines that have been bothering me most.

Not rushed. Not because I told you to. On your own time.

Then:

Make me suffer through every second of it if that’s what you want.

I stare at that sentence for a moment before looking toward the window again.

“Oh, you can suffer.” For once, the words come with a little more confidence than embarrassment.

I sit down, pull the blanket over my legs and turn on the television. If he wants a performance, he is getting a cooking competition. For the next hour, I watch strangers panic over pastry while pretending I’m not occasionally imagining the man outside wondering whether I’m doing this deliberately. Maybe I am. There is something unexpectedly satisfying about knowing I can leave him there without giving him anything else. He asked me to leave the lamp on if I wanted him to stay, and I did. That is all I agreed to. Nothing more belongs to him unless I decide it does.

By the time the episode ends, I have made my decision. I stand, switch off the television and look toward the window one last time. The lamp remains beside the couch, casting the same warm pool of light across the room. I leave it burning as I head upstairs. If he wants to interpret that as an answer, he can.

Friday morning feels insultingly normal, considering I spent part of the previous evening knowingly allowing a stalker to remain outside my house. And not only that, I was considering giving him what he asked for. How fucked up is that?

I feel there should be some visible consequence. A warning siren. A dramatic shift in the weather. Maybe a letter from the universe informing me that my judgment privileges have officially been revoked. All of these things might happen if I had decided to share this particular and obvious little mental episode of mine. But I haven’t so… no point in expecting that. Instead, I shower, get dressed for work and waste five minutes trying to decide which shoes look better with my skirt.

There is no envelope outside when I leave, not that I’m expecting one or at least I won’t admit to it out loud.