On the run

The room was just as he had left it mere hours ago. Almost. The haphazardously stacked yet untouched pile of books remained in their alarming lean, just as he had left them. The heavy curtains were just as drawn as he had left it, ensuring no prying rays of light had the chance to creep in and invade the space. Why, he had even allowed for a sigh of relief when he observed, upon his return, the little scrap of paper fluttering from the doorframe where he had wedged it.

But that did not account for the accursed thing that set his blood to ice. 

By all rights, the thing itself was perfectly innocuous. Inoffensive, even. Under any other circumstances, perhaps, he might have felt inclined to simply shrug it off as something that might have gotten caught on his things when he was on an outing and remained unnoticed until then. But this was not just any other circumstances, and he did not shrug it off. Quite the opposite, in fact. Even seeing the thing as it sat there sent him into a flurry of frenzied pacing, his footfalls carving heavy paths across the faded carpet. 

It was small, not significantly larger than an average calling card, one corner curled up slightly as if worried by a busy thumb before it found its home. Upon the little scrap of parchment was, written in a neat, sloping and altogether unfamiliar hand, a straightforward enough message. Straightforward enough, certainly, to set dizzying stars to dance in the outskirts of his vision.

“You can’t run forever.”

When he first read these words, his mind simply refused to comprehend them. His brain refusing to accept the implications of a warning left within a sealed room. But the horror grew, at first irrational, which was awful, then to something rational, which was worse. An irrational fear was a wild beast in the mind, clawing and thrashing and screaming, but the rational fear was there not to soothe the beast but to whisper to it confirmations of all its worst terrors while placing names to all that of which one would want to remain nameless. 

It came on all at once, a sudden rush with such an intensity that it threatened to snatch his breath, already ragged and harsh, away entirely. The feeling of being watched. The sensation of eyes upon him, prying and invading and tearing him apart piece by piece without ever needing to touch him at all. Watching him. In a room that was cut of from the wider world, a world of its own floating in the vast empty spaces of nothingness. 

It was impossible, he knew this, he was a rational man after all, but he needed to know. Needed to be sure that there was nobody watching him from some neglected sideline.

With the sort of flourish that was better suited for a stage performer than the common man, he drew the curtains back in a single motion setting his hands against the glass, cooled from the winter chill that his chambers seemed oblivious to. There was a flicker in the darkness, no doubt the result of curious moths darting and dancing about the Gaslamp situated on the street corner by the window. Surely this was the case, not some night-clad stranger weaving the shadow about them to avoid detection. 

There was nothing at all amiss, and that left a rather strong impression of absolutely everything being amiss. The air wore the sort of weight to it that served to herald in a thunderstorm, the sort of weather that easily explained why it was that haste dragged along at the few people that were still brave enough to dare be out as such a late hour. Unfamiliar people, passerbys in the street as they went about their business.

But then, why would anyone be out so terribly late? 

The feeling grew, the inkling now a certainty that there was somebody there watching him and did not care if he knew or not. He staggered back, rolling awkwardly on his heel as he drew the curtains once again in the process. He had not noticed when it was his breath had started hitching irregularly, even the simplest acts like breathing being used to make a spectacle of himself. For a cluster of heartbeats he clung to the curtains, the thick, slightly dusty fabric balled up in his shaking fists. It was a poor guardian, but nonetheless it served as a barrier between himself and the world, and he needed it. Needed anything. Anything at all that he could wedge between himself and the unknown. 

Only when the inaction felt worse than it would to fall to action once more, he took a step back, tugging at the collar of his shirt as if this might serve to aide the airflow more effectively than just the loosening of a button would allow for. Admittedly, this was more to delay what he was quite sure, and with the same degree of certainty that he knew someone had been in his room while he was out, was the inevitable course of action. He turned slowly, reluctance tugging at his heels, back to his work desk and, more importantly, back to the note that sat there just as it had been when he found it. The dreadful thing felt as if it was mocking him just by the mere fact of its existence. 

Had it not been for the card, he would not have had to feel the uncomfortable, thick discomfort that clung to him like spiderwebs and writhed beneath his skin like insects. It was its fault, it had spoiled everything! He had set up a nice little life there, nobody had any cause to doubt the life he led, he carried no name at all beyond that of which he chose outright to share. The rules he had lived by were so simple, to keep his head down, keep himself clean and never give anyone cause to question him. It should have been enough. Should have been, yet even now it was as if he was being laughed at for even so much as daring to hope for the faintest scraps of normalcy within the framework of society. 

But he could laugh too, and by goodness he would! How dare they make a mockery of his life? How dare they?! 

A flittering of unsteady laughter bubbled from his lips, wild, irrational and nearing on a sort of mania. He shook, exhaustion, fear and laughter together proving too much for his frame, but he did not stop. He did not stop when his throat started to ache from the unfamiliar onslaught, did not stop when once more his vision started to fail him as a dizziness threatened to take his vision once more, did not stop even as he was doubled over rasping out a choke that could only loosely be named a laugh.

He stopped only when the card fluttered to the ground in so many tiny pieces it would be quite impossible to accurately reassemble the thing again. Good. If they – they they they, whoever it was they thought they were, harassing him in his own home – wanted to make a point, he would prove to them that he could do just same. That would show them that he was not afraid. That nothing really meant anything in the end. 

Then, all at once as if something had gone out of him, he was struck with a wave of exhaustion. Had it been some regular exhaustion he might not have fared so poorly, but instead it was a sort of dreadful, primal exhaustion that struck at what one who was so inclined might consider the soul. A sigh, the sigh of a condemned man at the gallows, slipped shakily from his lips as he sunk into the chair he had drawn up at the desk. With his head buried in his hands, he peeked out through his fingers so that all he could see as he reduced his visual world to the small gaps where his fingers interlocked were the scattered shards of the card as they lay as innocently as a viper on the floor.