Whispers

I had always been invisible. In the grand scheme of life, office chatter, crowded sidewalks, dinner parties, I was the man no one noticed. The quiet shadow in the corner. I preferred it that way. Until they noticed me.

It started in the café, my usual corner seat by the window, shielded by a trailing curtain of ferns. A fortress of solitude where I could write in peace, the hum of conversations blending into background static.

But one day, their words broke through, sharp, clear. My name.

“Elena,” the brunette said, her voice carrying across the café. “He’s here again. You know, the guy with the notebook.”

I froze, my pen poised mid-sentence. My breath caught in my throat.

Her friend, a pale, willowy woman with an air of nervous laughter, leaned in. “Oh God, you’re right. Look at him. He’s always writing something. Creepy.”

The word struck like a needle to the spine. My fingers tightened around the pen. Creepy. They didn’t understand. They didn’t know me. The notebook wasn’t about them. It was observation, facts. People fascinated me—the way they moved, the lies they told with their bodies, the truths they revealed without meaning to. I noticed what others didn’t. That was all.

But their voices wouldn’t stop.

“I think he watches us,” Elena said, her voice dropping conspiratorially. “Like, really watches us. It’s weird.”

“I mean, you don’t think he’s, like, dangerous?” the pale one asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Elena laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Who knows? Guys like him, you never know what’s going on in their heads.”

I couldn’t breathe. My hands felt clammy. I hunched over my notebook, suddenly hyperaware of myself—of the scuffed boots I hadn’t polished, the ink stains on my fingers, the way I shifted too much in my chair. Dangerous. They were painting me as a monster. And they weren’t even subtle about it.

I should have left. I should have closed the notebook and walked out, let their words die in the air. But I didn’t. I stayed. And when I dared to glance up, Elena was staring directly at me. Her lips curled into a smirk, as though daring me to react.

I didn’t look away. I wanted her to feel what it was like—to know what it was like to be seen. Truly seen.

That night, I barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face—smirking, mocking. Her laughter echoed in my skull, blending with fragments of their conversation. Creepy. Dangerous. Over and over, like a mantra.

By morning, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. It clung to me like a shadow, following me as I walked to the café. The streets were unusually quiet, the air heavy with the threat of rain. Even the usual city sounds—the rumble of cars, the chatter of strangers—seemed distant, muffled.

When I reached the café, I hesitated at the door. Through the window, I could see Elena and Lucy at their usual table, their heads bent close together, their laughter spilling into the air like poison. My stomach churned, but I stepped inside anyway.

I kept my head down as I made my way to my corner. I could feel their eyes on me, even though I didn’t look. The weight of their stares pressed against my back, making it hard to breathe. When I finally sat down, I opened my notebook with trembling hands, trying to focus, trying to push them out of my mind.

But then I noticed something strange.

The sugar packets on my table had been arranged into a neat row. I hadn’t done it. I was certain of that. I always left the sugar untouched. For a moment, I stared at the small, orderly stack, my heart thudding against my ribs. It was such a small thing, so insignificant, yet it felt deliberate—like someone had been there before me, leaving a trace.

I glanced around the café, but no one was looking at me. Not Elena, not Lucy. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

The feeling only grew worse over the next few days. At home, I found my kitchen chair slightly out of place. A notebook I’d left on the shelf was now sitting on the coffee table. Little things, things I couldn’t prove but couldn’t ignore. I started double-checking the locks on my door, pacing the apartment late at night, staring out the window at the darkened street below.

And then there was the man.

I first noticed him a week later, sitting in the far corner of the café. He wasn’t one of the regulars—I would have remembered him. His face was pale, almost waxy, and his eyes were wide and glassy, like he hadn’t slept in weeks. He sat perfectly still, not drinking coffee, not reading, just sitting and staring.

At first, I thought he was watching Elena and Lucy. But then his head turned slightly, and I realized he was staring at me.

I tried to ignore him, tried to focus on my notebook, but I couldn’t. His gaze was unrelenting, like a weight pressing against my chest. When I glanced up again, he was still watching, his expression blank, almost inhuman.

By the time I worked up the courage to confront him, he was gone. The chair sat empty, as though he had never been there at all.

I went to the bathroom in the café to splash water on my face. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a harsh glare on the cracked mirror. As I leaned over the sink, I felt it again—that suffocating feeling of being watched.

When I glanced up at the mirror, I saw it.

Through a small peephole in the far corner of the bathroom wall, an eye was staring at me. Wide, unblinking, bloodshot.

I spun around, my heart pounding, but the wall was solid, the peephole barely visible. I pressed my ear to the cold tile, straining to hear something, anything, but there was only silence.

When I turned back to the mirror, the eye was gone.

I stumbled out of the bathroom, my hands clammy, my legs shaky. The café felt darker somehow, the edges of the room smudged with shadow. Elena and Lucy were still laughing, their voices sharp and mocking, but I couldn’t focus on them anymore. All I could think about was the eye, the man, the sugar packets, the chair out of place in my apartment.

It wasn’t just them anymore. It wasn’t just Elena and Lucy. Everyone was watching me now.

And then Elena laughed, loud and shrill, and something inside me snapped.

The chair scraped loudly behind me as I stood. My vision tunneled, everything else in the café blurring except for the two of them. Elena froze mid-laugh, her smile faltering when she saw me. Lucy glanced at me too, her face paling as her hand twitched toward Elena’s arm.

“What?” Elena said, her voice sharp but nervous. “Why are you staring at us?”

My throat was dry, but the words spilled out of me, jagged and trembling. “You’ve been talking about me,” I said. “For weeks. Whispering. Laughing. Calling me creepy. Dangerous.”

Elena’s eyes narrowed, but I could see the uncertainty creeping into her expression. “What are you talking about? We’re not—”

“Don’t lie to me!” My voice cracked, rising above the low hum of the café. A few patrons turned their heads, the barista freezing mid-motion behind the counter.

Lucy tugged on Elena’s sleeve. “Elena, let’s just go,” she whispered, her voice shaky.

But Elena didn’t move. Her lips curled into a smirk, though it wavered slightly. “Oh my God, you’re insane.”

The word hit me like a slap, reverberating through my skull. Insane. Insane. My hands trembled as they slipped into my bag, closing around the cold, heavy weight inside.

“I tried,” I said softly, my voice almost a whisper. “I tried to keep to myself. To stay invisible. But you wouldn’t let me.”

When I pulled the gun out and set it on the table in front of me, the café erupted into chaos. Gasps, screams, chairs scraping against the floor as people scrambled to flee. Elena’s face went pale, her smirk vanishing entirely. Lucy froze, her eyes wide with terror.

“You wanted dangerous,” I said, the barrel trembling slightly as I aimed it at Elena. “Fine. I’ll show you.”

The first shot rang out like a crack of thunder. Elena crumpled forward, her body hitting the table as a red stain spread across her chest. Lucy screamed, stumbling out of her chair and falling to the floor.

The café descended into chaos, but I wasn’t finished. The man with the newspaper, the barista behind the counter, the woman clutching her phone as she dialed for help—they had all been watching me too. They all had to feel it.

The next shot shattered the glass pastry case. Another followed, and another, until the screams were drowned out by the deafening roar of gunfire. Blood splattered the walls, pooling on the floor, mingling with the faint scent of coffee.

When the room finally fell silent, I stood in the center of the carnage, my chest heaving. Around me, bodies lay scattered like broken dolls. I walked back to my corner table, setting the gun down beside the notebook. My hands were steady now as I picked up the pen.

“They finally stopped talking about me,” I wrote.

Outside, the rain continued to fall, and in the distance, the wail of sirens grew louder. They were coming for me. Of course they were.

But it didn’t matter.

They would never forget me now.