Brownout

The air conditioner was out again.

Hadley didn’t know why she bothered. Even when it sputtered to life, it only wheezed lukewarm air into the room. Now, sweat trickled down her back, soaking her shirt and gluing her spine to the chair.

She hated the heat. Feared it.

The air was thick and damp—walls, skin, breath. Every inhale felt like swallowing steam.

Another heatwave.

She leaned back, peeled herself from the chair’s fabric, and stared at the ceiling.

There was no escaping it. Not in this city. Not in this basement.

But winter would come. It always did.

And with the cold came quiet. Because when the cold returned, the Red-Eyed Man slept.

Or so she hoped.

She’d moved down here to disappear. The basement had stayed dark and cool—once. Her last place had been a condo tower: central air, sunlit views, and wide-open windows. But it exposed her too much. Too easy to be seen. Too easy to be found.

Here, she lived like a mole. Curtains drawn. Lights off. Electronics unplugged—every heat source cut off. Survival by subtraction.

The hotter it got, the more likely he would come.

She shivered despite the heat.

He always came in the heat. First, in dreams, whispering to her while the world slept. Not threats. Promises. Of pain. Of ruin.

The hospitals hadn’t helped. White coats, white lights, locked doors. Meds that dulled her—but didn’t silence him.

He came anyway.

Above her, something scraped—chair legs dragging.

She froze. Listening. Every nerve was vibrating.

The neighbours were like ghosts. She paid them rent once a month. Otherwise, they didn’t exist. Night shift people. Vampire people. She preferred it.

Boots. Heeled. Click. Pause. Click. Crossing overhead.

She shook her head. “No.”

Her hand flew to her mouth, as if she could swallow the word back down.

She dropped from the chair. Eyes fixed on the ceiling—then the fridge.

She crawled across the linoleum, slow and flat. The floor was cool against her cheek. Every movement thudded in her skull. Even silence was loud.

Click. Click. Pause.

It was listening.

Click. Click.

She reached the fridge.

Click.

The boots had reached the top of the basement stairs—the ones that led to the landlord’s suite.

She pulled herself up, fingers closing on the freezer handle.

Knock.

She stopped breathing.

Knock. Knock.

Then a soft click. And silence—the kind that follows a dying motor. Silence of things gone still.

Brownout.

“No, no, no,” she whispered—but it thundered in her ears.

She wrenched the freezer open. Still cold. Still stocked. Ice trays stacked high.

She grabbed one and pressed it to her chest. The cold bit deep.

“Hadleyyyy.”

The voice oozed down the stairs, syrup-slow. The same voice that haunted her sleep. That lived behind her eyes.

Her name echoed inside her like a bell.

It had found her. Again.

She dumped the tray into her shirt, clawing for more cubes.

Click. Click. Heels on the stairs. Slow, deliberate.

The door was locked. Bolted. Barred.

It shouldn’t be possible.

Click.

The heat surged. Sudden. Suffocating. Like something had opened its mouth beneath her.

Water ran down her skin in rivulets. The ice was already melting.

She shoved more trays under her arms, clutching them to her body.

“It’s time, my dear.”

She scuttled backward, hands sliding in sweat and meltwater. Her spine hit the counter.

Someone was crying—mumbling. It might have been her.

Click. Click.

The ice was gone. Just puddles now.

She pressed herself against the cabinet. Its handles dug into her ribs. She didn’t feel it. Not with the heat so close.

A shadow stood at the base of the stairs.

Tall. Unmoving. Like a statue carved from ash and ember.

“Now, now, Hadleyyyy.” His voice rumbled.

“There’s no need to cry.”

She screamed.

But nothing came out.

She lunged forward, crawling—slipping across the slick tiles—toward the door, the stairwell, the heat.

“We have so much to do.”

The voice was closer now.

She’d done enough. Endured enough. There was nothing left to give.

She didn’t look back.

Just get out.

She had to get away.

Her hand closed on the doorknob.

It burned—like gripping the eye of a stove.

She yelped and recoiled.

“They don’t see you.”

They never had. Not her mother, who whispered answers to invisible people. Not her friends. Not anyone.

“But I do.”

Her palm screamed. She wrapped it in her shirt, gritted her teeth, and yanked.

The heat punched through the fabric, searing her.

The door twisted. Turned.

She collapsed in the stairwell. Concrete beneath her. Darkness behind. Heat above.

She crawled up the steps, her hand blazing.

Then the lawn.

She staggered onto the brittle, browned grass and collapsed.

“And we will do great things,” the voice whispered in her ear.

But the shadow still waited at the bottom of the stairs. Watching her with Red Eyes that didn’t blink.

Sirens, faint. She lay still. The grass pricked her skin—smoke in her lungs.

She sat up.

The house was burning. The house exhaled smoke. In it, a figure congealed—red-eyed. Watching.

The sirens were growing closer. Figures around the neighbourhood. Watching.

Hadley pushed herself up, cradling her burned hand. The pain was distant, though present, like a dream.

Figures in the haze. One stepped toward her. Mouth moving. Muffled, like a dream. Like the sound was underwater—or far away.

The heat from the fire was growing as if it were alive. Consuming.

She stumbled away, brushing off the hands that reached for her.

They couldn’t help. Not with this. Not with him.

“Not again.”

Limping to the sidewalk, she felt their eyes on her—but no one moved. She scanned the street—then turned her back to the sirens.

Sweat trickled down her spine and beaded on her brow. The sun was merciless.

She’d always hated the heat. It brought out the worst in her—and worse still in him.

“We’re just getting started,” the voice whispered behind her.

She didn’t look back. He wasn’t there. Not yet.

But the heat was rising.