The Enemy of My Enemy

Noah Harper nearly tripped over the brown box as he stepped onto his front porch that muggy afternoon. It was unmarked, plain, and unassuming—a cardboard rectangle set squarely in front of his door like it belonged there. 

Frowning, he glanced up and down the quiet cul-de-sac, as if expecting a mischievous neighbor or delivery driver to pop out and yell “Surprise!” But no one was there. The heat of late summer had driven everyone indoors. The cicadas screamed endlessly, their drone vibrating in Noah’s ears. Shifting uneasily, he crouched and picked up the package. It was light—so light it was almost like lifting an empty box—and yet the weight of something small rolled to one side inside. A single scrawl of red ink across the top read: “Noah Harper.” 

No address. No sender. Just his name.

He carried it into the house, toeing the door shut behind him. Sweat pricked his neck as he set the box on the kitchen table, the air conditioning unable to banish his unease. 

“Noah, you’re being ridiculous,” he muttered, shaking off a creeping sense of dread. It’s just some junk mail, some weird product from an online ad. Right? 

His hands hovered over the lid before he peeled back the packing tape. The cardboard flaps groaned open.

Inside, nestled in crumpled black tissue paper, lay a voodoo doll. 

Noah froze. A strange, sick chill clawed up his spine.

The doll was simple and crude, made of beige cloth stitched together roughly with black thread. Its limbs dangled limply at odd angles. Black buttons served as uneven, soulless eyes, and a thin slash of red thread had been drawn across its face to serve as a mouth.

Clutched against the doll’s head was a clump of hair—tangled, matted curls, dark brown, held there by what looked like more thread tied around its temples.  

Noah recognized those hairs. He knew them.

He’d seen that exact curl pattern and shade of coffee-brown everywhere in his life. On shirts. On the backs of chairs. On the heads of interns on terrible days at the office. 

No, it couldn’t be— 

His breath came sharper now, erratic.  

He grabbed the doll, holding it at eye level, staring at the clump. “No way,” he muttered under his breath, his voice strangled. But Noah knew. He loathed those cursed curls. Knew who owned them, whose mocking laughter always felt like sandpaper grating his mind. 

Logan Fiske. 

The name alone was enough to make Noah’s fists curl, his jaw clench. He pictured Logan perfectly: the perpetual smirk twisting that cherubic face, the sharp green eyes that burned with condescension. A CEO’s son, Logan Fiske oozed arrogance with every breath. He was Noah’s exact opposite at work—while Noah hustled for promotions, Logan simply existed and things happened. Raises. Corner offices. Power. 

And Logan Fiske knew exactly how to needle Noah about it. “Better luck next quarter, buddy.”

“This industry’s not for everyone, huh?” 

Noah stared at the doll. His shaking fingers barely noticed the note that had fallen into his lap. 

It was handwritten in precise lettering, ink that had a faint glimmer to it, as though it had been written with intense purpose. 

“Chanakya once said, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ 

We have a common enemy. 

May this gift be the sign of a new friendship. 

Signed, a friend.” 

Noah reread the note twice, a phantom heartbeat pounding behind his ears. 

The words tumbled in his brain: enemy of my enemy. Common enemy. 

He stared again at the voodoo doll. What the hell was someone implying? Who sent this? And what did they want? 

A cynical chuckle bubbled to his lips, trying to burn off the anxiety. “Great. Someone’s playing games now.” 

And yet—he glanced back to the hair, tied to the doll. It was so specific. So deliberate. Why Logan Fiske? Why him, of all people? Did someone else hate Logan enough to involve Noah? 

“The enemy of my enemy.”

That phrase rolled through his mind all evening as he placed the voodoo doll back into its box and shoved it deep into the back of his closet. Out of sight, out of mind—or so he told himself. Yet, long after he climbed into bed that night, the doll haunted him. Every time he closed his eyes, Logan Fiske’s smug face floated in his vision, winking.

“Better luck next time, Harper.”

The next morning was uneventful. Noah commuted to work, groggy from the lack of sleep. Everything at the office was as typical as ever. 

Until Logan Fiske didn’t show up. 

The usual meeting went on without him, and whispers quickly circulated that Logan had called in sick. Noah almost didn’t care—why would he? But as he sat at his desk, a hollow feeling gnawed at the edge of his awareness.

Sick. 

Noah excused himself, feigning a stomach bug. He had to go home. He glanced toward the closet in his bedroom. Was it coincidence? Bad luck? Whatever it was, he couldn’t let it affect him like this. He had a job to do. He had to get back to work. Besides, shouldn’t he have felt happy about all this?

Back at work, Noah kept thinking about these strange events. Logan never got sick—he was one of those people. And here he was, mysteriously absent, a day after the strangest package Noah had ever received arrived. 

By lunchtime, Noah couldn’t focus. A gnawing restlessness settled into his mind, like an itch he couldn’t scratch. He couldn’t stop picturing the box. The doll. Logan’s absence. That damn note.

What if there was something to this voodoo business? What if— 

“Stop,” Noah said out loud, startling his coworker sitting across the desk.

Still, the thought lingered like smoke. 

When Noah returned home for the second time that day, he couldn’t help himself. He went straight to the back of the closet. 

He pulled the box free, his hands trembling slightly as he pulled the doll out and set it onto the kitchen table. It sat there—silent, lifeless—except those stupid hairs didn’t look quite so harmless now. 

“I don’t believe in this garbage,” he muttered, but his chest ached, as if he was lying to himself. His thumb brushed one of the doll’s uneven button eyes.

Experimentation. That’s all he’d do. Just test it.

He didn’t grab pins, because that would have been insane, right? Instead, Noah thought. Concentrated. He pictured Logan Fiske, his perfect suits, his tailored laugh. Then, he flicked the doll lightly on the shoulder. 

Two hours later, Noah’s coworker sent him a text. “Dude, guess who dislocated his shoulder falling down the stairs today? Fiske.” 

Noah dropped his phone. 

Three days passed. Logan hadn’t returned to work. 

The whispers were louder now. “Shoulder injury? Fever? Someone said he broke his nose, too.”

Noah hadn’t touched the doll since the day he experimented with it, and yet the silence gnawed at him. He didn’t sleep much. Every bump, every shadow inside the house seemed heavier now, as though unseen eyes were tracking his every move. 

The note had implied so much and explained nothing. Who had sent it? What were their intentions? 

A part of Noah began to question his involvement in all of it, yet another darker part, tucked away in his brain’s corners, was thrilled. He thought of every humiliation, every eye roll, every denied opportunity. Logan Fiske had deserved this for years. 

But the strange coincidences… they were piling up. 

On the fifth day, the doorbell rang. Noah startled awake from his fog and yanked open the door. No one was there. Just another brown box sitting innocently on the step. 

This one, unlike before, was heavier. There was no note. 

Inside sat another doll—similar in style, but larger, thicker. Its hair, golden-blonde and straight, was unmistakably Noah’s. 

His heart stopped. 

The air in the house turned icy.

Noah dropped the box onto the table, stumbling backward, as though burned. 

This—this couldn’t be. He ran his hands through his hair on reflex, his mind racing. Who would even have his hair?

The weight of paranoia pressed on him like a lead blanket. Someone out there had his likeness. His doll. His mind reeled back to Logan—Logan, who was suffering. What if Logan had received his own box days earlier? 

“No,” Noah whispered. He couldn’t think straight. Sweat rolled from his temple as he stepped closer to the doll.

The enemy of my enemy… 

“What do you want?” he choked into the silence. “Who are you? What are you?” 

His doorbell rang again.

This time, when Noah opened the door, no one stood there. Nothing sat on the porch—no box, no sign of any movement at all.

The air outside was still, suffocating.

As Noah shut the door behind him, a soft laugh echoed faintly, impossibly, from somewhere in the house.