Don't Look Back

Have you ever had that feeling that someone is watching you? Like when you’re walking alone at night or when you’re at home by yourself? When you feel if you turn around, someone will be standing there? That’s what I feel like right now. I feel as if there are a million eyes fixated on me, watching my every more. Paranoid. That’s all I am, right?

            But I hear footsteps, heavy but faint at the same time. Only there is nothing there. I keep walking faster and farther. Only I know there is nothing there, so why am I worrying?

            My biggest fear, the one thing that scares me the most, is the unknown. The fear of the unknown. It’s not knowing what is hiding in the dark, lurking in every shadow. I used to believe the darkness was good, I used to think of it as a place to hide, away from everything. But now I know, it’s not me who is going to be hiding in the dark, but someone else, watching, hidden away and unseen by everyone else.

            I walked around the corner of an old building, turning into an alleyway. The alley was a short cut to my house, it saves me a few minutes. But the alley was dark and quiet. Maybe too quiet.

            I could hear noises from behind me. Both loud and quiet ones. All of them scare me. I can’t see whatever it is, but I can definitely hear it, them. I can hear breathing, but not just my own. Someone else is here. Watching me.

            I can feel my neck warming up and the sound of someone breathing in my ear. I turned around to see what was behind me. But when I looked, no one was there. I kept looking around for the source of my fear. But whatever it was, it wasn't there anymore. Nothing was there. Was I just being paranoid?

            Breathing deeply, I started to walk down the alley again. Only to have the warmth on my neck to return, but the breaths were now coming as a sigh. Slow and steady. I spun around again, prepared to see nothing. But what I saw took me by surprise. On the wall in front of me, the one that was plain only moments ago, now had red smeared across it. I walked closer, curious to what it was. Only to find it wasn’t just random bits of red. But on the wall was words. I reached forward and touched the letters. When I pulled my hand away, the red liquid from the wall dripped down from the tips of my fingers, that when I realized something. It was blood. I stepped back to get a better look at the wall, to figure out what was scrawled across it. “Don’t look back…”

            My hands started feeling wet, they were getting sweaty, and my breath, it stayed in my throat, unwilling to let me breathe. And I did exactly what the words told me not to do. I looked back. What I saw was far worse than my fear of the unknown. Standing behind me, was a man half hidden within the shadows. He stood no less than five feet away from me. And in his hand, was a knife.

            Covered in blood.