The first dose had to disappear. Not just into his body, but into his day.
A moment so ordinary it would never earn suspicion. A second that would dissolve the instant it passed.
I chose the morning as he always walked the same route, past the café, past the bus stop, past the narrow lane where the newspaper vendor stacked unsold copies against a rusted pole. Routine is a gift. People think habits protect them. They don't realize habits make them predictable.
I arrived earlier than him, bought a paper I didn't need, folded it carefully, then replaced it, not on the rack, not with the others.
I slid it halfway out of a crate beside the path...angled just enough that the headline would catch the eye of anyone walking past without looking for it.
Violence is loud, even on paper.
BODY FOUND IN INDUSTRIAL ZONE: POLICE INVESTIGATING BRUTAL KILLING
Bold letters. Stark image. No mercy. I stepped back...Waited...
He came right on time.
He didn't stop.
That was important because stopping would mean choice.
Instead, his eyes caught the words without permission. His steps faltered, barely. His grip tightened on the strap of his bag. His jaw set, as if his body had noticed danger before his mind could argue it away.
The paper stayed behind him.
The words didn't.
The drug entered later.
Subtle.
Careless.
All I had to do was pass behind him once. A shared space. A moment of distraction. A surface everyone touched, and no one questioned.
That was all it took. A drop slipped into his drink. Colorless. Tasteless. Gone.
I didn't watch him drink it.
That part didn't matter.
What mattered was what came next.
Control doesn't need witnesses.
By afternoon, I laid the second stone.
I chose the neighbor carefully.
Someone already inclined to talk. Someone who complained about weather, rent, noise...someone whose voice blended naturally into the background of the building.
I didn't tell her to lie, I just gave her something to talk about.
A story framed as concern. "People should know," I said. "It's not safe." She did the rest herself.
That evening, she stood by the stairs as he came in, voice pitched just high enough to travel.
"It's awful," she said to another tenant. "Another cat found dead. Third one. Same area." A pause.
"I swear, something's wrong around here."
He stopped.
This time, he couldn't help it.
Just for a second...his foot hovering mid-step, breath shallow, like his body was waiting for instructions.
Then he moved again.
But slower.
So much slower.
The drug had begun to loosen the hinges.
Night did the rest.
That's when the mind stops pretending it's in control.
In the dark, thoughts wander. Memories overlap. Fear stops knocking and simply lets itself in.
The pieces from the day began to drift toward each other.
The headline.
The voice on the stairwell.
The alley he passed every night.
The sound of something scraping metal in the distance.
Not visions.
Not yet.
Just connections.
The human brain hates randomness. It will invent meaning rather than sit with uncertainty.
I let him invent.
Near midnight, I moved again.
Quiet.
Deliberate.
I chose a stray cat no one would remember and a place close enough to be seen...but not clearly. Under a flickering streetlight. In a pocket of shadow that blurred edges and invited imagination to finish the shape.
When I was done, I left the body where morning would find it.
And where he would see it first.
He stood at his window for a long time.
I watched from across the street as his silhouette stiffened. As his hand rose to his mouth. As his knees nearly gave.
He didn't know what he was seeing.
Ahhh...That was the beauty of it.
His mind rushed to explain the fear he'd felt hours earlier. The unease. The tightening chest. The sense that something was coming.
Now it had.
Coincidence, he would tell himself.
Just coincidence.
But the seed had already taken root.
That night, he didn't sleep.
And neither did I.
The first thread was woven.
Tomorrow, I would add another.
And soon, the pattern would be all he could see.