He always slept with the window cracked open.
It was a habit he picked up in college and never dropped. Something about the sound of the outside world — cars passing, wind, the occasional dog barking at nothing — made sleeping easier. Like a reminder that life was still going on out there and he could just... pause for a while.
His name was Ethan. Twenty-six. Worked a boring data entry job he kept telling himself was temporary. Lived alone in a one bedroom apartment on the third floor of a building that smelled like cigarettes and old carpet. It wasn't much but it was his and that counted for something.
He'd had a normal day. Ate leftover rice, watched something on his phone until his eyes got heavy, then turned over and fell asleep around eleven-thirty.
He didn't think about her before he slept.
He probably should have.
Her name was Mara.
They'd met eight months ago at a bookstore. She bumped into him, he helped pick up her books, they talked for maybe fifteen minutes about nothing important and then went their separate ways. He thought that was it. Just one of those small forgettable moments people collect without meaning to.
But she remembered. More than remembered.
The messages started two weeks after. First on social media, normal enough, maybe a little too frequent. Then his number somehow, he still didn't know how she got it. Then the calls. Then the showing up outside his job. Then the letter slipped under his door that was six pages long and talked about them like they had a whole history together that existed only in her head.
He filed a report. Twice. Nothing much came of it.
His friend Marcus told him to move. His coworker Diane told him to get a restraining order. His mother told him to come stay with her for a while.
He kept saying he'd handle it. Kept thinking it would just stop on its own. That she'd eventually realize whatever she thought this was, it wasn't real.
He was wrong about that.
He woke up because something hurt.
That was the first thing. Not a sound, not a feeling of being watched, just — pain. Deep and wrong and centered in his chest like something had reached inside him and grabbed.
His eyes opened slow.
The room was dark except for the streetlight coming through the cracked window and in that dim grey light he saw her sitting on top of him, knees on either side of his stomach, one hand pressing down on the handle of the knife she had buried into his chest.
Mara.
Her hair was loose. She was wearing the same green jacket she always wore, the one with the broken zipper. Her eyes were wide and wet and she was smiling — not a cruel smile exactly, more like the smile of someone who had finally finished something they'd been working on for a long time.
He opened his mouth. Nothing came out right away. His lungs weren't cooperating.
"Shh," she said softly. Like she was comforting him.
He tried to move his arms. They felt heavy. Wrong. His fingers found the bedsheet and gripped it but that was about all.
"I thought about it for a long time," she said. Her voice was calm. Gentle almost. That was the part that didn't make sense, how gentle her voice sounded. "You were going to leave. I could feel it. People always leave when you give them the chance."
He looked at the knife. Looked at her hand on the handle. His chest felt like it was collapsing inward, slow and steady.
This is real, he thought. This is actually happening.
"This way," Mara continued, tilting her head slightly, "we'll always be together. You understand that right? It's not an ending. It's the opposite."
He wanted to say something. Wanted to tell her she was insane, wanted to scream, wanted to beg, wanted to do anything except just lie there staring up at her. But his body wasn't listening anymore. His fingers loosened on the bedsheet on their own.
The streetlight through the window caught the tears on her cheeks.
She was crying. Still smiling, but crying.
She actually believes it, was the last coherent thought he had. She actually thinks this is something good.
The pain started pulling back after that. Not because it got better — more like he was moving away from it, like the distance between him and his own body was growing by the second. The ceiling looked further away. The sound of the cars outside got muffled and then quieter and then almost like a memory of a sound rather than a real one.
He thought about the window. How he'd cracked it open before going to bed.
The night air coming through it smelled like rain.
He thought — briefly, stupidly — that he hoped someone would water his plants.
Then there was nothing....