By the time I get back behind the bar, with fingers tingling and adrenaline riding just under my skin, the crowd has thinned. Last call hits, and like cockroaches under fluorescent light, they scatter. Dragana gives me a look and doesn’t ask. She knows better. She is already flipping chairs on tables like we didn’t just nearly have a goddamn situation.
I walk home through the rain with my keys clutched like brass knuckles in my coat pocket. The streets are slick, shadows bending in ways that make me want to keep looking over my shoulder. I don’t. I keep my head down and my pace steady.
I’ve been prey before. Never again.
My apartment is a shoebox on the fifth floor. Too many stairs. Not enough insulation. The kind of place you rent when you’ve got no family and no backup plan. Yet it’s mine. I kick off my boots, shrug off my damp jacket, and head straight for the sketchbook waiting on the coffee table.
It’s always been like this. The only way I know how to shake off the static is to draw it out. The noise. The chaos. The things I can’t put words to.
When I sit down and open the page, it’s already full with a haunting portrait of a man I don’t know, or at least I don’t think I do…
I don’t remember sketching it. Not even a little.
Eyes. These aren’t just generic eyes. Sharp. Piercing. Too real. Toofamiliar.
My skin prickles. I don’t know who they belong to, yet I know this: I’ve seen them before.
Somewhere in my dreams.
And now they’re staring back at me from the page…watching.
Waiting.
I stare at the sketch like it’s somehow going to blink.
The page is still warm under my fingertips, like it was only just finished. I haven’t picked up a pencil since yesterday, when I drew a broken wine glass and half a cigarette. Not this.
Nothim.
The eyes are too detailed. Every line, every glint of light reflected in the irises, like I saw them up close. One of them is slightly narrower than the other, the way someone looks when they’re calculating something. The pupils are pinprick sharp. The lashes? Too precise to be a dream.
Except I’ve never seen those eyes. I would remember.
I haven’t slept well in years. Dreams come in flashes. Fragments. Faces I’ve never seen doing things I don’t understand. Half the time, I wake up tangled in sweat-soaked sheets with ink on my fingers. This? This is different. This isn’t dream weird. This isreallyweird.
I flip the page, half expecting the rest of the face to follow, and it’s just white space. Blank. Like he’s hiding.
“Great,” I mutter. “Now I’m hauntedandsleep-sketching.”
I throw the sketchbook onto the couch and head to the kitchen. Open the fridge. It hums like it’s on its last leg, same as the ice machine. I grab the last beer, pop the cap, and take a long pull. It’s warm and flat. Doesn’t matter. Still numbs the edge.
I lean against the counter and stare out of the kitchen window. The city looks hollow from up here. Lights flicker. A siren wails in the distance. Rain snakes down the glass in rivulets like it’s trying to claw its way inside.
I swear I see something move across the street. Just a flicker in the shadows, I blink and it’s gone.
My brain’s short-circuiting. That guy in the hallway. The sketch. The feeling I’ve had all night, like I’m being watched. Followed. Tracked.
Paranoia is a hell of a drug. Instinct? Instinct doesn’t lie.
I finish the beer, chuck it in the sink, and grab my pencil again. If I’m already cracked wide open, I might as well bleed on paper.
I start drawing without thinking. The pencil moves like it has its own agenda. Lines curve. Shapes form. Not another face or eyes this time, but…something else.
A spiral. No, a knot. Wait…no, not quite. It loops in on itself like a maze, and there’s a center. I press harder. Darken it. At the core, something juts downward. A blade.
I sit back. The symbol pulses behind my eyes.
I’ve never seen it before, but Iknowit. Like it’s carved into some part of me I can’t reach.
