I was doing my homework on my computer while sprawled out on my bed. There was a soft tap on my door.
Curious, I got up and opened it. The boy was standing there. My shadow, my stalker. He had made contact with me twice now today. This was all new. I was confused about what created this change. Also about how he had gotten into my house. But he did not seem to be concerned about trespassing.
“What are you doing here? How did you get into my house?” I peppered him with questions.
“I need to talk to you” he said.
“Fine. It better be important.” I moved aside, unblocking the door. He stepped in and closed the door.
“I want you to come with me Friday. It’s important.”
“How important? I’ve all ready got plans, so it’s too bad.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to say this but you must come with me. No other option.”
“Sorry. Your outta luck. No can do. I’ve already made plans this weekend and you can’t break them.”
“We will see about that. Oh and by the way, your front door is unlocked.” he turned on his heals and left the room, the door swinging shut behind him.
I took a deep breath. What was with people lately. I rolled my eyes, closed the laptop, rolled over and soon fell asleep.
Vivid pictures followed me. I knew they were dreams, but for the first time, instead of being comforted by this figure, I was scared. Jerking awake, I rolled over too scared to look for my normally comforting stalker, also to scared to fall back asleep. I watched the clock, waiting for an acceptable time to wake up. By 3:45 I gave up and wandered into the bathroom and tried to wash the images away with the hot water.
I emerged from the bathroom with a cloud of steam. I hopped up the stairs and headed to the kitchen. My house was silent, not much of a surprise. My mother always stayed out late partying and always came home it the wee morning hours. Or not at all, depending on the day. I checked the driveway on the way to the kitchen, no car. She must have still been out. I poured myself a bowl of cereal and sat on the couch to eat it. As I was finishing I heard foot steps approaching. I was surprised, figuring my mother had been dropped off, but she never was up this early. I turned to the doorway and screamed. It was not my mother standing there, but in fact, my stalker.
“What are you doing here? Why are you at my house, again?”
“You need to come with me. It’s for your own good.”
“No. You need to get out of my house. Stop following me. Stop stalking me. Get out of my house. I’m gonna call the cops.”
“Little good that would do you.” he muttered. Then clearly “listen to me. Please. It’s for your own good. I’m trying to help. You should listen to my warnings. If you don’t want to listen to me you don’t have to. But I think you should. Bad things are going to happen. I’m trying to help you avoid it. Please take me seriously. I can save you. I can help you.”
“You’re just trying to get me to go with me. Scaring me into it. Leave me alone. Just leave.”
“Fine. But don’t expect me to be there when you need me.”
“Good. Cuz I’m never gonna need you.”
He spun on his heels and left the room. I waited until I heard the front door bang shut. I got up and locked it. Wandering down the stairs I went to my room and got ready for the day. Pulling the shade to check the weather I realized with horror that someone had slit my screen. Something must interfered though, because it was only half way split. And lying on the ground was a shining silver, was a knife.
I shuttered. He was trying to scare me into going with him. That had to be it. There was no other explanation. It seems like there are better ways to freak me out then to try to break into my house. I wondered when he found time to do it without me noticing. I hurried to get out of there. I couldn’t be myself anymore. I snuck to my car, backed down the driveway, and headed to school.
The parking lot was practically empty. There were a few cars here and there. I pulled into my typical parking spot, and decided to stay in the car for a while to wait for the parking lot to populate a little bit more.
The passenger door open, I jumped as Colton slid into my car.
“What’s up? Why so jumpy?”
“You scared me.” I was hesitant to tell him the story of this morning.
“Lame. I do this everyday. You’ve been fine with it. Something is up.”
“Nothing is wrong! Why does everyone think that something is wrong?”
“Sure, sure.” he rolled his eyes. “Let’s go.”
We wandered into the school building as the bell rang. I headed to my first hour to work my way slowly through my day. In my opinion Thursdays are the slowest days.
It dragged. After what seemed like hours and hours I finally, finally got home. My mother was still not home. Typical. But I kind of wished she was. Another human being around would have been nice. But on a positive note, I had not seen my stalker today. Maybe he got the hint and took a hike.
I sighed and relaxed. My imagination had been going crazy. Things were bubbling out of control, unsure of reality compare to images. My exhausted mind slipped into dreaming. And for the first time in three weeks I slept completely peacefully

I woke up and glanced at the time. It was 45 minutes past my normal time I was up. I was still crumpled in the same place, on the couch as I had fallen asleep early the day before. I hurriedly got up and showered quickly. I rushed and made it to school right as the bell rang. What a way to start my Friday. I rushed to my first hour, not having time to stop and talk to anyone. The day flew by, not giving me time to stop and think at all. Every thing seemed relatively normal. No sign of my stalker or the horrors that have haunted me the last little while. I was excited for the end of the day. Colton met me at my locker. Hand in hand we walked to his car.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see. It’s a surprise”

This was a mildly irritating answer seeing I liked to have everything planned. “Do you even have a plan?”

“Yah. I do. It’s just a surprise. Come on. Just go with it.”

“Ok I will.” It was silent after that. Not a bad silent, just a comfortable one. As we were pulling out of the parking lot I caught a glimpse of the one person I hoped not to see. My stalker, staring at me intently and slightly shaking his head, no. That irritated me greatly. I wished he would leave me be. Having a solid night sleep last night, the first night he left me just solidified this irritated-ness. It must all be connected, some how. He was responsible, I had a feeling.

The car jerked to a stop, breaking my thoughts. I looked around. We were at a small dirt parking lot at the head of a trail. A place I had never seen before. Dark, murky light was filtering through the dark trees.it all held a slightly creepiness to it. The parking lot was empty beside one other car.

“What are we doing here?”

“You’ll see. Remember, it’s a surprise. Be patient.” He pulled a dark back pack of the trunk and slammed it shut. Slinging on the back pack, he grabbed my hand, “let’s walk.”

He pulled me along the trail, it was dimly light and the ground was soggy and squished as we stepped. We walked in silence quite a ways. There were no other signs of life, besides a bug here or there.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on yet?” I was getting quite annoyed.

“No. Stop whining. We’re almost there.” His tone was rough.
We stayed walking in silence, but now it was an angrier awkward silence, not the normal comfortable silence. After what seemed like hours, but could have only been a few minutes I had no way to tell time, we veered off the path into the thickness of the woods. The walking was a lot tougher and took a lot longer. Finally we ventured into a clearing. There was not way to find it if you did not know it was there, but it was by a small stream and the grass was lush. The sun shone down into it, illumining it in the darkness surrounding it.

“How did you know it was there?” I asked.

“A friend showed me it. No one else knows about it. I though it would be a good place for us to go.”

Colton opened his backpack a pulled out a sheet, laying it across the wet grass. On top of it he placed a few sandwiches and a bottle of water. “We’re gonna have a picnic. Kay?”

“Sounds great by me.” I sat down next to him on the blanket and stretched out my legs in the sun.



After eating we both sat absorbing the suns ray, but very few words passed between us. We mostly just sat, in each other’s company, not always had there been silence. This silence between was not completely unordinary; the last few days or weeks it had become a normal. Colton had become more reclusive the last few weeks. I didn’t mind; the silence wasn’t awkward.



I laid down, just sitting was causing my sleeplessness to catch up with me, guess I needed more than one night of good sleep. My eyes drifted close. The sun felt so good warming my eyelids. I felt Colton’s hand press into mine; I moved it so my fingers were laced with his. I heard him sigh. All the sleeplessness caught me and I was gone.



I awoke to a sharp pain. The hand that was once intertwined with mine had slid up my wrist and now was holding me pinned to the ground. He had rolled to have me completely pinned and helpless. Kissing my collar bone was the silver handled knife, not deep yet, and a thin trail of blood was trickling down my chest; warm and sticky. I struggled and felt the knife dig deeper, slicing my flesh, bringing a sharp pain and a cry to my lips. The blood flow increased, staining the front of my shirt.
I felt him drag it upwards, getting closer and closer to my throat, I let out a blood curdling scream, but of course no one heard it, because we were in the middle of no where with no one around. A sickening snap came from my wrist, but I didn’t feel anything.
“I am going to kill you.” his voice was low and angry.
“No. Don’t do that. Let’s talk.”
“No time for talking. That will not work you done.” he raised the knife and moved it so the blade was sitting in the soft part of my neck. He pressed, slightly, enough to hurt me but not enough to kill me. He was going to make this as long, drawn out and painful as possible. His knees were heavy against my ribs; I could feel them crushing me.

A branch snapped close by our opening, Colton got nervous, I could tell by the way he shifted his vision. He pulled the knife back and pushed it forwards with all the force he could muster. As I felt it bite into my skin all of Colton’s weight was gone off me. I figured it was me dying, but as I looked around, my vision foggy from all the blood I had lost, I saw another figure. Maybe I was just hallucinating and I was starting to fight of blacking out. But Colton was no longer on top of me and the knife was no longer biting me. What I saw was the face of my stalker, right before the darkness took over and I lost all sight of everything.

I awoke to strange sounding beeps and chugs. What ever was underneath me was hard and uncomfortable. Breathing hurt. My left wrist was incased in plaster. I opened my eyes to the scene of a pale, washed out hospital room. It was empty, besides me of course. I wondered if any one even knew I was here. There was a news paper sitting by my head, so I picked it up. The front page had Colton’s picture on it. And was also captioned “High Schoolers Attacked”, reading into the article it was about how Colton got attacked and killed by a wild bear while on hike. It also mentions my name and the fact that I was there, but escaped.
I though about this story. It did not connect with what was flowing through my head, but also did I know what I was thinking about, after all that happened. Maybe that was the truth. I set the paper down.
“You doing ok?”
The voice made me gasp. I looked towards the foot of my bed. It was my stalker. “I’m quite confused.”
“That’s ok. You should be. I’m sorry about his death. I didn’t really see another way though.”
“I figured the whole bear story was fiction.”


“Yah. Easiest way.”
“You shouldn’t have. You should have let it go through a trial. You couldn’t have got into trouble.”
“Some things are just too hard to explain.”
“How did you know?”
“Know what?’
“Where I was. That I needed you.”
“I told you that you would. Some things you just know.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Shhh. I’ve got to go. Someone is coming.” as he said that the door opened and Colton’s parents walked it. He waved and vanished from my sight.
“Hey, sweetie. How are you doing?”
“I’m ok. Really rattled. How are you doing?”
“About to be expected. It’s a lot of shock to go through. We’re glad you are ok though.”
“Yah. I’m really...” My sentence was interrupted by a yawn.
Colton’s parents laughed. “We’ll leave so you can rest. Feel better.”
The room was empty again, leaving me to think.

But not for long. I heard a laugh. The boy, my stalker appeared in my vision again.

“How do you do that?”


“Do what?”

“Appear like that.”

“I don’t just ‘appear’. Your on a lot of drugs, dear.”

“I don’t think so. I think our hiding something.”

“Again, you are on a lot of drugs. You lost a lot of blood and you have several broken bones, not to mention the gaps in your neck. You’re not thinking straight.”

Something occurred to me, “How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“Where we were. What was happening.”

“I’m not stupid. I could see it coming. I could predict it happening.”

“Well. How did you know? Like when and where? That spot was not known of.”

He just smiled.

“You are not helping you know.”

“Sshhhh. Hear the footsteps? Someone else is coming. Probably a nurse. My time here is done. I will not be seeing you again. Good bye.”

As the door opened I looked over at him. He had a slight glow. He began to dissolve, disappearing into the background.