A Twisted Tale Chapter 1: 101 I see you, a twilight fanfic

Authors note and disclaimer at the bottom of the page...

Summary

A dark force who tries to claim what she believes she owns... a man who must face his worst fears... two people who must learn to trust each other in order to survive…. It's up to Bella to protect Edward from a vicious stalker threatening to make his life a living hell; an assignment that turns out to be a little more than she bargained for. A complicated situation that becomes even more ticklish when old sparks fly between the agent and her protégé.

Enjoy!

Chapter 1 - #101 - I see you

"Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood"*

*Friedrich Nietzsche (German classical Scholar, Philosopher and Critic of culture, 1844-1900.)

The first envelope…

This twisted little tale started one gray and soggy winter's day.

It began much like any other Sunday in Edward Cullen's life: he slept until noon, stumbled blindly into the kitchen for a much needed caffeine injection and then padded into his bathroom to get dressed and ready to spend an hour at the gym with his brother Emmett. So far nothing unusual, nothing indicating that this was going to be anything but a normal Sunday afternoon.

The workout session was rigorous as always. Edward suffered through it, mostly to prove that he was not a complete wuss. Emmett took great pleasure in pushing him to the point of total exhaustion. His freak of a brother could lift a car without breaking a sweat.

Before the hour was over Edward had cartoon birds chirping in small circles above his head. The birds kept him company for the better part of the walk home. Hungry, lightheaded and still somewhat shaky from the adrenaline rush he made a small detour to the grocery store to get a box of emergency donuts. Again, this was nothing unusual for a Sunday afternoon in the life of Edward Cullen.

When he finally returned to his studio apartment a considerable part of the day had already passed. The sigh he let out as he unlocked the door and stepped inside his home was a mixture of exasperation and contempt. It had been an exhausting few hours and he was looking forward to a hot shower, some clean clothes and above all, food.

He didn't know it yet but his day was about to take a turn of the most unpleasant kind.

Tossing his keys on the kitchen counter, he dug up a frozen burrito from his grocery bag and placed it in the microwave oven. While he waited for the food to heat up, he put the rest of the groceries away and began flipping through the mail that had piled up over the past week.

On first glance, it was the usual stuff; junk mail and a few bills. There was, however, one envelope that stood out from the rest. It was scarlet red and square shaped and looked like some fancy schmancy invitation of some sort. It had no return address, no stamp, no postmark, no nothing…. It was addressed simply to 'Edward' and had, by the looks of things, most likely been hand-delivered.

Puzzled, he tore the envelope open and pulled out the contents. A chill of foreboding ran down his spine as he realized what he was holding in his hands. Instead of a card or a letter there were photographs, not just any photographs; three very detailed close-ups of the five story-74' high 1940s-era brick building Edward had called his home for the last year and a half.

The first photo was of the main entrance, showing two people standing in the doorway talking. It was grainy, but still clear enough to make out all the necessary details. He recognized one of the silhouettes as himself and the other as the blond yoga instructor slash waitress slash neighbor from down the hall.

The second photograph was more of an area shot (think Google Map's street view feature), but hq enough that you could make out the license plates on the cars in the foreground… hq enough that you could read the letters printed on the back of Edward's sweatshirt as the camera had captured him stumbling home after what appeared to have been a wet night out in a rain-soaked NY.

The third and last photo was taken from a slightly different angel and showed the upper part of the facade of the building. The focus in the picture was on the southwest corner of the fifth floor, the very same corner where Edward's apartment was situated. Someone had used a red marker to make circles around each and every one of his three attic-like windows. His forth window, the half moon shaped one closest to his bed, even had a little red cross drawn over it.

As if that wasn't disturbing enough there was a bible quote scribbled across the bottom of the photo;

"Do not urge me to leave you or quit following you! Where you go, I will go. Where you live, I will live. Your people will become my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die. That is where I will be buried…" (1:16-17)

Actually, disturbing wasn't a strong enough word for it. All thoughts of food were quickly forgotten. Edward never got around to eat his burrito that Sunday afternoon… or any other food for that matter…

Before the day was over he had invested in new shutter blinds for all of his windows and an additional lock on his front door.

The second red envelope…

…was found tucked inside Edwards morning paper, on a windy spring day the first week of March. It contained a new stash of photos, similar type of tele-lens-spy-shots as the previous ones, only this time all of them were snapshots of Edward out and about in various locations and situations. There were photos of him entering a Starbucks coffee shop with frizzy wind-blown hair and a laptop tucked under his arm. The next few ones showed him outside his favorite Chinese takeout place and after that came a couple photos of him dressed in his business attire - tie, coat, slacks, fancy black shoes and white shirt - flagging down a cab with his guitar case in one hand and his briefcase in the other.

The handwritten message that accompanied the photos this time was short but well composed, laced with Nietzsche quotes and just a hint of underlying menace.

'I know where you hang, I drive by there often.

I spy on the circus that makes up your friends.
I won't be pushed aside, won't be ignored.
You ought to face our destiny with courage

because I will follow you until your conscience bleeds more freely than my heart.

All truths are for me soaked in blood.'

The third red envelope…

…was tucked under the windscreen wiper of his car. The forth one was pinned to the bulletin board by the elevator and the fifth was delivered to his apartment in a pizza box, marking the beginning of a never ending stream of intrusive photos and handwritten messages with promises of blood and pain.

And then there were the anonymous phone calls… dozens of them, always from random payphones or disposable cell phones or numbers with blocked caller IDs. Most of them were hang-ups or messages by a disguised voice.

The first few ones were innocuous enough, someone calling his mobile claiming to be his 'destiny', followed by series of strange but non-threatening text messages leading him to assume the caller was harmless.

After a while, however, the caller started saying nasty things like 'You'll bleed for me', 'I'll punish you till you behave', or 'I'll hurt you till you need me', all with a disguised cartoon-like voice. There was something about that voice that fazed Edward more than he wanted to admit. It sounded so young, but so evil, as though it was a demon in human form… it was unnerving. The frequency of these calls was alarming as well. Sometimes 20-30 a night for a week straight, then nothing for a few days, then back again.

After having changed his phone number thrice to no avail, he swallowed his pride and turned to the police for help. A police report was filed and an investigation initiated; an investigation that had (after two months) yet to result in anything remotely useful.

Nothing unusual had showed up on the surveillance tapes from the building, same thing with the paper trail. No usable fingerprints or other identifiers could be obtained from the envelopes, the photos or the many handwritten notes.

The digital trail, however, was a slightly different story. It was quickly determined that a majority of the phone calls (text messages included) were local of origin, meaning they had all been placed through one of the thirty something cell towers in the area. Edward was quite surprised to learn that the police could pull geographic coordinates from every single one of those calls. Not though live tracking of GPS signals though, because the stalker knew better than to use a GPS enabled phone, but through triangulation - a method using the signal strength from three, or more, nearby cell towers to calculate the last known location of the phone. But of course the caller never stuck around in the same location long enough to get caught.

There was no distinct pattern to the many coordinates obtained, nothing to help determine the identity of the stalker. The amount of data generated was staggering and growing by the hour and the police was simply too under-resourced to deal with it.

The officer handling the case was sympathetic, but not very helpful, saying things like 'the threats are vague and lacking in detail, but don't worry there is no imminent danger to your life.'

... which in Edward's opinion sounded like complete B.S. 'Someone wants to see you bleed, but don't worry these things are almost always empty threats.'

Gee, that's reassuring. NOT!

Five months, 101 notes and 256 phone calls later there was nothing harmless or innocuous about the situation. Edward's 'friendly' stalker had turned into an obsessive psychopath watching his every move.

AN: This is my first post and first fic in this fandom – hello everyone! -- and first shameless plea for feedback!

Bella will make her big entrance in the next chapter.

Disclaimer

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

I do not in any way profit from this story and that all creative rights to the Twilight characters belong to their original creator, Stephenie Meyer.

The plot line though is my own brainchild, so please don't steal it. I worked hard to come up with it! (Really, I did.)