Chicago, 5:47am
The world hasn't started buzzing yet. It's hardly even taken a breath. The streetlights are aglow with a steady warmth, traffic is minimal, and if I concentrate my gaze just beyond the distant horizon I can see the cold, blue morning begin to cut its way towards the city.
I'm up in an instant, my body's circadian rhythm finely attuned to waking just before my alarm. I have no commitments that ever require such an early rise– work starts at 9:30, my commute a short subway ride– but the quiet space where I exist in between now and the hustle of getting ready for my day is invaluable. I use this sacred time to think. Sometimes journal, sometimes meditate, but mostly I pull back my curtains, stare across the Chicago skyline to the east where it meets the waterfront, and think. It's the only assured moment of peace throughout a busy day.
It's been ten long years since Edward left me alone in the forest. Six years since I left Washington.
I don't think about him much anymore. Not consciously, at least. The more time stretches in between now and the last time we spoke, the more difficult it is to peer back into the memories we made. His silhouette is forever seared into my brain, but when I try to remember him in motion– his gait, the way he sat with his shoulders rolled back, his hands around my waist, cupping my chin, running through my hair– it's like sorting through hazy vignettes, each border smaller and more disruptive than the last.
That chapter of my life feels increasingly unreal with each passing moment, as though it happened to someone else. As though the connection we held is now only recognized as folklore, a cautionary tale passed down through generations. With each narration, the story changes a little. The details are a little different, simplified for the sake of the listener. But the lesson stays the same: don't follow any beast into the woods. No matter how enticing.
I blink, and the thought is gone—evaporated like breath on glass. Still, it hangs in the air, heavy and residual, as if something else left it behind. Like a scent. Like static.
I shake it off.
The kettle begins to whistle, sharp and shrill in the quiet of the apartment. I pour the water into the carafe, wait, press, and carry my mug to the window. Outside, the city is stretching awake. The waterfront glints faintly gold beneath the rising sun. I sip. Let it burn the edge of my tongue.
In typical fashion, I brush through my hair and leave it down, letting it splay across my shoulders. Only recently have I discovered dry shampoo. I use it to tease my roots where they would otherwise become a little oily. My makeup is minimal. A swipe of blush. Something to cover my dark circles. A few coats of mascara. Nothing on my lips but chapstick, I hate the feeling of sticky gloss.
In the short decade since entering adulthood, I've let myself indulge in things I may have considered too deeply feminine in my teenage years. I wear a sweet jasmine perfume on days that I feel I need a little boost. Don dresses on special occasions, like office parties, the weddings of dear friends. Still, my essence remains unchanged. Under the cloak of effortless femininity, I find myself stumbling often. Thumbing through the classics in the same voracious way I did as a teen. I still sleep with purple bed sheets. It reminds me of a simpler time.
When I move toward the mirror to fasten my earrings, something's wrong.
At first, I can't name it.
I lean in close. My reflection leans, too. Everything is in place. Same slight puff beneath my right eye, same shadow where I didn't quite blend my concealer. But there's a split second—when I glance down to reach for the jewelry box—I swear my reflection doesn't move.
It's subtle. Barely there.
But I feel it. In my spine. In my teeth.
I snap my gaze back up. The mirror's fine. My reflection is perfectly still—just as I am. I raise my right hand up, wiggle it a bit. My reflection does exactly the same. Nothing seems amiss now.
Did that really happen?
I stare harder, eyes scanning every inch of the glass.
I laugh. Not because it's funny, but because it's stupid. This is the kind of paranoia that comes from late-night deadlines and too much caffeine. I've been working on a deep-dive piece for two weeks straight. I'm sleep-deprived. Wired. Seeing things.
Still.
As I walk out of the room, I pause one more time, stare deeply into the mirror. She stares back, not a hair out of place.
…
The subway is colder than usual this morning. A breeze slithers up the sleeve of my jacket and holds me tight. I should have worn another layer. In my hands I hold a stuffed manila envelope and a coffee cup from a bodega outside my building. The drink inside is lukewarm now, just one or two mouthfuls left.
Across the platform, I feel eyes on me. I look up, and see a man watching. He's not staring at me in the way that men sometimes do. Not hungrily, or curiously. Instead, he's looking at me with a completely neutral gaze– too neutral– as though someone pressed pause on him while in between passing thoughts. He's wrapped tightly in a grey woolen coat, his posture is entirely too rigid. I check all over for signs of life, looking for the steady rise and fall of his shoulders, his scarf fluttering in the wind, a blink. But he is still. I don't think he's even registered my presence.
Irked, I look down to my boots. Worn leather moto boots I've had re-soled each winter for the past several years. Then, because I can't resist, I look back up. And he's gone. It's been mere seconds since I've had eyes on him, and now he's disappeared into the ether– or so it seems. Perhaps he had ducked behind a column, or had been swept up by a fast moving crowd of commuters. Perhaps I had just imagined him.
My phone buzzes as the train approaches.
'Draft due by noon. Don't make me hunt you down, Swan,' my boss, Cass writes to me. Shortly after graduating college with a joint honours degree in Journalism and English Literature, I began interning at The Chicago Sentinel, a small but fierce digital publication that covers crime, politics, and the occasional deep-dive on local oddities. The latter are my favourite to write about, however I rarely have a say in what lands on my desk. Today I need to push out a report on a local zookeeper who was convicted for giving LSD to the orangutans.
…
My office building is nestled between a crumbling old bank and an extremely modern co-working space that reeks of oat milk and millennial ambition. The Chicago Sentinel is located on the fourth floor, and I take the stairs. Not because I'm especially fit or motivated, but because the elevator makes a faint whining sound between the third and fourth floor, like something trying to claw its way up. The hallway is dimly lit, a flickering fluorescent bulb near the far end gives off the occasional zap.
I walk through the glass doors, holding them until they click behind me. The newsroom is a familiar blend of buzzing monitors, half empty coffee cups, and the soft patter of keys on a lanyard. My colleague, Elena, waves from her desk, her headphones on sideways as she's already locked into some true crime article.
"Morning, Swan," she calls, looking up at me only momentarily, "you look haunted."
"Great, thank you," I mutter back. She smiles anyway and settles back into her seat.
I shove my messenger bag under my desk, drape my jacket over my chair, and press the button on my computer's tower in order to bring it to life. I open my emails. 36 unread messages. I exhale through my nose. I click the first one. PR junk. Then the second, which happens to be a reader submission. I file it away to be read later. The third is a request for a work order to be submitted in regards to the mammoth sized Xerox printer in Cass' office that's been jamming every few pages. I diligently click my way through the emails, trashing some, filing others into their respective folders. Some I reply to.
The tenth email is from an address containing an illegible tangle of letters, numbers and special characters. No subject, no message. Just an attachment.
footage_
My stomach curls. The spam filter should have caught that. I hover my mouse over it, debating. Whatever it is, I'm sure I've seen worse. Then, I think, what if this is a phishing test from IT? My blind curiosity has already landed me in four internet safety seminars. A fifth one wouldn't sting.
I click on the attachment. It's grainy security footage from a subway platform. The same one I was on earlier this morning. The figure on the screen looks familiar, I lean in closer. Black jacket, messenger bag over the shoulder, leather moto boots– it's me. I watch myself on the tape, registering the moment when I look up to observe the man across the platform.
And then it happens.
Just for a few seconds, two, maybe three at the most. The video glitches– wait, no, I glitch. My face begins to distort, my eyes and mouth warping into a disfigured blur. Is the footage corrupt? I can't be sure, seeing as all the commuters behind me continue to hurry to their trains as usual. The face on the screen before me is utterly unrecognizable, all my features melted like watercolour, a jagged black hole beginning to form where my mouth once was.
And then it stops. The entire clip was only about fifteen seconds long.
I close my email inbox fast. My hands twitch, my heart thumps ferociously. I look around to the other desks, nervously.
The office buzz continues around me, unchanged.
No one saw anything.
No one ever does.
…
The day passes in a shaky whirlwind. I file my article before the noon deadline. Take lunch at my desk. Nod through a staff meeting. Respond to the innocuous emails in my inbox. The glitch doesn't leave me, though, it simmers just below the surface with each thought. When I close my eyes, I see my own mouth split open too wide.
By the late afternoon, I've deleted it. Emptied the trash, too. But it's still there, somewhere in me.
While walking home, I watch the sun begin to dip low into the sky. Spring in Chicago means the cold still clings to the concrete, and the wind bites without warning. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to keep my core warm while I traverse. A figure passes me on the sidewalk, tall and dark, in a long coat. I don't look up until he's gone.
Just a man.
Just a man, but my heart races. What does my body know that I don't? I pause under the awning of a corner bookstore, watch my reflection in the glass. The lights inside flicker behind it. I'm afraid to look at myself for too long, and so a chill runs down my spine while I turn and quickly begin walking once again. Just as I'm about to chalk it all up to exhaustion, another gust of wind lifts the collar of my coat, and on the breeze, I catch something. A scent.
So direly faint. So specific.
Cold cedar, pine, something tangibly warm just underneath. I know it anywhere. My head snaps up, I am immediately on a swivel, looking in all directions. Where did it come from? I gaze upwind, and see a barely perceptible shadow disappear into an alley.
