And then there was one

“Invite me in”, a voice whispers outside her tenth storey window. 

She lifts her head slightly from her pillow, sure that the voice was a remnant of a dream but she lifts her head all the same. When no voice follows the first after a few minutes, she relaxes back into the soft duvet and pillow, more than ready to go to sleep and erase this god-awful day from her memory. 

Not even five minutes later a loud crash comes from inside the closet. 

Suddenly her old child-like fear of having a monster in the closet seemed a little too real now. 

Reluctantly, she pushes her warm blanket off and walks to her closet, shivering slightly as the cold air hits her. She pulls the closet open and sees nothing out of place. 

So what the hell crashed?

Thinking again that she imagined the noise, she goes to push the closet shut. But as the closet whooshes closed, the window slams open, and the bitterly cold breeze rushes in. 

Her fears heightened because she definitely didn’t imagine that and suddenly the anxiety in her mind murmurs,, “What if it’s a stalker?”

The rational parts of her want to shut down the absurd idea, but then the other, and much larger parts of her give in to it and she starts to feel the eyes of someone watching her. 

This time, a little more worried for her own safety she cautiously, slowly treads away from her closet, towards her window. She leans forwards out of her bedroom window, facing the huge tree in the neighbour’s front yard and looks around, wondering what kind of animal had the audacity to creep her out like that in the middle of actual night.  

When she senses no immediate danger, she pulls the window shut and returns back to her now very chilly bed. Cursing the monster who subjected her to this torture she rubs her arms up and down to bring back some of the heat into the bed.

Then out of nowhere, the doorbell rings. 

It startles her for a second and by the time she shakes herself out of her stupor, she hears the hushed voices of her parents talking to the random stranger. She listens more intently, trying to make out their conversation, and notices not one and not two either, but three pairs of footsteps.

They invited this random stranger into the house at midnight with absolutely no hesitation?

No…

No.

Everything was fine. 

It was probably one of her parent’s friends looking to crash on the couch because he got locked out by his wife for coming home too late from the casino…right?

Now she can hear them more clearly. 

She hears the new man say, “Can I use your washroom?”

Her dad replies, “Yeah of course, it’s just down the hall, on the right when you go upstairs.”

She hears his footsteps following the directions of her father, and turns around in her bed, calm enough to finally try and go to sleep. 

But that opportunity never comes when she hears the latch of her room turn and open. She squeezes her eyes shut, not wanting to interact and knowing that he’s gonna go away anyway because there’s no way he thinks her bedroom is a washroom. 

She hears the latch turn and close this time and she releases a sigh at the relief. 

But then she hears the lock turn and she spins around. 

There, looming above her, stood probably one of the most, if not the most handsome man she had ever laid eyes on, with his olive skin, dark, luscious hair, and green eyes. As if that wasn’t enough, he also had the most long legs to ever exist. 

She snapped herself out of it, reminded that he was old enough to be her father. 

Then she says, “The bathroom’s next door.”

“Oh, I am well aware, sweetheart. I came here for you.”

“Excuse me??”

“Well didn’t you notice me? Watching you all these months?” he leered.

She froze. 

She opens her mouth wide, but he anticipates the oncoming screaming and slams his hand down on her lips.

“Oh please don’t be scared”, the creep says with an uncanny soft gaze in his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you unless I absolutely have to, and screaming will just make me hurt you. Nobody wants that.” he reassures her. 

“So you didn’t realise that I was watching you these past months? Teenagers these days, always so ignorant; addicted to their phones.”

Months?!

Her body still couldn’t move. 

He continues, “I’m willing to answer all of the questions you most definitely have, but only if you can tell me what they are.”

He pulls his disgusting hand away and goes to sit on her desk chair, “I'll just wait here until you figure it out. No rush.” he smiles, making her shiver with disgust. 

She finally works up the courage and shakily asks, “How did you get in?”

“Starting simple I see. I pulled the door handle.” he says smugly. 

She almost has the urge to roll her eyes but then the fear takes over.

“H-how did my parents let you in?” she stutters

“Oh see, four months ago, I decided that it would be the most brilliant idea to make friends with them, and well now we are all just the best of friends.”

“Why?”

“Why did I make best-friends with them? Maybe because I’m a clinically diagnosed psychopath?” he said with a certain glint in her eyes that it made it very easy to believe him.

Her body froze again and she just lay there, unable to speak while the bed was shaking with her fearful quivers. 

The man gets up from the chair and starts to pace. Every 30 seconds he halts and lets out an impatient sigh, waiting for the next question, and continues his pacing. After a minute, he starts to fidget with the little ornaments around the room.

Another few minutes pass and when she still shows no signs of moving or speaking, he exclaims, “Ughh, I just have to do everything myself.”

“Fine I’ll tell you everything, but there’s no guarantee you’re leaving this room unharmed. You want to know why? Because you just couldn’t do the one thing I asked and ask a couple not dumb questions.”

He kneels down beside her bed, and goes to pull her hand out of the blanket. 

She lets out an ear-splitting scream and this one he doesn’t anticipate. 

He looks up at her in shock and says exasperated, “Well now look what’ve you done! Now I have to worry about hurting not just you but your parents too. And I actually liked them!”

A heavy pair of feet storm up the stairs and throw their body at the locked bedroom door with no luck in opening it. The door handle jiggles and shakes but the door stays shut. 

Her father calls out, “I heard you scream sweetie, what’s wrong? Please open the door.”

The creepy stalker goes to open the door, saying “I really wish I didn’t have to do this.”

Then before the statement even registered in the father's mind, the man raises. He hides himself behind the door, turns the doorknob and pulls the door open. Before the girl is able to register his intentions, the man raises his fist and hammers into the back of the father’s head. 

The girl screams out, “Dad! NO!” as she watches him fall to the ground in a heap, his face still contorted with the sheer shock of his attack. 

Filled with more rage than fear now, the girl yells at her stalker, “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US?” and the bubble finally bursts as tears stream down her cheeks and she pleads again, “Please…leave me alone…”

He controls himself until the door is closed and then shakes his head with disappointment and clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth, “I totally would have. But you just wouldn’t listen. Let’s hope you listen now that you’ve seen what I can do… and how quick I can do it.”

The girl stays rigid. 

“We don’t have much time left. And we can’t leave anything unanswered, now can we?”

No response.

“Let’s start at the beginning.”

“I’ve been stalking you and your family for four months, but you’re the only one I hid myself from. I just couldn’t bring myself to take away that fear in your eyes that you hold for me now.”

He comes closer to her bed again and reaches for her hand.

Her shivers become violent.

“But you probably don’t care about that. What you want to know is how I managed to pull off such a feat in the first place.” 

He pauses. 

“Phase 1 was getting your parents to trust me enough that one night I could just waltz in, asking for a couch to crash on, and they would welcome me with open arms…that’s what your mom is doing downstairs now. Probably fixing up one of her yummy sandwiches and setting up the couch with some of the cosiest blankets you own.”

He paused again, just long enough for both of them to hear the mother open the downstairs’ closet for a spare blanket.

“Phase 2 was learning your schedule. Where and when you went out on the weekends and who you went out with. The time it takes for you to walk to school and walk back. Walking back takes you those extra ten minutes when you’re walking with your friends. I had to know all of this by heart if Phase 3 of my plan was to be successful.”

“W-Why…”, her broken voice whispers.

He places a finger on her lips, “Shhh…we don’t have much time.”

“We’re getting to the good part now. Phase 3 was all about setting you up when we got to this exact moment here. See, by the time Phase 3 came around, I had already convinced your parents that I was just a lonely man, who’s wife never gave him the time of day. So they let me stay over, even when they weren’t home. Wanna guess how I spent my time all those days?”

She couldn’t speak but her body trembled at the image of this wretched rat rummaging through her privacy. 

“You remember when you heard that voice whisper, “Invite me in”? Me.” he states, pointing at himself.

“And when you heard that crash in your closet? Me.” 

He brings his finger down and continues, “I planted a tiny little speaker in there when I was here and it connected to my phone when I was standing outside your window and then all I had to do was click one measly button. And then of course, there was the window. That one was the easiest of them all.”

He stops, a little out of breath.

Nobody heard the footsteps while he was still talking, but they certainly noticed the girl’s mother breathing just outside the door.

She steps in and her eyes widen at the scene before her. 

She screams in fright and yells, “What are you doing?! GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!”

“Ughh, goddamnit.” he whispers under his breath. 

Then in the blink of an eye, he’s behind her with one arm on her waist and the other gripping her neck. 

Now the girl springs up. 

The blanket flies away. 

A new fury takes control of her. 

But just as fast her courage builds up, it is broken down again.

She watches on as he twists her mother’s neck to a point where it could never come back from.

She falls to her knees with her head in her hands, as she watches her mother tumble to the ground, lying side by side with her father.

Dead. 

Standing up, she finally looks the villain in his eyes and there’s a sense of panic in his eyes that she didn’t expect. 

Before she could get a word out, he starts, “Look what you’ve made me do.”

“They were my friends!”

“No no no no….”

He looks at her again and prowls towards her, his hands shaking. 

He backs her up against the wall, an inch between the two.

He pushes his fist into her chest and hoists her up into the air, his hand squeezing her heart.

Forcing it to pump those last drops of blood more erratically than ever before.

Her heart drops to the ground with a thump and her lone stalker stares at his trembling hands as her blood drips down his fingertips. 

And then there was one.