She Came With The Dark

He left but the apartment didn't feel empty.
The grey suit was still there. Clean and pressed like nothing had just happened. But something had.

I poured a whiskey. Neat.
One sip to clear the mind and remind myself who I was.
Discipline is wealth.
But tonight it tasted like smoke.

Her voice was still running laps in my head.
Rent free.
The note in my pocket felt heavier than paper should.

"Don't trust the man in the grey suit. He already knows."

I already knew that now. The hard way.

She warned me about the wrong thing.
He didn’t just know. He anticipated.
She was never his target.
I was.

Something moved in the room that wasn't me.
Curtains shifted but the windows were shut. I clocked it.
Her perfume arrived before she did. Jasmine with something harder beneath it.

I turned.

She came out of the corner slow.
Like the dark had been keeping her warm.
I knew those eyes. They hadn’t got any safer since the last time.

… Beauty shaped like a warning.

"You're late," I said. My pulse had its own opinion about that.

She tilted her head. "And you're still too early."

Wherever she was coming from, she wasn't in a rush to explain it.

“Who is he?”

The smile left her face. What replaced it wasn't quite fear. But it was related to it. She moved closer. Close enough for me to read her breathing.
Not close enough to trust it.

"You shouldn't have opened the door."

"I didn't invite him in. He let himself belong."
Her eyes went to the closet. "He always does."

"Then why warn me? Why the notes? Out of everyone, why me?"

She took her time to answer. In it, I heard everything she wasn’t ready to say.
Her eyes studied my face the way you studied something you used to know better.

"Because you still think truth is a hallway with doors that open one way."

"And you don't?"

"Some doors breathe. I found that out the hard way."

“Tell me what he wants locked.”

She swallowed the answer. "Not here."

"Then where?"

The lights died before she could answer.
The city outside went with them like the whole night had been switched off.

Darkness took the room whole.

Her breath was close now.
Trying to not betray itself.

The glass found the table by memory.
My other hand found the note by habit.

“Stay still,”

She whispered.

“Why?”

“Because what’s looking for you doesn’t need light.”

One step in the hallway.
Then another.
Neither of them were hers.

I reached for the key.
Gone.

To be continued…

Next Chapter — Blackout