Upstairs

Trigger warning: this is a very scary story. A first time foray into horror.

He needed to hear her voice, it calmed him. She didn’t know he needed to hear it, or that he waited until she came home every day. The familiar movement of her steps, the clanging of pots and pans, the shuffling of things. He thought she wanted him to hear all of it. He thought she had been trying to tell him that she knew he was there. He thought she wanted to know him too. Know him intimately. Oh because that’s how he wanted to know her. 

He didn’t mean for this to happen again. To fall for another one. To want to possess her. He just couldn’t help himself. He loved them. All of them. Even the ones who he had liked a bit too much. The ones who didn’t like his attention. When they didn’t like it, he hated them. He found them revolting. After the meeting with the last one went wrong, he ran and never looked back.

Every night, he and his new love and would have conversations through the ceiling. And every night he fought the urge to see her. He couldn’t risk seeing anyone. But when she never tried to see him, he began to wonder. Was this a game she was playing? Were they trying to get him? Did they know he was there? 

When the world was asleep, he made his move. Breaking in was nothing new. But this felt personal. This felt important. He had talked to her: the woman upstairs. This time was real.

Dust covered the empty spaces of the small apartment. No furniture. No lights. 

“I’m here. I came for you.” He said aloud, waiting for her response. 

“You didn’t come here for me, you came for yourself.” She said back, startling him and causing him to drop the pick he had used to unlock the door. There was no one there, the voice seemed to come from somewhere else.

“What does that mean?” he said in between gritted teeth, with anger infecting every word.

He didn’t wait for a response. Instead, he ran out of the empty and dark surroundings of that apartment to his own. Once inside, he locked himself in and saw her standing there. A bloodied shadow in front of him, mouth moving. Now the voice didn’t come from above anymore. It hovers over him, everywhere he moves.