Anyone, In The Right Light

The windows of the small coffee shop were clouded with condensation, so that the cars and people passing outside were blurred outlines on the opposite side of the glass.

Evelyn lifted her cup to her lips, attempting through sheer force of will to still the trembling in her hands.

You didn't see what you thought you saw.

She was crazy, after all. He was always telling her that, anyway. "There is no one else, you're imagining it." "She's just a colleague, you're paranoid."

No. She'd separated herself, she'd put miles between his sneering face and hers, and she was through with the gaslighting, the second-guessing. She could trust her own senses, couldn't she?

Evelyn stared at the foam dissipating on the top of her latte. The noise of the cafe felt too loud in her ears. The jangling of the bells over the door sounded and she looked up as a young couple entered, followed by-

Evelyn froze, static roaring through her mind. The man in the trench coat turned and looked directly at her, his beard wiry and coarse, his vivid blue eyes lit with mockery.

She got up, pushing out from the table so abruptly it made a noise of protest, causing her latte to slop over the paper edges of the cup and the people at the table closest to her to look up in alarm.

There was a back door. Thank god, there was a back door, and she'd sat close to it on instinct. Just in case. She turned woodenly, feeling his eyes on her the whole time, and exited onto the street, a second set of bells tinkling their farewell. Once outside, she started running, her mind a tangle of thoughts moving at lightning speed.

.

Evelyn had been two months in her new apartment in the city, two hours out from her old home in the countryside. She'd assumed, she saw now naively, that he wouldn't find her. Wouldn't follow her here. She'd hoped to evade him for good, after the messy end to their relationship, but Andrew was nothing if not persistent. I always get my way, he told her when they first met, in the honeymoon phase when she didn't yet know who he really was. At the time, it had seemed attractive, assertive and confident, but now she saw it was just the chilling truth.

For the months after she'd ended it, she'd felt him stalking her. Not anything she could openly prove, nothing substantial to take to the police, only hints. The floodlights coming on over the lawn at night, pulling her from bed to stare fearfully out her window at an expanse of nothing, just black woods where she sensed his face leering just beyond. The lingering scent of his cologne, Polo Blue, in the living room when she came downstairs, her laptop open and awake on the coffee table, open to the email exchange she'd had with her only good friend weeks ago: I think he's cheating on me. I can't prove it yet, but I'm close. He tells me I'm delusional, but I'm not. I'm not.

Am I?

How ironic, she supposed, that at this moment she wanted anything but to be able to trust herself. What she thought she'd seen could have been a trick of the light, an innocuous stranger's face held in profile at just the right angle. After all, anyone could look like anyone in the right light.

Right?

She thought of the moment she knew she was done, the way his strong hands had gripped her shoulders, shaken her hard. Get help, he'd told her harshly, but she never had, even afterwards, when the silent shadowing, the stalking, began. It embarrassed her, mocked her, her inability to be free from his influence. Her mother loved him more than she liked her own daughter, she thought bitterly. If she were to call her up and tell her now, she wouldn't believe her. She could hear her now: Stalking you? Don't flatter yourself- don't you think he's moved on?

Biting her lip to bleeding, Evelyn wove through the busy streets, the smell of air pollution crowding her lungs, slowing her down. Though she'd put yards of space between them now, she still felt his piercing blue eyes twisting through her back like a knife, eating through the distance at the speed of light.

Clearly, Andrew hadn't moved on. This was the first time she'd seen him in the flesh, and it would have given her a validating satisfaction if it didn't frighten her so much.

What do you want?

Evelyn felt the tingling at the back of her neck increase and looked over her shoulder for what seemed like the twentieth time since she'd left the coffee shop. He wasn't there, hadn't caught up with her manic strides. Yet.

When she came to the entrance for the subway, she ducked over and made a beeline for the stairs. Other eyes were sticking to her now, the eyes of strangers, but this was the city, they saw stranger things every day and were only casually interested in what they probably saw as her madness.

You are mad, Andrew's voice echoed in her head. Completely fucking nuts.

She bought a ticket and fumbled through the turnstile with shaking hands, the smell of piss and grime strong in her nostrils. Evelyn stopped in wait for the first oncoming car. One-minute arrival. Soon she would be bulleting through the city's veins like a lively toxin under his confused feet; she would escape him one more time.

One minute came and went. The train was late. Evelyn started to fidget. Her mouth dry, she was deciding whether to go catch another ride when she heard it, a rushing sound deep in the tunnels beyond. Her heart slowed, or began to, because the smell hit her then: the unmistakable spice of Polo Blue.

She turned and somehow there he was, right at her back. Evelyn couldn't tell if the rushing in her ears was the sound of the approaching train or the static that swallowed her mind and her tongue like warm, numbing gauze.

"What's wrong?" Andrew said, his eyes mocking. "I thought you couldn't bear for me to leave you. Isn't that why you did it in the end, you crazy bitch?"

He did not wait for the answer that she couldn't give. Instead, he took her shoulder and pushed.

.

Lakeland Herald

April 23rd, 2022

BODY FOUND RULED HOMICIDE

The body found by the Smith-Westfords in the unfinished basement area of their new home indeed seems to be the result of an intentional killing.

The deceased man, found by May Smith-Westford in what she described as a 'shallow grave of sorts' behind the radiator, had a fracture to the skull, suggesting he'd been hit with something heavy. Experts said it was extremely unlikely to be caused by an accident due to the placement of the injury.

DNA revealed last week confirmed the male, 35, to be Andrew Wilson, who had been reported missing months earlier by his wife, Evelyn Wilson. At the time, Evelyn claimed her husband had run off with another woman he'd been speaking to online *by a coworker. She appeared devastated, but unworried for his safety.

Upon seeking out Evelyn Wilson at her new address in New York City, state police found that she had passed away herself in the early hours of the morning on April 19th. The death was a suicide, shocking in method and execution. Witnesses say that Ms. Wilson was waiting at the subway for the F train when she suddenly threw herself onto the tracks and was hit at full speed by the oncoming car. The line was shut down for clean-up.

"It was horrible," one woman said, shaking her head as if to shake the image away. "I don't know what possessed her."

A male onlooker adds that just before jumping, Evelyn had turned around and looked right at him.

"There was pure fear in her eyes," he recalls. "I say she was looking at me, but not *really*, you know what I mean? It was like she was looking through me, at something else. Like she'd seen a ghost."