Chapter 1
The notebook is not right. Neither are the pencils or highlighters that outline the right side of his desk. Thrown everywhere without a single thought, perhaps pushed away in a hurry. No order and no pattern. Mason restrains himself from heaving a deep breath and takes a seat on the worn leather chair instead.
First, he wipes his cold hands against the harsh material of his pants.
Second, he touches the notebook, pencils, and highlighters, one by one. With such weight that the tips of his dry fingers barely graze the surface of the cheap plastic.
Third, he carefully peels the bright yellow sticky note from the edge of the desk and tucks it into his left pocket. The tip of the note catches against his sweater and wrinkles. He goes slower to refrain from disturbing the smooth paper. His heart is beating a little too fast, as it always does whenever he comes in contact with the notes.
Mason allows the air in his lungs to rush out and begins the arrangement of the items on the table. It is so time-consuming and meticulous that it’s almost painful, and yet, he can’t help the way his muscles move to fix the messy area. There is not a lot in life that he wishes for, but as he slides the highlighters into a single file, approximately an inch between each one, he knows what he wants. Not to organize his potential manager’s disaster of a workspace, but to lock himself in his room and search until every one of them is found.
He hears the footsteps before he sees them at the door. Shiny loafers topped off with oddly matched red socks, forever cataloged into his mind.
“Mason Alfe?” The owner of the special socks asks.
Mason finally looks up and stands, only to dip into a bow. “Yes, that’s right,” he says with a practiced smile. His interviewer is a small man with a large middle and flushed cheeks. Mason’s gaze drifts to the square name tag resting on his chest. It reads, Jonathan. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
Jonathan leans against the doorframe. “Jonathan,” he corrects as he eyes the desk Mason has been fiddling with for the past few minutes. Almost everything is in neat rows, all except a single blue highlighter that has rolled to the edge of the surface. It’s about to fall onto the floor, to join its fellow stationery in this ridiculously messy office. Mason’s fingers itch to fix the chaos, but every business has secret papers, and that is the last thing he wants to get caught holding. “You got OCD or something?”
“A little,” Mason admits. “It will not affect my workflow.”
“You smoke, Matty?” Jonathan asks.
Mason blinks, surprised. Matty. Only one person calls him that. “No.”
“You do drugs?”
Uncomfortable with the blunt questions, Mason shifts from foot to foot before he realizes how unprofessional it makes him look. Bad habits are difficult to shake, I guess. “Never.”
Jonathan nods. It’s a sharp movement, overexaggerated. “Come here tomorrow at five. We’ll discuss the details then.” He casually pulls a white tube from his pocket, and, Mason realizes, is a cigarette.
Mason’s eyebrows twitch upwards at the irony as Jonathan grins. “And, by that, I mean, you’re hired. Welcome, Matty. Don’t fucking fuck this up.”
Flipping over the sticky notes is like opening Christmas presents. Although, perhaps, comparing stalking to something as sweet and innocent as Christmas is not the best example. But the base concept is still there.
How many has he opened now? Maybe a hundred. Multiple hundreds. He is sitting in front of his old laptop, waiting for the web browser to finish loading. Mason is safe in his room, but not, at the same time. Ever since moving here last month, he has spent a total of fifteen and a half hours turning furniture over and poking his head into obscure spots for hidden cameras. Each time, his hunts turn up empty. But still, He knows where everything is, all the way from large details, like his address, to small ones, like the number of stripes coating his black-and-white toothbrush.
A few months and He is already talking like they are the best of friends. The familiarity is unnerving.
Each and every time he reads the small, neat print on the notes, his heart pounds and the back of his head aches with invisible hits. It has been months, one would think Mason has gotten used to the strangeness of it all, but knowing that a person is tracking your every movement is difficult.
But, today, in particular, is an odd day.
Mason spins the sticky note between his fingers, double-checking each side. No text. A first. He holds it up to the light for several minutes, but nothing more is revealed. He sets it down on the table and frowns. Maybe it’s a normal sticky note – after all, that desk was awfully messy. Still, unease makes his stomach clench.
He sets the paper down before moving onto his laptop. One, quick thorough scan of all his files, using a program he created himself a few months ago. He never imaged coding would come in handy, but it makes hacking look remarkably simple in comparison. If you can code, you can hack – the two go hand in hand.
It takes a full minute for the program to review everything. Nothing new. Mason should feel relieved that his strange little friend is finally ceasing with the odd messages, but all that’s mixing in his stomach is unease and dread.
Mason clicks open the notepad app that he has jotted down all the letters he has been sent. The earliest one arrived in front of his house; a little yellow sticky note strapped on the doorknob with several meters of clear tape. It had taken hours to get off, and after the incident, the knob never worked the same. That was the first clue to what kind of person He is.
How was your day, Mason? Matty?
I know. Awful people, am I right? Sometimes they are better off without a mouth. Or eyes and ears for that matter. Perhaps we shouldn’t judge based on what we see and hear. A world of blindness – it sounds beautiful.
Ah, wait a second.
His name is Blake. Or so He says. Mason doesn’t need to read hundreds upon hundreds of mystery novels to know that names given by the predator himself are usually pennames. It means black or dark. Fitting, perhaps, if the messages were written in black, paired with a darker background. Black letters, dark background, shadowed personality. A perfect definition for the perfect stalker.
But Blake is weird. Beyond weird. He has the bubbliest writing that Mason has ever seen, full of wide curves and drifting endings. They are written with gel pens, red one day, blue the next, green, and then back to red. Never black. The sticky notes are yellow, always yellow. Mason sometimes wonders if the change in bright colors is deliberate, but surely nobody has enough discipline to keep a pattern going for months.
And they were never always delivered physically either. Sometimes, Mason would come home to his small apartment and find files on his desktop. Files of images of sticky notes and things he didn’t save. Hence, the reason he created the scanning program.
The messages contain carelessly hidden jokes and little details of things that most people wouldn’t notice – or rather, wouldn’t care to notice.
Maybe it’s the bright colors instead of the expected dark that makes him shudder.
He clicks onto the next note.
What do you call me? Mother always told me names are very important. Gotta leave a good impression the moment you meet, she used to say. She used to say a lot. A little too much, actually.
How about Blake? I like that name.
Yes – call me Blake.
