The Intrusion

One

(Tuesday, March 13, 2018)

[Jordan]

I wonder what it would feel like to disappear.

The thought lingers in the back of my mind like the taste of cheap red wine as I step down from the curb, subconsciously making sure that my feet land on the white of the crosswalk. I've always gotten this weird feeling that, if for some reason I were to step in the black, the street might somehow open up and swallow me whole, and I'd be gone. Buried beneath the ground, beneath the street, beneath the concrete.

All my thoughts, all my memories, all my dreams, gone.

Nothing.

Like I'd never existed at all in the first place.

Weird, I know—the idea of a city swallowing someone up—but sometimes I can't help but wonder about things like that... about what it might feel like to disappear.

I hop safely onto the last bar of white, feeling like I'm performing a balancing act on a ledge two hundred feet off the ground, and then I step onto the curb.

I take in the cool night air as I walk home, listening to the hum of zooming cars and the snippets of conversation from fellow pedestrians. Where they'll go for dinner, what their weekend plans are, what that one friend who always seems to be making a fool of himself did now...

Vancouver is notorious for being rainy and dreary, but this time of year, the beginning of spring, it's beautiful. Although the air is cool, the city and the people in it radiate a warmth that brings it to life.

I stop at the next intersection, and as the chirp-chirp-chirp of the walk signal sounds, a woman herding three children scurries past me. The smallest kid, who is pretending he is an airplane, nearly flies into me as he zooms into the street.

"Sorry," the woman apologizes as she hurries to catch up.

Where are you going?

For a second I feel compelled to ask. The desire to know about these people comes quickly and it comes from nowhere.

I silence the thought. It's none of my business.

"No problem," I call instead, but my voice gets caught in the wind.

I turn the corner onto my street, and a gust roars down the tunnel created by the towering buildings on either side. I shiver and jog a few steps, suddenly feeling the urge to close the gap between myself and my building.

I pass under a light post, and a sinking feeling pools in the pit of my stomach.

Something isn't right.

A single car drives past me, skirting too close to the curb, and I jump where I'm standing, startled by the rumble of its engine and screech of its tires. As the echo fades away and the car turns the corner, the eeriness settles back in. I whip my head around, glancing up and down the street.

I'm alone.

The street is completely empty—not a single other pedestrian walking along the sidewalk, not a smoker standing out on the porch of a building, not a line of cars sitting in traffic at the intersection.

Nothing.

I don't know if I've ever been alone on this street before. There are always cars, pedestrians, something. It's never just empty, like everyone has somehow disappeared.

I shudder and quicken my pace again to a brisk walk, putting my head down and one foot in front of the other in a straight line like I'm walking a tightrope. But then, like a gasping breath from an enormous set of lungs, a gust of wind bores through the city, chilling me to the bone. A strange itch crawls up my spine.

I'm being watched.

I spin my head around, expecting to see someone, anyone behind me.

But all I'm greeted with is more silent, screaming wind roaring past my ears.

I let out a heavy sigh, feeling my warm breath against my teeth and watching it condense in the cool, dark air in front of me like fog. The tiny droplets glow like miniature crystals in the light emanating from the buildings around me.

I turn back towards my apartment, but when I look up ahead I freeze where I am standing, paralyzed. My breath catches in my throat, and my heart stops in my chest.

There, standing not even thirty feet away from me, just beyond the light seeping out from the door to the lobby of my building, stands a dark shadowed figure. There is something off about the way it is standing there—and I know that it isn't human.

It doesn't move like it is human.

Oh God, it's moving.

Slowly at first, the shadow creeps towards me. My arms twitch, but still I can't move, frozen in place. I try to scream but I can't. I'm paralyzed, staring at the shadow figure as it creeps closer... and closer... and closer.

It passes my building, closing the gap. Its feet glide over the ground like it is hovering. Its legs move—miming a walk—but its pace does not match its speed, like a terrible animation.

It's like it is pretending to walk.

Then, as it gets closer, I realize something else: it has no face. Just an enormous darkness—a nothing where its face should be.

It breaks into a sprint. Running towards me, barreling at me like wind screaming through a tunnel, but everything is silent. An intense pressure consumes me, and I feel like I am underwater and everything is moving in slow motion, as though time itself has slowed down.

The pressure grows and grows the closer the shadow gets to me, and then, in an explosion of breath and heat, I break myself, screaming into the night, my voice ringing out like a siren. I collapse onto the ground, hugging my arms around my legs, my eyes pressed to my knees, and I sob in great heaving gasps.

After what feels like hours but is probably no more than a minute, I manage to pick my head back up.

The street is empty.

There is no one here.

What was that? What did I just see?

I pull myself to my feet, my entire body shaking uncontrollably. I glance around one more time. I'm alone.

With one last shiver, I compose myself as best I can and jog the rest of the way to my apartment, the drum of my feet against the ground echoing through the city and ringing in my ears. I can't help but look back over my shoulder every couple of steps, expecting to see someone. Someone watching, that shadow lurking behind me.

I've been getting that feeling a lot lately—the feeling that I'm being watched. Maybe that is why my mind is inventing things. That's got to be it—the sensation itself manifesting as some sort of imaginary apparition in the night, my own eyes and mind playing tricks on me in the shadows. Maybe the feeling isn't coming from someone but something. Maybe it's this whole city I'm feeling the eyes of.

It has eyes, the thought invades my mind—a thought that's been dancing around back there in the depths of my brain since I got here.

But not just eyes, I remind myself, thinking back to the crosswalk that I was almost sure wanted to swallow me up. This city's got a mouth too, a whole face that I can't see. I can only feel the eyes staring at me, and the cool breath gasping out of its slack jaw.