Night Stalker

How It Began

Night Stalker|Chapter One

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Most days I wish I'd never met you because then I could sleep at night. And I wouldn't have to walk around with the knowledge that there was someone like you out there.— Good Will Hunting
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On the wings of the gentle breeze floated the faint sound of chirping birds retreating to their nests and in the distance, cars honked. The night seemed boisterous than the day and in all of this, Leo found the mockery that everything with life perpetrated.

To his ears, the sweet songs of the nightingales sounded like raucous laughter, ridiculing his very existence. Hastening his steps, he found his way into the quiet part of town.

The moon peeked out behind the cloud, bathing him in its white essence and making him a semblance of pictures taken in black and white. Slowly the velvety clouds covered the moon again.

His hands were balled into tight fists and his face was pallid with rage. The chattering of distant birds kept plunging his mind into a frenzy which was becoming a constant part of him.

When he was cooped up in his room a few hours ago, with his window open, the night air had felt good, but walking in the dark streets, accentuated every pain that he'd managed to live through.

She had told him to wait for her at the street corner, where they'd first met. He'd gone there as planned, but a ghastly sight had met him. Her absence. He kept going back there each day, it was becoming a routine, but she never showed up.

An image of her perpetually invaded his mind. She was everything he wanted, but she'd unknowingly pushed him off the brink of his sanity.

Amidst all this, Leo hadn't always been this way. It had started in his teenage years, with a decreased need for sleep. At the time, it wasn't visible, perhaps, nobody was close enough to notice. Slowly it had bloomed over the years, making itself quite recognisable, from the subtle movement of his eyes to the apparent motion of his legs and arms. He was a walking shell of someone long dead, perhaps someone born anew to this world mentally.

When his energy level increased and his mood elevated; mostly euphoric in the company of strangers and himself, and irritable with his parents, he will engage in superfluous activities like rearranging the furniture in the attic more than twice. He began spending lavishly and his talkativeness doubled.

The fatality of every foreboding that had persistently been pushed forward occurred when he met her.

Her blonde hair glimmered beautifully in the setting sun and her broad smile exposed her beautiful white set of teeth. With a graceful movement of her slender arms, she ran her fingers skillfully through her hair, while admiring the colourful dresses on display at the street corner.

Across the street he stood, admiring those lithe movements of hers which enthralled him. His heart beat changed its rhythm and began beating for something he couldn't have.