The Bad Light

a short story

Runners on the last leg of their marathon, a boutique chocolate shop, new parents pushing their dream stroller, with their dream baby, and crust in their eyes, adults that were once dream babies coming home from work, a great friend with another, two squirrels, and a stalker. Well, a stalker’s car. I don’t know what he looks like, but I know his white Toyota Corolla. When I see it pass my windows, sweat pools above my lip. When I drive home and see it parked across the street, my arrhythmia acts up.

Hi, I have the shop across the street from you. There is something I need to make you aware of. Can you email me or call me. Thanks.

In a letter folded into eighths and wedged between the slit of my front door.

They had always felt a little odd, the windows here. But they’re the reason I signed the lease. I had a few magical weeks where I left them undressed, letting all the light pour in and cast minimal shadows on my walls. Then the light turned dark. Dreary, scary, terrifying dark. I bought sheer curtains. White ones. To only let the good light in.

I got the stalking thing very wrong once before. Just a few months earlier, in this same apartment. Every night, at 5:30 pm, I would hear a knock on my door. Three times, sometimes four. Knock, knock, knock. But not as sharp, more a drawl - a soft, extended whisper. And it wasn’t always 5:30, sometimes it was 5:34, sometimes it was 5:28. I peered out those windows every day at that time and could have sworn I saw the same person passing thrice. I also saw squirrels and dream babies.

My partner bought me a Ring camera and installed it outside my front door.

Mission: catch a man, a very bad man.

That first night, he came over, and we sat down beside the window, peering from the app to the street again and again. Then it happened. The three knocks that sounded more like shnooooocks, but nobody was there. Not on the street, not on the phone.

It was my automatic cat food dispenser. Three weeks of stalking allegations because of my abandoned automatic cat food dispenser. I threw it out.

Now, as I stare at this letter from the chocolatier across the street, I can feel my heart racing and my underarms sweating and my knees going wobbly. Is she crazy? This seems like a letter from a crazy person. Is this a prank? I’ll kill whoever thinks this is funny. Is this real? Or is it a food dispenser situation? Please, not another one of those.

After ringing the number on the note and a twenty-minute conversation, it’s confirmed. It’s real. A stalker has been sitting outside my apartment, parked right outside the chocolate shop, and peering into my window. I tell my neighbors. We start a group chat to track his visits. The chocolatier even steps out to confront him one evening, but he drives away.

I start hiding in the furthest corners of my home, away from the windows. I have someone over at every moment, staying with me from the moment I wake up to when I go to sleep, and to be honest, every minute in between. When I see the Toyota, I call the police. They tell me nothing can be done but to call them back if something is done. I make a mental note to call them back when the man breaks into my home and brings a knife to my throat.

Coming home doesn’t feel safe anymore. It’s as dreary, scary, terrifying as the dark that used to leak through my windows. The other day I drove home alone, and saw his car sitting there. I could have sworn I saw binoculars in his hands. I panic, hard and fast. I didn’t want him to know that this was my car, that I was coming back home alone, to know that my front door led straight into my living room.

I called my neighbors, and they came running out, so kind, so loving. They opened my car door and brought me into their home while we waited for my partner to arrive. While I dialed the police, they did the same. Three calls are better than one. It had to be. By the time my partner had arrived, he had already driven away.

When moments like these happen, they feel pivotal. Three calls to the police and hiding in a garden unit were the straws that broke that poor camel’s back. Yet somehow that moment didn’t come until a few weeks later, after more bouts of minor stalking. It didn’t come until I pushed my curtains to the side and let myself dive feral into the dark. When I decided I was going to lose it and, more importantly, lose him.

There was his Toyota, across the street, as it had been for the past month. The chocolate shop was closed, and my neighbors were out of town. My friends were visiting later that night, and I let myself be alone for an hour - let myself, in my own home. Protocol was to pick up the phone and dial 911, but this time as I punched in the numbers, I wasn’t concerned nor scared; I was angry. Viciously mad, seeing red, furious.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“There’s a man who keeps parking outside my house - has been for the past month. He just stares into my apartment. This is like my fifteenth call. My neighbors have called too, and the store owner across the street has as well. I’m really scared. I’m terrified for my safety and I don’t know what to do. It feels, honestly, useless even calling at this point because nothing ever happens. But I need you to do something about this. I really need you to do something.”

Give me your address this, where-are-you-now that. “Dispatch is on the way.”

I hid in the furthest corner of my home.

And then there they were, red and blue lights flashing on the pavement, sirens echoing down the street. And there he went, rolling up his window, turning on his engine, and revving away. I ran down my steps and onto the street, watching the police pursue him down and around the corner.

When they called me later, they said they followed him to his home. That he lived only three minutes away. They warned him that if he was going to return, he would be detained. And when they asked him why he kept parking here, staring through the window, he didn’t really answer. And they didn’t really have a reason to push - he said he would stop.

I never saw his Toyota Corolla again. Not on my Ring, not by my neighbors, and not by the chocolatier. When I moved out a few months later, I wish I could say I remembered to be concerned for whoever would move in after me. But I didn’t have to. A few months after I moved out, a car drove into my building, totaling the first floor and displacing my neighbors. Condemning the building.

I still wonder why he did it. Not as much as I did in the moment, but the thought creeps up when things are already creepy.

Did someone important to him die in my apartment, and he visited every day to pay his respects? My cat was always scared of the tub; perhaps a child drowned there. Or maybe he followed me home one day, and I never noticed, oblivious, drunk, and happy after I ignored him at an event; or maybe he liked the way I looked, even hated the way I looked, and decided he would observe me from afar to untangle his feelings.

There are chocolatiers and sweet tooths. There are marathon runners, and there are mental sprinters. And I ran and ran thinking about why this man decided to park his Toyota across the street and break all trust I had for people and all the love I had for windows.

Still, I picked my next apartment because of the light.