Porch at 1B
Last Tuesday, at exactly 7:00 PM, I decided I needed to disappear. My apartment was pristine, bills stacked and accounted for, but the one loose end—the tether keeping me to this world—was Max, my twelve-year-old Labrador, and Mr. Harlan, my reclusive neighbor in 1B who hadn’t said more than a grunt to me in years.
I left my apartment carrying Max’s leash, his heavy bag of kibble, and his favorite tattered tennis ball. Every footstep down the hall echoed like a countdown. My hands shook, not just from fear but from the fatigue that had settled into my bones over the past year. I wasn’t just tired—I was bone-deep hollow, a ghost drifting through a life I had never signed up for.
The hallway light flickered as I reached Harlan’s door. He sat on his porch, a faded army jacket draped over his shoulders, a lukewarm beer in hand. The flickering porch light cast lines across his face, turning him into a monument of shadow and grit. He didn’t look at me as I approached.
“Evening,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I… I need a favor. Just for tonight.”
He tilted his head slowly, like he had been expecting this moment. “California?” he asked, voice low and cautious.
My stomach twisted. “Yes. Work,” I said. “Corporate housing doesn’t allow dogs.”
He chuckled, a dry, rasping laugh that made the boards of the porch creak. “Bull,” he said, finally meeting my eyes. His gaze pierced through me. “You’re not going anywhere, son. You’re too far gone to leave like that.”
Max nudged my leg. Harlan’s hand hovered over the dog for a moment, then he grabbed my shoulder with surprising force. “Sit. Now.”
I obeyed. For the first time in months, someone was looking at me—not my social media persona, not my productivity metrics—but me.
Harlan went inside and returned with another cold beer. He handed it to me without a word, then leaned back in his chair, his eyes scanning the street. “You know what’s wrong with you kids?” he asked after a long silence. “You think you’re alone. You’re not. You’re just disconnected.”
I wanted to argue, to tell him he didn’t understand. But the truth was undeniable. The isolation I felt had nothing to do with physical space—it was a prison built by screens, algorithms, and silence.
Over the next hour, Harlan and I sat on the porch. We drank, we didn’t talk much. Max rested his head on my knee, occasionally glancing at Harlan, as if he understood more than we did.
Then came the first twist I hadn’t expected.
A knock at my apartment door—sharp, deliberate, too fast. I froze. Harlan tensed beside me. “That shouldn’t be yet,” he muttered, eyes narrowing.
I grabbed Max, and we approached my apartment slowly. I peered through the peephole. The hallway was empty. Nothing. No one. But a faint clicking sound echoed from the apartment across the hall—1C. A door slammed.
Harlan’s voice was barely audible. “They’re watching,” he said.
I wanted to laugh. To shake it off as paranoia. But the unease lodged in my chest. I hadn’t realized until then how thin the line between ordinary life and danger had become.
The next morning, I was awake at 6:45 AM, just as Harlan had instructed. We drank black coffee on the porch. The sun rose weakly over the smoggy city. Max was calm, oblivious to the tension in the air. Harlan and I didn’t speak much. Words weren’t necessary yet.
By noon, strange things started happening. Emails I didn’t remember sending appeared in my outbox. My bank account showed withdrawals I hadn’t made. And worst of all, Max began barking at corners of my apartment where nothing existed.
Harlan noticed too. “They’re in your building,” he said. “Not the cops. Not burglars. Someone else.”
I wanted to scream. But what could I do? I had no allies, no resources. Only Harlan—and Max.
Days passed, and the disturbances escalated. I discovered a hidden camera in my apartment, one that had been there before I packed the bag for Max. The feed was being transmitted to an unknown location. Someone had been watching me for months, tracking my movements, my routines.
It was then that Harlan revealed the second twist.
“Your life isn’t just yours,” he said gravely. “There are people who profit from the despair of others. From the isolation. They know when you’re at your breaking point.”
I stared at him, disbelief and fear warring inside me. “Who?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he handed me a folded envelope. Inside were photos of me, taken from my own apartment, from the hallway, from the street outside. Each photo was labeled with dates and times. My heart raced.
“Yesterday, someone came to take Max,” he said. “If they had succeeded, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
The third twist came as the sun set on the third day. My phone rang—an unknown number. I answered. A distorted voice whispered: “You shouldn’t have involved him. The dog. The old man. Now it’s too late.”
Harlan grabbed my arm. “You need to leave. Tonight. Forget California. Forget everything. There’s more at stake than you realize.”
I looked at Max, at the porch, at the man who had unknowingly become my lifeline. I didn’t want to go. But deep down, I knew he was right. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t just personal. It was bigger. Much bigger.
By 11 PM, we were packed and ready. Harlan gave me a final nod. “Trust no one. Watch every shadow. And don’t… look back.”
The hallway was silent as we left. But as the elevator doors closed, I glimpsed a figure at the end of the corridor. Tall, faceless, and still. Waiting. Watching.
I didn’t know who—or what—it was. But I knew this was just the beginning.
The elevator doors closed behind us, but the figure at the end of the corridor lingered in my mind like a warning etched in shadow. Harlan’s grip on my shoulder was steady, but his eyes betrayed a tension I hadn’t seen before. “They know we left,” he said quietly. “We have less time than we think.”
I tried to process the chaos—the hidden cameras, the surveillance, the threatening call—but my mind kept returning to Max. He whined softly, as if sensing the storm ahead.
We drove through the city in silence, headlights cutting through the fog. Harlan directed me to a small, unmarked building on the outskirts. “You’ll stay here for now,” he said. “Safe. For tonight. But don’t get comfortable. Comfort is what makes people blind.”
The building looked abandoned, but inside it was fortified: locks on every door, a pantry stocked with supplies, and a series of monitors showing live feeds from streets I didn’t recognize. Harlan gestured to one screen. “They’re everywhere. Don’t assume anything is random.”
I barely had time to catch my breath before the first twist hit.
A knock on the door. Sharp, insistent. Too deliberate.
“They found us,” I whispered.
Harlan’s face hardened. “Good. That means we’ve been noticed. But it also means they’re confident. Dangerous.” He opened the door a crack. Outside was a delivery man, uniform pristine, package in hand. My name was scrawled on it.
“Open it,” Harlan ordered.
Inside the box were two things: a single photograph of Max, taken yesterday, looking terrified; and a USB drive with no explanation. My stomach turned. Whoever was doing this had eyes everywhere—even here.
“Plug it in,” Harlan said. “Careful. Don’t assume it’s just files.”
The screen flickered to life. Security camera footage—my apartment, my street, my life—played on a loop. And then, someone appeared in the frame I hadn’t noticed before: a figure in black, face concealed, moving like a shadow among the neighbors’ doorways. They were inside my life long before I realized it.
Max barked, frantic. That’s when I realized: the dog was reacting to something I couldn’t see. The same sensation had hit me in the hallway.
Before I could react, Harlan’s phone buzzed. A single text: “You shouldn’t have moved him. Now the game changes.”
The second twist: the monitors flickered. Faces I knew—friends, coworkers—appeared on the screens, smiling innocuously. Then, in the next frame, they were all staring directly at the camera, their eyes cold, empty. They weren’t alive—or they weren’t themselves.
Harlan muttered under his breath, “They’ve learned how to use the familiar to manipulate fear. We’re not just targets. We’re experiments.”
I felt a wave of nausea. “Experiments? What… who are they?”
Before he could answer, the lights went out. Pitch black. Max whined, pressed against me. Then the monitors flickered back—only this time, Harlan’s face appeared on one of the screens, sitting on a chair in a room I had never seen, looking terrified. My own name echoed through the speakers, distorted, whispering: “Jason… come to us…”
Harlan screamed. Not in anger, but in terror. The last I saw of him in the room was him being pulled backward, vanishing into darkness. Max barked furiously, lunging at nothing.
I was alone.
Panic surged, but I couldn’t think clearly. Whoever—or whatever—was doing this had capabilities I couldn’t comprehend. The cameras, the monitors, the voices… all tools in a puzzle I didn’t yet understand.
The third twist hit immediately after. My backpack, which I thought I had packed with supplies, was gone. Alongside it, the USB drive, Max’s leash, even my coat—vanished. And on the floor was a single note, written in a handwriting that was familiar yet wrong:
“They watch everything. Trust no one. Start running.”
Max barked and ran toward the nearest window. I followed. Outside, the street was empty, eerily quiet. But from the shadows, dozens of faint silhouettes moved with unnerving synchronicity, surrounding the building without making a sound.
I realized then that the people—or entities—watching me had anticipated every move. Every escape route. Every plan.
And yet… I noticed something odd. One shadow, slightly ahead of the others, paused. Its posture was hesitant. For the first time, there was a crack in their control.
I grabbed Max, heart pounding, and bolted toward the alley. The shadows followed, moving faster than humanly possible. And then, just as I reached a dead end, the alleyway lit up. A door creaked open, revealing a hidden staircase descending into darkness.
With nowhere else to go, I leapt inside, pulling Max after me. The door slammed behind us. Silence.
But I knew it wouldn’t last.
Somewhere above, the shadows waited. And somewhere beyond the darkness, Harlan’s scream still echoed in my head.
This was no longer about escape. It was survival.
And as I descended into the unknown, I realized the first rule of the game: trust is the most dangerous illusion of all.
