Thirty Days Under Her Bed

For the past thirty days, Ive been living inside Annas house, and she still has no idea I exist.

Its kind of a thrill, honestly. I know phrogging is technically a felony, but I didn't plan on staying this long. I originally just needed a place to crash for a couple of nights.

But her setup is just too perfect. She lives alone, shes wealthy, and shes completely blind.

The first time I slipped inside was during a torrential thunderstorm. I popped the vent grating on the side of her luxury condo and slithered into her life like a cockroach.

Because shes blind, I don't even have to hide in the crawlspace or the attic like I used to.

I can sit right on her expensive leather sofa, watching her fumble her way to the kitchen to pour a glass of water. I can watch her change her clothes less than four inches away from my face.

She has beautiful eyes. Even though theyre milky and unfocused, it always feels like shes looking right at me.

It gives me a sick, twisted sense of satisfaction. I log all her daily habits into my encrypted private blog. I titled it: Diary of Keeping a Blind Girl.

Anna is a piano instructor. Her routine is as rigid as a machine.

She wakes up at 8:00 AM, feels her way to the bathroom, practices piano at 9:00, and listens to audiobooks at 2:00 PM.

As a seasoned phrogger, I mapped out her auditory blind spots by day three.

I know exactly which floorboards creak. I know exactly when she turns on her loud robot vacuum so I can sneak into the kitchen and steal her food.

The feeling of watching your prey living completely defenseless right under your nose... it's addictive.

I am addicted to this blind girl. I feel like I am her god.

But I haven't touched her. I haven't even dared to steal a kiss while she sleeps. Once she goes to bed, I just lie down on the plush rug next to her mattress and breathe the exact same air she breathes.

It makes me feel like, for once in my miserable life, I actually have a home.

That was, until the day an unexpected man rang the doorbell.

I peeked through the peephole. A heavy set man with a scarred, meaty face was standing there, gripping a steel hammer.

Anna walked to the door, her hands trembling slightly as she unlocked it.

I was watching through the crack of the bedroom door, calculating exactly how I was going to burst out and play the hero if things went sideways.

But what happened next froze the blood in my veins.

The moment the door swung open, Anna didn't ask "Who is it?"

Instead, she smiled at the empty hallway and said something that made my skin crawl.

"You're finally here. Come on in, he's been waiting under the bed for a long time."

My heart completely stopped.

I was literally lying flat on my stomach under her bed at that exact moment. Cold sweat dripped from my forehead onto the hardwood floor.

In that split second, my mind raced. Did she see me? Has she been faking her blindness this entire time?

But the man with the hammer just blinked, looking confused. He muttered, "Crazy bitch," turned around, and walked away.

She was bluffing. Or maybe she was just talking to herself to scare off intruders.

I let out a long, shaky breath. The sheer adrenaline rush of a near miss made me even more euphoric.

In this apartment, she was the owner, but I was the ghost. And the ghost sees everything.

Anna locked the door and felt her way over to the grand piano. She sat down.

I stood exactly six feet behind her, holding a bag of potato chips I had just swiped from her coffee table.

Crunch.

I bit down on a chip.

The sound was deafening in the dead silent apartment.

Annas fingers slammed on the brakes, hovering directly over the piano keys.

She slowly turned her head. Her dead, milky eyes locked perfectly onto my exact position.

I stopped breathing. Every muscle in my body locked up. I held the half chewed chip in my mouth, terrified to even swallow.

This was the ultimate high. Dancing on the razor's edge.

If she were a normal person, she would be screaming for the cops right now.

Too bad shes blind.

As long as I don't make another sound, I am just air.

Anna stayed frozen for about five seconds. Her eyebrows furrowed slightly, like she was trying to isolate a sound wave.

Then, she shook her head. Her fingers dropped back onto the keys, and the booming classical music drowned out everything else.

I smiled a silent, manic smile and swallowed the potato chip.

A blind person's world is pitch black. And in her darkness, I am the only speck of white.

I absolutely relished the absolute control I had.

As a veteran phrogger, I have a strict set of rules: No noise. Do not move objects. Leave no scent.

Every day, while she showers, I use her exact shampoo and body wash.

That way, no matter how close I get to her, she only ever smells her own scent.

It is the perfect camouflage. Its also a deeply sick form of possession.

That night, I was hiding in the hollow space above her walk in closet, updating my blog.

Diary of Keeping a Blind Girl - Day 30:

"Her piano playing was a little messy today. Probably spooked by that guy at the door. She is so fragile. Like a porcelain doll. But she is safe here, under my watchful eye. I am her guardian angel."

The blog is heavily encrypted. Only I have the password.

Its my trophy case. My proof of existence as an invisible man.

At 2:00 AM, I heard movement below me.

I peeked through the slats of the closet vent.

Anna, wearing a thin silk nightgown, was sleepwalking toward the closet doors.

She hadn't turned on any lights. The pale moonlight washed over her face, making her look like a corpse.

She slowly pressed her cheek against the wooden closet door. Her face was only half an inch of wood away from the bottom of my feet.

She just stood there. Completely motionless.

What the hell was she listening to?

Did I snore?

Impossible. I literally tape my mouth shut when I sleep. Its a professional habit.

She stood there listening for ten agonizing minutes. Then, the corner of her mouth twitched upward into the tiniest, most microscopic smile.

The smile looked incredibly sinister in the moonlight, and then it was gone.

She turned around and went back to bed.

I lay flat on my back above the closet, my eyes wide open until the sun came up.

That was the very first time I felt genuine fear toward the blind girl I was "keeping."

The next day, a different man showed up.

This wasn't a wrong door situation. He was specifically looking for Anna.

He was wearing a wrinkled blue mechanics shirt with a cheap plastic badge that read "Building Maintenance."

I could tell instantly it was a fake. There wasn't even a photo on the ID.

"Who is it?" Anna asked through the closed door.

"Maintenance. Checking the pipes," the man grunted. His voice was raspy and reeked of stale cigarettes.

Anna opened the door, but kept the heavy chain lock secured.

"I didn't call for maintenance," she said, her voice tight with suspicion.

"Building wide inspection. Gotta check every unit," the man said, shoving his thick fingers through the gap, trying to reach the chain.

I was crouched behind the shoe rack in the entryway, my fists clenched so hard my knuckles were white.

A wave of pure, unadulterated rage hit me.

This was my territory. She was my prey. Any other predator who stepped onto my turf needed to die.

How dare this greasy piece of shit try to lay his hands on my property.

Anna was visibly terrified. She tried to slam the door shut, but she wasn't strong enough.

The man wedged his heavy work boot into the gap, flashing a disgusting, yellow toothed grin. "Living all alone, huh sweetheart? Let me come in and take a look. Im real good with my hands."

You didn't have to be a genius to hear the vile threat in his voice.

I glanced at the heavy ceramic vase on the console table next to me.

It was Annas favorite piece. She dusted it meticulously every week.

Right now, all I wanted to do was smash it repeatedly into the side of that mans skull.

Just as I grabbed the neck of the vase, ready to charge, the man suddenly yanked his foot back.

It was like he sensed something. He snapped his head, staring directly toward the shoe rack where I was hiding.

Maybe I was breathing too hard. Maybe he could feel the sheer malice radiating off me.

The man muttered under his breath, "Jesus, it feels like a graveyard in there."

He let go of the door. Anna slammed it shut and locked the deadbolt with a loud click.

She pressed her back against the heavy wood, slid down to the floor, buried her face in her knees, and started to sob.

Her crying was muffled and completely helpless. It made my chest ache physically.

I wanted to burst out of hiding, wrap my arms around her, and tell her not to be afraid. Tell her I was here.

But I bit my tongue.

I couldn't blow my cover yet. I was a shadow, and shadows die in the light.

I watched her cry, and the dark, twisted possessiveness inside me grew like a cancer.

That guy wasn't going to just walk away.

I looked through the peephole. He hadn't left the hallway.

He crouched down by the baseboard next to her door and used a piece of chalk to draw a tiny, crude symbol on the wall.

It was a burglars mark. It meant: "Single female. Easy target."

He was coming back tonight.

I reached into my pocket and flicked open my switchblade.

I wasn't sleeping tonight.

I was going to teach him that this house already had a master.

Midnight hit, and right on cue, the guy came back.

He was garbage at picking locks. The deadbolt clicked and scraped loudly.

Normally, Anna would have been wide awake from the noise.

But I had crushed half a sleeping pill into her evening glass of milk.

I needed her dead to the world so she wouldn't witness the bloodbath I was about to cause.

The door creaked open.

The man crept into the apartment, a short hunting knife gripped tightly in his right hand.

Using the faint glow of the streetlights filtering through the window, he started making his way toward the master bedroom.

I was standing flat against the wall right next to the breaker box.

The second he stepped into the center of the living room, I threw the main switch.

The already dim apartment was plunged into a suffocating, pitch black void.

"What the fuck?" the man muttered, freezing in his tracks.

The dark is a living nightmare for the blind. But for a phrogger? Its an absolute playground.

I slid my military grade night vision goggles over my eyes. The room instantly lit up in crisp, glowing green.

I could see every pore on his sweating face.

He was waving his hands in front of him like a blind man, completely disoriented.

I picked up the heavy TV remote off the coffee table and hurled it as hard as I could at the far wall.

SMASH.

The plastic shattered loudly.

The man spun around violently, slashing his knife at the empty air. "Who's there?! Show yourself!"

I didn't make a sound. I slipped behind him with the silent grace of a ghost.

I was barefoot, wearing thick wool socks. I made literally zero noise on the hardwood.

I leaned in, putting my lips an inch from his ear, and blew a soft puff of cold air onto his neck.

That single breath did more damage than a gunshot.

The man violently flinched, his entire body convulsing in sheer terror.

He spun around wildly again, staring into the pitch black abyss.

"Ghosts... there's a fucking ghost..." his voice cracked, laced with raw panic.

I pulled a heavy steel wrench from my tool belt and swung it hard into his shinbone.

Because he couldn't see me, his brain processed it as some invisible, demonic force snapping his leg.

"AGH!"

He screamed, completely abandoning his plan to rob or assault anyone. He scrambled backward, tripped over his own feet, and dropped his knife on the floor.

He crawled frantically toward the door, threw it open, and ran for the elevator.

I waited until I heard the elevator ding and the doors slide shut before I flipped the breaker back on.

The lights flickered to life.

I knelt down and picked up his dropped hunting knife. Etched into the base of the blade was a strange logo. It looked like a URL emblem I had seen once on a deep web forum.

Suddenly, the bedroom door clicked open.

The sleeping pill wasn't strong enough. Anna was awake.

She leaned heavily against the doorframe, her face pale and exhausted. She stared blindly into the empty living room and whispered, "Thank you."

Every muscle in my body turned to stone.

Who was she talking to? Me?

Then, she pressed her palms together, bowing her head toward the ceiling. "Thank God. Please protect me and don't let that man come back."

She was praying.

I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding, feeling a strange twinge of disappointment.

But it didn't matter. As long as she was safe.

What I didn't know at the time was that the moment the intruder ran out of the building, he pulled out a burner phone and sent a text.

The text read: "The bait is taken. The squatter is highly territorial. Pushing his boundaries further."

That logo on the knife was bothering me.

But before I could look into it, everything went straight to hell.

Three days later, right around noon, a courier dropped off a package for Anna.

She thought it was her new braille books. She grabbed a pair of scissors and excitedly sliced through the tape.

I was sitting criss cross under the dining table, watching her.

The moment the cardboard flaps opened, a sickening, metallic stench of raw blood filled the apartment.

Annas hands shook as she reached inside. Her fingers brushed against something furry and wet.

It was a dead cat.

Its throat had been slit. The blood was still warm.

"AHHH!"

Anna screamed, violently throwing the box across the room. She scrambled backward into the corner of the room, curling into a tight ball, shaking uncontrollably.

It must have triggered the memory of her old guide dog. That dog had died under similarly mysterious circumstances a year ago.

She cried so hard she hyperventilated, eventually passing out cold on the floor.

Screw the rules. Screw staying hidden.

For her, I would gladly turn from a ghost into a demon.

I crawled out from under the table and scooped her up into my arms. She was so light. Her skin was freezing.

I laid her gently on the couch.

I stared at the mutilated cat, the killing intent boiling over in my veins.

I picked up the blood soaked box. The return address was printed clearly on the label: Abandoned Textile Mill, Warehouse 3, City Limits.

It was a blatant provocation.

That bastard was declaring war.

I poured a glass of water and set it on the table next to her.

Before I left, I slipped a small piece of thick paper into her palm.

I had spent weeks learning to write braille just for her. I used a pin to punch out the dots.

The note read: "Don't be afraid. I am here."

It was the first time I had officially broken cover and admitted I existed.

I knew exactly what I was risking, but I didn't care anymore.

I was going to that warehouse, and I was going to slaughter that animal with my bare hands.

But when I got to the warehouse, it was completely deserted.

It was a sprawling, rotting industrial wasteland. A single naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling in the center of Warehouse 3.

I gripped my switchblade tight, stepping silently over the shattered glass and debris.

Under the lightbulb was a folding table. On the table was an open laptop.

I walked over and looked at the screen. The blood in my veins turned to ice.

It was a live video feed of Annas living room.

High definition. Perfect overhead angle. No blind spots.

I watched the live feed as Anna woke up on the couch.

She sat up. She held the braille note I had left her between her fingers.

She wasn't crying. She wasn't scared.

Her face was completely, terrifyingly blank.

She slowly ripped my note into tiny pieces, shoved the paper into her mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed it.

Then, she slowly raised her head. Those milky, dead eyes locked flawlessly onto the exact location of the hidden camera lens on the ceiling.

And she smiled. A massive, ear to ear, psychotic smile.

She was smiling right at the camera. She was smiling right at me.

It was a trap.

There was no stalker. There was no threat. That guy with the knife was working with her!

I ran out of that warehouse like a madman, sprinting until my lungs felt like they were going to burst.

By the time I got back to the apartment, the locks had already been changed.

But I had a spare key. The one Anna "hid" under the welcome mat.

My hands shook violently as I jammed the key in and turned the deadbolt.

The living room lights were blazing.

The greasy mechanic who had broken in three nights ago was sitting on the leather sofa, casually flipping that hunting knife in his hand.

He saw me, flashed those disgusting yellow teeth, and laughed.

"Took you long enough, man. Been waiting."

"Where is Anna?" I growled, my voice rough and ragged.

"In her bedroom. Sleeping like a baby," the man stood up, twirling the blade. "What? You wanna play the knight in shining armor?"

Looking at his smug face, every ounce of fear evaporated, replaced by pure, blinding rage.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Doesn't matter who I am. All that matters is youre leaving in a body bag."

He lunged at me, driving the point of the knife straight at my chest.

A month ago, I would have bolted.

But right now, the only thing playing in my head was the image of Annas psychotic smile as she swallowed my note.

I had been played.

The absolute humiliation of being her pet was worse than death.

I sidestepped his thrust, grabbed a heavy brass lamp off the console table, and brought it down hard on his skull.

CRACK.

The man stumbled, blood pouring down his forehead.

But he didn't drop. Instead, he let out a roar and tackled me around the waist.

We hit the floor hard, violently rolling and thrashing across the hardwood.

He had forty pounds on me, but I was ruthless.

When you spend your entire life surviving in the shadows, you learn exactly where a human body is weak.

I drove my thumbs deep into his eye sockets and slammed my knee upward into his groin.

The man shrieked in agony. His grip loosened, and the knife clattered to the floor.

I scrambled for it, grabbed the hilt, flipped him over, and pinned him to the floor with my knees on his biceps. I pressed the edge of the blade against his throat.

"Wait... wait, please don't..." he suddenly froze, his eyes widening in absolute, primal terror.

He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at something right behind me.

"Run... she's a..."

He tried to warn me, but I didn't give him the chance.

I thought about the slaughtered cat. I thought about the helpless tears Anna had cried.

Whether she was playing me or not, this piece of trash deserved to die.

"Go to hell."

I drove the hunting knife deep into the side of his neck.

Hot, thick blood sprayed directly across my face, burning my skin.

The man convulsed violently beneath me for a few seconds, then went entirely limp.

His eyes were still wide open, locked onto whatever was behind me. And in his dying gaze, I swear I saw... pity.

Playing the hero sometimes means you have to become a monster.

I sat there straddling the corpse, panting heavily, my hands slick with blood. The knife slipped from my fingers.

I just killed a man.

Right then, a soft click echoed behind me.

The bedroom door opened.

Anna walked out. She was wearing a pristine white silk nightgown, barefoot on the hardwood.

She perfectly sidestepped the shattered lamp. She perfectly sidestepped the dead body. She even stepped neatly over the pooling blood.

Her steps were confident and deliberate. She wasn't walking like a blind person at all.

She walked right up to me, crouched down, and gently reached out. Her thumb wiped a smear of blood off my cheek.

Her skin was freezing cold, sliding against my face like a snakes scales.

I braced myself for her to scream. For her to run to the phone and dial 911.

She didn't.

She didn't even ask what happened.

She just looked at me with those blank eyes and whispered in a soft, sweet voice:

"Its okay. Well just clean him up."

She stood back up, walked over to the front door, locked the deadbolt, and pulled the heavy blackout curtains shut.

It was the practiced, methodical routine of someone preparing a kill room.

I stared down at the corpse beneath me. One of his hands had fallen open, revealing a blood splattered leather wallet.

I reached down and flipped it open.

Inside was a heavy metal shield and a laminated ID card. The photo was a perfect match.

Name: David Miller.

Rank: Undercover Detective, Vice Squad.