What you must understand, my voyeur, is how very much can go unnoticed so easily. Days fade into one another. You forget to write your mother back. Your sister bitches to you about it over email. Your showers stop looking like scenes from Psycho. You realize it’s time to do your roots again. That is what reminds you. Not the smarmy, purse lipped remarks from the weathered women of this gray country. If you missed anything about America, it was all the color. The vast expanse of it in the sky and in the egg salad of culture of New York and Boston and LA. Even Saint Louis seemed to have more going on for it than this dusky isle. And that’s saying something. Saint Louis is in Missouri.

But you’re probably confused, Voyeur. Cause if you’re reading this, you’re very aware that I have a voyeur. A voyeur that is not you. You’re wondering if this letter is to him. If the abduction or murder or whatever this ends up being wasn’t a one-sided affair. This letter is not to him. This letter is to you. You, the voyeur. My voyeur. The cop or journalist or, G-d forbid, relative digging through my things for some clue as to who’s done this. I know precisely who’s done this. Maybe not his name, but what he is. Would you believe me if I told you what he was? Would you believe me if I didn’t think him quite human? I’m sure it’s all makeup and contacts. I’m not sure, but that’s what would make the most logical sense.

This, though. This doesn’t feel logical. There’s almost a whimsy to the whole ordeal. Almost a romance. Maybe Romantic, but not a romance.

When I first saw him. Really saw him—not whatever part he saw fit to play for the public, I almost screamed. I knew my next actions were paramount. I couldn’t hide my shock or surprise, but I made the effort to suppress my terror. I don’t think I was quite successful. There was a distinct twinge of hurt when I met his eye—I’d never met his eye. I’d never seen them. So accustomed to the glazy gaze he often employed; the wide, wet brown beads were more horrifying than any inhuman stone he could embody. He looked so strange, cheeks flush and alive. Yes—alive! That’s what really did it. I’d never seen him so lively. He was handsome. A kind of shy, boyish charm to him.

Is it strange if I were to say I’d have entertained a date with him if he’d simply asked?

But he hadn’t.

Another thing you must understand, Voyeur, is that survival is rarely a matter of rationality. Especially when dealing with irrationality. And the man watching me write this—the man, a dark silhouette against my paisley wallpaper as he wonders if I’m simply writing another song—is very irrational, I’ve learned. He knows I write music (not even my sister knows I write music).

He's irrational enough to think the smile I plastered on, and he waxed lyrical about my smile in his letter, is real. And I suppose it is. It is a smile that harkens back to its primitive origins as a threat. To bare teeth at another ape. To show you have them all. To show you bite. If you find my teeth marks in him, know I fought back. Even if I didn’t win. He thinks this smile is one of joy. Of pleasure. The pleasure of being seen. And see me, he most certainly has.

Sobbing and joyous. Enraged and ecstatic. Groaning in pain with a heating pad clutched to my abdomen and writhing in pleasure at the skill of my own hand. Two nails permanently shorter than the rest. He’s obsessed with details, but he never seemed to catch that one. Or, perhaps, in all of his wealth of ink against paper, he only lacked in mentioning it. It’d be an odd thing to mention—to spin the straw of his obsession into gold about. An openness to endings of all kind, feminine or otherwise.

This isn’t even the first time I’ve had a stalker. Must be something about me that draws them. I never cared whether I was particularly noticeable. It was always a matter of chance, how easily I stood out in a crowd. The odds I’d move the way I do. Laugh the way I did. Smile the way I did. The odds that red really was just my color.

Cherry Bomb. Cherry Bomb was my color. Right there on the side of the box in metallic red ink. My sister had to ship it in. England doesn’t have Cherry Bomb.

I keep sliding back into the past tense. That’s very bad of me, isn’t it? To talk about myself like I’m already dead. But I’m not. Not now, at least. Not while I type this. He doesn’t mean me dead. But then again, they never do. Do they? He doesn’t, I think. Still—he’s mighty unseemly sitting in my apartment. Not the first time he’s been here, if the letter’s anything to go by. Won’t be the last either, if he can help it.

He’s very good at keeping still. A trick of the trade, I suppose. He sits across from me now. So very, very deathly still as he watches me. Head tilted just so. His brown eyes flitted up to meet mine. I offer a small smile, and it seems to sate him.

He was still when he laid his hands on me too. It was a subtle thing. Just the large expanse of that warm member upon me. Still, a professional of his trade or not, he could hardly suppress his uncharacteristic panting. So easily excitable. It was only a hand, at first.

Despite his research—and he’s a glutton for knowledge—an endless barrage of questions spew from his coy, pink lips. He asks of me again and again and again and again. And I answer. As best and honest as I can cause if I’m still talking, I’m still alive. He asked me questions about myself even I didn’t know the answers to. And in those moments as I struggled to answer him at such speed he wouldn’t suspect my horror, I invented new women for him to obsess over. Dark, damask reflections of my reality to entertain him. He is so easily entertained, so long as I kept talking.  I understood, for the first time in my life, Scheherazade’s plight. And I’d kiss the sands she walked upon for planting the idea in my head. I was at once master and servant to the very web of stories that was keeping me alive.

Or more comfortable, at least. A silk shawl might feel better than nothing, but it wouldn’t keep the cold from creeping in.

I’m being morbid again. He doesn’t mean to kill me, does he?

He’s shifted in his seat. A curious grin tugging at the corners of his lips as he asks me what I’m up to. I cannot tell him. I invent another new woman for him to play with. One that isn’t scared out of her wits and desperate to leave last words. Desperate that in the grand narrative of her life, he doesn’t get the final say.

He doesn’t mean to kill but fright creeps into my bloodstream through the gums with every toothy smile. Animals die of fright, don’t they? And we’re only animals.

He doesn’t mean to kill me.

Dear Voyeur, I’m so very afraid. I’m many things, but mainly afraid. And I’ve had stalkers before. I know precisely how this goes. I’m quick enough to make it to the phone. He’s charmed enough by my sharp-toothed smiles to not catch me till the police are called. He’ll be hauled off. He’ll be bailed out. He’ll be back again.

I’m a very messy person, Voyeur. He knows this. He’s dug through my things. He hacked into my computer. Though, with my choice of passwords… I should know better. I know that. The first time this happened my mother wasn’t frightened. Wasn’t worried. She was angry. So very angry. Cherry Bomb angry that I should have known better. That girls like me—and she did say that, girls like me should know better. What more could I expect, drawing attention like I do.

In all his research, he never knew why I came to England. The violence that pushed me from the nest before my time. Forced me to fly on naked wings. A songbird flitting from foot to foot on the frozen winter ground looks like it's dancing, does it not? He doesn’t know why I came to England.

I must confess, Voyeur, I’m not fluent in any other language.

He doesn’t mean to kill me, but he will. And whether I choke on terror or—him—is a matter of chance. The same matter of chance that landed me here. Now. Sitting across from him. My purse on the ground at my feet. As big and cluttered and messy as I am.

My dear Voyeur, I’m so afraid. I am many things and, among them, afraid. But above all that I am American. And there is one aspect as to my me-ness that he has yet to anticipate. A version of myself that isn’t traced upon his soft, supple, skin. A version of myself that doesn’t spill from my lips like cherry wine. A version of myself that is hard and coarse and mean and selfish. A version of my self that survives.

Dear Voyeur, I think the police are on their way now.      

Dear Voyeur, there’s a ringing in my ears.

Dear Voyeur, there’s a Cherry Bomb splatter on my paisley wallpaper.

Belle "Toast" Stanfield is a queer writer in Missouri exploring the intersection of horror and romance in their work. Their audio drama The Voicemail Box Is Full, a horror podcast told through voicemails left to the protagonist, is available wherever you find podcasts.