1 Stalker

Justin slowly crawled out of his bed only waking because of the disturbance his alarm clock brought. He reached for the noisy machine and stopped it's ringing before making his way towards the bathroom.

Lately he has been waking up to this unusual feeling of nausea and migraine and had visited the hospital for a check up. Some pills had been prescribed for him but they were all ineffective and it was driving him insane. It was the weekend and he had some time to relax and maybe clear off his head. The feeling he got might be from overworking himself with classes and his part time jobs but he was completely free for today.

He came downstairs after his ablution only to meet his younger sister a twenty year old girl who was probably meant to be in school but never listened to her brother.

"Good morning" she greeted almost nonchalantly scooping a spoon of cereal into her mouth after pronouncing the words

"Morning" He replied ignoring her unconcerned attitude and heading towards the kitchen to make his own bowl of cereal.

They were orphans, surviving off the little income he made from his part time jobs and the little their parents had left them behind after a loosing their lives in a car accident.

They were both in the local community college and he was already near his graduation but Ashley had just began schooling and as things seemed, she wasn't taking it seriously and he had expected this behavior from the onset.

She had rejected the idea of going to college completely and offered to help out in doing little works to save up and probably start her own business instead of wasting the money on an education that wasn't even guaranteed to give her a job after graduation but he was totally against her idea.

He wanted her to study and finish her education and after much heated arguments and disagreement, she finally bent to his will and had started her first year

"What's going on?" Justin asked as he neared the television which his sister had her eyes fixated on.

"Another murder" She replied "The same as every other one" she finished.

Ever since their parents had died, he never felt safe in their community. For some reason he felt their car crash wasn't really an accident. He felt like it was a completely schemed out agenda of murder covered up to make it look like an accident. For some reason, his parents had swerved off the edge of the road and fell into a ditch because their car had lost control and they were trying to avoid hitting a little girl.

Ever since then random deaths had been occuring all around the entire town with the victims eyes either gouged out of its socket or they had one of their organs missing. All in all, their deaths was a painful and cruel one. Their bodies were heavily mutilated and recognition of the victim was almost impossible.

The locals believed a wild animal was behind these attacks but he could feel there was a much worse predator doing thses things. Something of pure evil and it was certainly not human or an animal but his thoughts didn't really matter.

Every newspaper was printing the deaths as a wild animal attack and that was what everyone in the town was busy believing.

He sat down beside his sister, his eyes equally glued on the screen watching as the police men covered the already decaying body with a tarp. Over the past one year, nine people had been reported missing first and then their body wound up dead not always far from the forest and this helped to always add flesh to the fact that it was probably a wild animal attack. But what was really weird was that this animal had never been found after a full year of relentless searching by the local police and for some reason, people kept going into the forest despite all the deaths that had been reported there.

Hayside had become a murder town and people didn't seem really bothered but he and Ashley felt really off about the killing and were both home before seven PM.

He finished his cereal and handed his bowl over to his sister who took out both their plates. Even though she was probably still mad at him for forcing her into college, the love between them never dwindled and she still respected him,

He also rose from the seat, readying himself for grocery shopping. He has already accessed the items they were short on while he was in the kitchen and had already made a mental list of what to buy.

"I'll be back soon. Don't let anyone in I'll be home soon" He reminded her while she rolled her eyes at his words seemingly showing that she had heard him enough times.

He always constantly reminded her just to make sure she heard him. They had already lost their parents and losing her would totally break him.

He walked outside the house, not taking any step further away until he heard the door lock click.

The supermarket wasn't far from their residence and was roughly a twenty minutes walk. His total Shopping time was an exact hour. A twenty minutes walk to the store, twenty minutes to do his shopping and another twenty minutes walk home.

Throughout his walk to the supermarket, he felt unsafe. It was probably the nausea coming back again or his migraines he concluded even though he felt something more than that. He hastened his steps hoping to finish a little faster before collapsed on the road. But ultimately, he knew it wasn't his nausea. He was being watched and he was walking faster to get into the supermarket where they were a lot of people.

If he was being followed or watched, he would shake off his stalker by walking into the crowd before heading home. He could be wrong anyways but the feeling in him felt so real he just concluded he was being followed. Maybe it was just his intuition trying to keep him alert because of all the killing happening.

He concluded his shopping and made it home as soon as he could. Hoping it was just his head trying to keep him alert because if he was really being watched, then he was literally leading his stalker to where he lived and putting both himself and Ashley in danger of the unknown.

Entering the house after it had been unlocked, he unpacked all that he had purchased and stashed them into where they were meant to be. He walked outside towards the bin to dispose of the grocery back that wasn't needed any longer.

After disposal, he had turned to enter the house when he noticed a paper neatly folded in their flower pot. When he had entered, he didn't see it there neither did he notice it when he left for the supermarket this morning. He didn't want to believe it but he had been right, he was being stalked.