I should be trying to evict him.
Instead, I pour coffee and check the street outside my window like I’m waiting for a delivery. Like maybe there’ll be a car I don’t recognise. A man standing too still. A note on the windscreen. A fingerprint on the glass.
There’s nothing.
No text.
No knock.
No proof.
But I feel it. I know it. The way you know when you’re being stared at. The way you know something’s wrong even before the sound comes. That itch beneath the skin that says run but never tells you where.
I turn on the TV for noise. Music. Anything. It doesn’t help. Nothing is louder than silence when you know someone else is listening too.
I open my laptop.
I type his name.
Just to see.
Not Hook. That’s not searchable. That’s a ghost story.
But what I do have — what I remember — is the shape of his face.
The scars.
The hook.
And the name he said when the bouncer called him over, quiet but not soft, as if it was a title, not a warning.
James.
I type it in.
Just that.
James. NYC. Club. Velvet Room. Surveillance.
I scroll.
And scroll.
And scroll.
Until the feeling in my chest tightens, not with panic — but recognition.
And then I find it.
Not a photo.
Not a record.
A forum thread.
Locked. Buried. Hidden behind invite-only access and warnings written in half-jokes and coded language. A dark site that smells like rot and fetish forums and secrets no one should be saying out loud.
But it’s there.
