I delete it before I reach the end of his message.
My phone goes face down on the desk because I’m done with all the shit it brings. The hum of the air conditioning fills the silence, but it doesn’t drown the sound of my frustrated pulse. This game Daniel is playing with me is really pissing me off, and I’m growing tired of waiting for the right time to kill him.
I know I keep calling it a waiting game, but how fucking long do I have to sit idly by while he drives me crazy?
By three, I give up pretending to work and prop my feet on the desk, leaning back in my chair.
The man I’m watching hasn’t moved for over an hour. He’s reading emails, tapping his pen like a metronome as he sips the free sludge they pass as coffee.
I scroll through the app thread, trying to remember why I opened it in the first place. But it’s just my newest time-suck, an addiction that I don’t need.
There are no new messages, only the cursor, blinking like it’s waiting for me to say something I shouldn’t.
Eris:
Do you know what it feels like to be haunted by someone who’s still alive?
Locke:
Yes, it feels like being rewritten by someone else’s memory.
My throat tightens as I nod to myself. That’s exactly what it feels like.
Eris:
How do you make it stop?
The dots appear, vanish, and return in a rhythmic pattern.
Locke:
You replace the ghost with something stronger.
I stare at that for a long time contemplating what exactly replace means. Get a new stalker? Or replace this stalker with an actual ghost?
Around me, keyboards click and chairs roll as people prepare to leave. Someone microwaves leftovers that smell like garlic and incoming heartburn. The ordinary noise makes the words feel louder.
The cursor blinks once more, drawing my attention as new words roll across the screen lazily.
Locke:
I can be stronger, Eris.
If you let me…
Ikeep telling myself she’s just another user.
Another thread to test tone and timing, measure how far people go before they feel seen. That’s what we built this thing for.
But I start checking her feed for activity before my coffee is done brewing, and that’s when I know I’m full of shit.
Eris.
She types like a storm about to break. No sense of regret, no fishing for sympathy… Just clean hits of thought, sharp and fast. Everything she sends reads like maybe she doesn’t want to say it, but she still presses send anyway.
And she stays.
Most users ghost within a few days. Bored or unnerved. They want quick affection from the algorithm, not an echo that bites back.
