My legs finally respond. I ease backward, slow and silent, keeping to the shadows. Every step feels like it drags seconds into minutes. When I reach the mouth of the alley, I don’t run. Running screams guilt. Running screams witness.
My pulse races so hard it hurts.
I slip into the stream of pedestrians, matching their rhythm, their pace. I don’t look back. Not yet. Not until I reach the next corner, where I let myself steal a single glance.
The alley sits empty. No movement. No silhouette. No sign of him. Except the air still feels tight around me. My bones buzz with the memory of his gaze.
I turn away quickly, clutching my notebook like something solid might hold me steady. I keep walking, blending into the noise, the crowd, the city’s relentless rush. But the truth has already settled in my chest like a weight I can’t shake.
I force myself to keep walking, blending into the foot traffic the way I used to when I lived here, when anonymity felt like a relief instead of a necessity.
My pulse hasn’t settled. It thumps fast and uneven, pushing hot pressure through my chest. I keep my notebook tucked tight to my side, fingers numb from how hard I’m gripping it. Every few steps I tell myself to breathe, but each breath comes thin, clipped, as if the air itself is too heavy to pull in.
The city moves around me, loud and uncaring, and for once that should comfort me. New York is good at swallowing people whole, turning them into background noise. I should disappear easily.
I count storefronts, passing cars, the squeal of a subway grate, anything familiar to ground myself. Yet something prickles at the back of my neck, a cold thread tightening from my spine up to my scalp.
It feels like someone is watching me.
I don’t turn around. My instincts scream not to. Instead, I shift lanes on the sidewalk and slip between a pair of women arguing about rent, hoping the extra bodies hide me. My bag strap digs into my shoulder. My breath fogs slightly as cooler air moves through the street. I try to focus on the normal things. A food truck blasting pop music. Someone handing out flyers. A line forming outside a tiny café.
None of it cuts through the feeling curling beneath my ribs.
I tell myself it’s shock. My mind is processing something violent and horrifying, and this is a textbook stress response. Adrenaline. Dissociation. Heightened threat perception. I list the symptoms in my head like I’m reading from a manual, but the logic does nothing to quiet the twisting sensation deep in my gut.
The feeling isn’t panic alone. It’s specific. Focused. Like a single pair of eyes marking my steps, narrowing each time I drift too close to a crosswalk or too far toward an open space. I don’t know how I know, but I do.
I saw something I wasn’t meant to see, and someone knows I saw it.
I rub my free hand over the back of my neck and try to shrug the shiver away. The evening wind moves through the street, stirring wrappers along the curb. My hair brushes my cheek, loose strands catching in the breeze.
The city smells of hot asphalt, spices from a street vendor, stale cigarette smoke. All familiar. All normal. Yet beneath it lies something faint, something colder, as if the memory of that alley still clings to my clothes.
The face I saw—or rather, the parts I saw—flash through my mind in blurry fragments. A jawline sharpened by shadow. The faint shape of a scar near his temple. A pair of pale eyes fixed on the dark.
I never saw the whole picture. I didn’t need to. The pieces alone were enough to wedge themselves deep into my memory.
He wasn’t surprised by the gunshot. He wasn’t unnerved by the body hitting the ground. He watched the moment unfold with focus, not hesitation. There was a calmness in him that terrifies me more than the violence itself.
Normal people don’t stand like that.
I hurry across the next intersection when the light changes. A cab swerves wide as I move, honking loud enough to make me flinch.
I raise a hand in apology, even though the driver has already moved on. My feet ache inside my shoes, but I don’t slow down. If anything, I move faster.
Block after block stretches beneath me until the neighborhood shifts, the buildings softening into a slightly nicer district with brighter storefronts and more foot traffic. The tension in my shoulders eases a fraction.
People linger here. They talk, laugh, smoke outside delis, argue over directions. It feels less hostile, less charged.
Still, something cold coils low in my stomach. I stop near a bus shelter under a flickering fluorescent light and pretend to check the route map.
My reflection stares back at me from the plexiglass: wide eyes, flushed cheeks, hair a little messy from the wind. I look like someone who’s running from something.
I angle my body slightly and glance past the edge of the shelter, making it appear casual. The street behind me spills out into traffic and pedestrians, nothing out of place. No dark figures. No lingering shapes. No pale eyes watching me.
It doesn’t make the feeling go away.
I push onward, letting the city swallow me again. The noise loosens the tightness in my chest, but the cold prickling never fully fades. I adjust the strap of my bag and take a turn toward the subway entrance, thinking the swarm of people below might finally give me some sense of safety.
