PENNED

It was one of those peculiar sensations that Anna couldn’t exactly describe, yet she instinctively knew its meaning. A cold tickle up her arms. A slight chill on her spine. A sudden, frantic paranoia and a primal need to stay very, very still.

 

The subway train glided along its rails without a bump or jolt, and people were crowded around her in every direction. Phone screens and YouTube videos flashed and glimmered in the corners of her eyes; the trip to D.C. was not long, but their attention spans remained woefully short.

 

Anna flicked her eyes to the nearest stranger standing beside her. A young woman with voluminous hair, Beats headphones draped around her neck, an athletic jacket, and the obligatory black leggings. Their eyes met briefly, and then Anna focused on her own shoes rather than the woman’s face.

 

The chill grew more intense, dragging up her back with icy claws. A light sweat broke out on her limps, and Anna exhaled softly.

 

She sent a glance to the three people surrounding her left side, but none of them were especially suspicious. A man in a business suit, carrying a briefcase. An old, plump woman with a scarf tied over her thin hair. Another young, hip, jogger type.

 

It’s nothing, Anna reassured herself. Don’t be so paranoid. Nobody’s paying any attention to you.

Noticing her own reflection in the opposite window, she met her eyes through the spaces afforded by the shifting bodies. There were dark shadows under her eyelids, and Anna’s ivory face remained stoic and weary while she gazed at it.

 

She inhaled sharply.

 

There was a man behind her, and his eyes were locked on her in the reflection.

 

Anna jerked her head and knocked into the man with the briefcase.

 

“Excuse me!” he protested, and she mumbled an apology before turning red and facing forward again. Heart racing, she looked back to her reflection in the window.

 

But the man was gone.

 

The train began to slow, and everybody stumbled a little as the doors whooshed open at the station. Anna let go of the strap to which she’d been clinging and allowed herself to be swept onto the platform with the surging tide of harried passengers. Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she made her way to another platform and stood there to wait for the train to arrive.

 

Anna studied the ground for a time, nudging a small rock with the toe of her shoe. She didn’t often come to D.C., nor had she any desire to do so. But her brother had recently rented an apartment near Capitol Hill, and he begged her to come visit him when she could. So, while on break for Christmas, she was on her way to Liam’s new home.

 

“Excuse me.”

 

A pair of well-polished, black dress shoes appeared a foot from her own flats. Anna lifted her head and saw black slacks, a grey wool coat, black-rimmed glasses, and a fedora likewise attached to the man standing in front of her.

 

A perfect, white smile flashed across the stranger’s face. “You dropped this,” he said, offering her a blue scarf identical to the one she’d been wearing a minute ago.

 

Anna’s fingers jumped to her neck but found it devoid of that navy, patterned scarf. “Oh,” she replied, reaching forward with a hand that slightly shook. “Thank you.”

 

“My pleasure. Have a nice day. And that’s a very pretty scarf. You’d better keep an eye on it; I’d hate to see you lose it again.”

 

The man tipped his hat and disappeared into the milling crowd before Anna could shut her partially-open mouth. She looked down at the scarf, wondering how on earth it had escaped her neck, and slowly wound it around her throat once again.

 

When the train arrived mere moments later, Anna stepped aboard without any recognition of her actions. She took a seat by herself and watched everyone who came aboard. They were ordinary people, for the most part—although one woman had violently pink hair—and after the car pulled away from the station, a knot began to loosen in her belly.

 

Someone took a seat behind her. Anna noticed the movement of a shoe in the corner of her eyes and took a casual glance at it.

 

A well-polished, black dress shoe tapped the floor behind her.

 

Anna suddenly had difficulty swallowing, and she clenched her bag tighter in her white-knuckled hands. The rest of the ride was a blur to her; all she could hear was the incessant tapping of that black shoe—all she could see was it wiggling in the corner of her eye, as if in time to some secret song.

 

When the train arrived at her station, she shot from her seat and hastened to the doors as quickly as the herd of exiting passengers would allow. She thought someone tugged on her scarf, but when Anna turned sharply, no one was behind her.

 

She burst into the cold, Washington air and sped for the arranged meeting point where her brother would pick her up. Anna glanced back once but did not see anyone resembling the man in the fedora leaving the train. Furrowing her brow, she continued on her way and kept her eyes on the ground.

 

Anna lingered at the meeting place for a long while, checking her phone for texts from her brother. He was notoriously bad at returning her calls, and there were no messages from him informing her that he would be late. But—she checked her watch—it was fifteen minutes after he was supposed to arrive, and there was no sign of Liam yet.

 

When someone touched her arm, she turned with a smile, expecting her brother.

 

But no one was there.

 

Her frozen smile faded away, and Anna dialed Liam with unsteady hands.

 

“Anna!”

 

He came jogging up with a grin just as she put the phone to her ear. A sigh of relief escaped her body, and Anna threw her arms around Liam.

 

“Hey, how’s it going?” he asked. “How was the trip? You tired?”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, sleep sounds great.”

 

Anna gave her brother a fond smile as he proceeded to chatter about his new apartment, his new job, his new dog, and everything else he’d acquired since she last saw him. Together they walked for Liam’s car, which was parked just outside the station.

 

But when Anna approached the Lexus, she caught sight of her own reflection in the frosted window.

 

Her scarf was missing.

 

“Anna, you okay?”

 

She looked up at Liam and forced her brightest smile. “I’m great. I can’t wait to see the apartment.”

 

He laughed and gestured her into the car. “Then quit standing around, and let’s go!”

 

Anna popped the car door and got in, but she didn’t hear a word that her brother said the entire ride home. Her fingers touched the bare skin at her throat, and she let out a long, slow exhale.

 

***************

 

The doorbell rang just as they sat down for Chinese takeout, and Liam groaned.

 

“Hey, could you get that? You’re closer to the door,” he said.

 

“Yeah, sure.” Anna got up and went to the apartment door. Sliding the golden chain from the lock, she pulled the door open and instantly jerked backwards.

 

That perfect, white smile reappeared, and a navy, patterned scarf was extended to her by a gloved hand. “You dropped this,” he said, his voice warm as dripping honey. Brown eyes studied her from behind the black-rimmed glasses, and they swept up and down her body in a thoughtful perusal.

 

Anna’s throat jerked as she tried to swallow. “Oh. Thank you.” But she didn’t reach out to take the scarf.

 

“My pleasure. Have a nice day. And that’s a very pretty scarf. You’d better keep an eye on it; I’d hate to see you lose it again.”

 

The smile remained on his lips, and, seeing that she was not going to accept the accessory from his hand, he reached out to drape it gently around her neck.

 

Then he walked away.

 

Anna shut the door and did not move, her pale, trembling hand clenched around the doorknob.

 

“Annie? Who was it?” Liam called from the dining room.

 

“Nobody,” she replied automatically. “It was nobody.”

 

************

 

The next morning, Liam went to Anna’s room and knocked twice on the white door. He had promised her a tour of D.C. and wanted to get an early start before the traffic became too horrendous. However, Anna told him the night before that she would be downstairs by six, and it was almost seven o’ clock already.

 

“Annie?” he called, rapping his knuckles against the door again. “Hey, you ready to go? You haven’t even eaten breakfast yet.”

 

There was no answer.

 

Liam paused and tried again. “Anna? You in there?”

 

Maybe she was in the bathroom. He ducked down the hallway and checked, but no, the bathroom door was wide open and uninhabited. Frowning, Liam went back to his sister’s room and tried the handle.

 

It was locked.

 

“Anna, hey, can you let me in?”

 

But she did not answer him.

 

Heart pounding, Liam threw his shoulder against the door a few times until it yielded and burst into his sister’s room.

 

“Anna!”

 

She was lying sprawled on the floor, an ugly red mark across her throat. Her glassy blue eyes bugged from her face, and Anna’s face was tinged with the frosty pallor of death.

 

Liam let out a hoarse cry and threw himself down next to her, hot tears flooding his vision.

 

“Anna!” He shook her gently, hoping against hope that she would stir and come back to him. “Anna, wake up! You’ve gotta wake up!”

 

But her body was chilly and stiff in his hands, and Liam sat back with a ragged gasp.

 

The soft touch of cool fabric touched his hand then. Liam reached out and touched the blue scarf lying next to his sister on the floor.

 

And sitting under the patterned fabric was a pair of shattered, black-rimmed glasses.

 

 

 

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