Julie’s life was simple, steady, and happy. She went to work every day at a law firm and got paid well. She had a good boyfriend. She had a pretty nice car. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to her. In a word, it was boring.

 

But she liked boring. Boring was okay. Not great, but good enough. And besides, boring was so much better than what her life was about to become.

 

One day Julie was walking home from work. She only lived a few blocks away, so it never made any sense to waste gas on such a short trip. Spring was around the corner, but just then it was still chilly outside. She hugged her coat tighter and hustled toward home. All she wanted was a nice plate of leftover beef stew.

 

Usually, she kept her head down as she walked, but that day, something made her look up. Across the street from her, a man stood at the bus stop. He was dressed warmly in a black trench coat with a long red scarf wrapped around his neck. She only saw him for a moment before the bus pulled in front of him and stopped, but something about him unsettled Julie. Was she seeing things, or had he been staring at her?

 

She kept walking, thinking she was being silly, but she looked back a few seconds later. The bus was gone, and now so was the man. She shook her head and picked up her pace.

 

Ten minutes later, she was almost home. She stood on the opposite sidewalk and looked to make sure there were no cars. Suddenly, she stopped short. There was the same man standing on her porch. He stared at her unblinkingly.

 

She furrowed her brows and stared back a moment. Finally, she stepped out onto the blacktop, planning on confronting the man. A loud honk and the sound of squealing rubber on asphalt reminded her that this was a suburban road. The car screeched by almost close enough for her to reach out and touch it. She froze in the middle of the road and twisted to see the departing car, its driver with one finger held high out the window.

 

Julie quickly checked the road again and then ran across angrily, looking forward to yelling at the stranger for distracting her with his … creepiness. But when she reached her side of the road and looked back at her porch, he was gone.

 

She walked slowly onto the porch, scanning her surroundings carefully. She had only been preoccupied with the car for a few seconds. Where on earth could the man have disappeared to? But try as she might, she couldn’t find him.

 

The ghost of his trench-coated form haunted her as she unlocked her door, set her briefcase and jacket aside, and heated up the beef stew. The stew did nothing to dispel the chill that had settled deep in her chest. She slept fitfully that night.

 

In the morning, she awoke not exactly rested, but ready to put the strange situation behind her. She ate breakfast, texted her boyfriend good morning, and headed off to work. Throughout the day, as the regular stress of working at a law firm piled on, she forgot about the stranger who had appeared out of nowhere the day before. Even as she walked home, she only hesitated slightly as she passed by the bus station. She grinned as she saw that the man wasn’t there. She continued on her way home with a hop in her step.

 

But it wasn’t to last. As Julie neared her house, she could see the outline of a trench-coated figure standing on her porch. She clenched her fists, determined to keep him in sight this time. She made it across the road with no issue this time and stomped up to her porch.

 

“Hey!” she shouted.

 

He continued to stare at her, moving only his head to keep her in view.

 

“What’s up with you?” Julie asked. “Why are you here? You almost got me killed yesterday.”

He still didn’t respond.

 

Julie stood at the base of her stairs, unable to move any closer to the door. It wasn’t that the stranger was in the way. It was that he was just there. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He stood so still she couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

 

Suddenly, she realized that she wasn’t breathing. She took a deep breath and then walked up the stairs. She stood face-to-face with him now, just out of his reach. “You need to leave.”

 

He stared.

 

“Leave,” she set, putting more steel into her voice. “Now.”

 

He did nothing.

 

She swallowed. “If you don’t leave, I’m calling the police.”

 

When he continued to play statue, she brushed past him and unlocked her door, keeping him in her peripheral vision the entire time. She moved inside and slammed the door behind her. She turned the lock on the knob, and then, for the first time since she’d moved in, she also locked the deadbolt above it.

She backed away from the door, breathing hard. Out the window, she could still see him. She felt slightly safer inside, but he absolutely had to go. She pulled out her phone and dialed 911.

 

“This is 911. What is your emergency?” a female operator asked in a calm voice.

 

“There’s some weird man outside my house and he won’t go away. I need the police,” Julie said, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice.

 

“Is he on your property?”

 

“Yes. He’s on my porch,” Julie replied. She felt an odd anger rise in her chest. “He’s not supposed to be here. Please send someone to come get him.”

 

“What is your address?”

 

Julie quickly gave it to her and the operator told her to stay on the line. Help would be arriving soon.

Julie sat down in a kitchen chair with a view of the man out the window. She wasn’t going to let him do his disappearing trick this time.

 

Minutes ticked by like hours and she wondered where the police were. The man still had not moved and, even more unnervingly, hadn’t blinked once. It was almost hypnotizing to watch him stand so perfectly still.

 

Finally, a siren sounded in the distance behind her house. She jumped and spun around quickly. The moment she did, she realized her mistake. She tried to turn back around fast, but her fears were realized.

 

The man was gone again. Just vanished.

 

She ran outside onto her porch and looked frantically around. How could he possibly disappear so fast? She checked under the rose bush beside her porch, but got nothing for her troubles, but a nasty prick on her finger. A minute later, the police arrived.

 

“Are you the person who lives here?” one mustachioed policeman asked, glancing around.

 

“Yes,” Julie answered from her porch.

 

“You were the one who called in the stalker?”

 

Julie paused. She hadn’t thought of the man as a stalker before. “Well, yes.”

 

“Where is he?”

 

Julie stood helplessly. “I—I have no idea. He was there one second, and then he just vanished.”

 

The two policemen shared a glance. The one with the mustache sent his partner to search around the house, but the younger man came back with a shrug. The older man walked up to Julie. “Ma’am, reporting a false emergency is a crime.”

 

“But I didn’t!” Julie exclaimed. “I swear he was there, but he’s just gone.”

 

The policeman let out an exasperated sigh. “People do not just disappear.” He started walking back to his car. “I’m letting you off with a warning, but please only call in the case of an emergency next time.”

Julie watched them leave, dumbfounded. Long after they’d driven away, she stood on her porch. Only the cold slowly seeping into her core reminded her to go inside. She sat down in front of her TV and stared at the blank screen. It was almost eight before she realized that she hadn’t had dinner.

 

That night, it was almost impossible for her to sleep. But as she finally drifted off, the words of the policeman came back to her. People do not just disappear.

 

In the morning, she awoke to the face of the trench-coated man outside of her window. She screamed and fell off of her bed. When she got to her knees to look over the edge of the bed, he wasn’t there. Her heart beat pounded in her chest as she stood shakily to her feet. She swallowed, trying to wet her dry mouth.

 

She dressed as quickly as she could, not looking out her bedroom window, or any window in her house. She skipped breakfast and walked to her car. She felt safer in the car than on foot.

 

She didn’t see the man as she drove the short distance to her job, and she started to relax again. But when she drove through the final light, she caught just a glimpse of a trench coat out of the corner of her eye. She tried to convince herself that it wasn’t him, but anxiety clawed at her insides.

 

From that point on, she hardly went an hour without seeing him. He was on the sidewalk outside of the window in her break room, staring up at her, which made her jump and spill hot coffee on her shirt. She saw him briefly in the elevator as it opened to let someone off. That was the first time they had ever been in the same building. He was there again across the street from the sandwich place she went to at lunch.

 

Always staring, never blinking, and always gone the moment she looked away.

 

She couldn’t focus. She kept looking up, expecting to see him. Somehow, when she didn’t, it was all the more nerve wracking. She knew he had to be there, but didn’t know where. Every fiber of her being was begging her to call the police again, but she knew that if she did, he would just disappear again, and she would probably get arrested. At one point, she considered calling her boyfriend, but she decided she didn’t need anyone else thinking she was lying. Or else, crazy.

 

And wasn’t that the problem? She knew that people didn’t just disappear, but her eyes told her otherwise. Was she crazy?

 

At the end of the day, her nerves were shot. She hadn’t seen the man in almost an hour, but she still jumped at every sudden movement. She got in her car to leave and began to pull out of the parking lot. She stopped at a stoplight. And there he was, standing like a menacing statue across the street.

 

Julie made a decision. She turned the corner and kept driving. She drove past her house. She drove out of the city and then kept going. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel, as she tried desperately to put as many miles between her and the trench-coated man as possible. She drove until the sun went down and kept going.

 

When the car’s low gas indicator noise sounded, she finally slowed down. She pulled over to a small hotel on the side of the road. She was in the middle of nowhere.

 

She got out of the car cautiously and walked inside the hotel, keeping an eye out for the man. But he was nowhere to be found. Inside, he still didn’t make an appearance. She started to think that maybe she had gotten away from him. Her heart beat slowed down for the first time in what felt like days. The clerk at the front desk gave her a key after she paid and told her to bring the car around to the back of the building where her room was.

 

A small smile began to form on her face as she got back in her car and drove around back. Her eyes scanned the room numbers on the doors looking for hers. Finally she found it. She backed her car up, positioning it to park. And then she looked up.

 

He was there standing in front of her door.

 

Her heart raced, her teeth chattered uncontrollably, and tears ran down her cheeks. In that moment, Julie broke.

 

Her fists tightened on the steering wheel and she forced her foot down on the accelerator as hard as she could. Her wheel’s spun and then gained traction, shooting her forward and closing the gap between her and the man in seconds. He never moved or blinked as she rammed the front of her car into him and then the brick wall of the hotel behind him.

 

An hour later, after the front desk clerk had called the police, Julie was still in the car. Her fingers were still wrapped around the steering wheel. The head of the trench-coated man had gone through the windshield and was still staring with dead eyes at Julie.

 

It took four paramedics to pry her out of the car. She was taken to the hospital and treated for her injuries. She was then moved into the psychiatric unit. Police never discovered the motive of her stalker, but video footage from Julie’s neighbor’s camera, her office, and her sandwich shop proved that he’d been there all along.

 

Julie was institutionalized soon after. She never recovered and she never stood trial. She stayed in the hospital until she hung herself ten years later. Throughout the entire time, she only ever said two words, repeated endlessly: “The eyes. The eyes. The eyes. The eyes.”

 

 

*Disclaimer: I do not own these pictures