THE VIEW FROM 4B

“Where were you last night?”
The voice, hoarse and dry, crackled through my phone’s speaker threateningly. I stood confused in my kitchen, my nightly coffee in hand, staring at a live feed of my front door.

“Who is he talking to?” I whispered. The cold kitchen counters softly stung my back as I leaned against them.

On the screen, a man in a dark suit stood on my porch. His expensive tailoring was briefly visible when the wind flowed through his navy-blue trenchcoat, a garment that reeked of wealth and superiority. It was incredibly smug of him to simply walk into the motion zone and place his hands behind his back. He didn’t ring the bell or knock; he was confident that his mere presence would alert those in his surroundings.

I scoffed. After all, that is what doorbell cameras do.

I hurriedly sipped my coffee, afraid the time spent in my head had made it cold, before finally bringing my thumb over the microphone icon. “You have the wrong door.”

“I don’t think so, Silas.”

My eyes squinted, and my heart began to pick up its pace as panic settled in. My mug, still slightly warm, shifted in my clammy palm.

“We tracked the anomaly to this grid,” the man continued. “Satellites showed a male, average height, in a champion-branded black windbreaker. Oh my, I wonder who that could be?”

The corner of his lips raised slightly, reminding me of a mischievous child. But the fish-eye lens stretched the gesture and distorted his features, hollowing his cheeks until the smile looked entirely unhinged. It wasn't mischief. It was as if he wasn't looking at a front door at all; his dark, swollen eyes stared into the lens like a monster, gleaming with the undeniable promise of the hunt.

Lythe Wraithe is a writer of the macabre and the vivid, specializing in stories that haunt the thresholds between romance, speculative fiction, and philosophical realism. With a voice etched in subtle sorrow and the macabre of romance, he tends beauty in the soil where stories grow.