It patiently awaits

It patiently awaits

You're calmly sipping a coffee late into the night in a kitchen partly lit by two LED lights placed strategically, illuminating just enough to allow you to move around in the kitchen and find everything you may need.

While sitting and enjoying the hot beverage, you have an open view of a dark hallway leading to the living room. Veiled by darkness, you get to make out a few shapes, such as a lamp, a chair and a small table, but the corner of your eye catches something.  

Your gaze is then turned to the cup for another sip when your brain realizes something is off. Eyes quickly move from the dark liquid to the dark corridor when you notice something seems to appear in the corner, at the end of the corridor leading to the living room. 

 

No.

 

It's always been there! Something akin to a pair of eyes staring at you all that long. The befuddlement causes you to blink quickly as a reaction to regain your composure and, suddenly, it's not there any longer.  

What was it? What does it want?

 

A surge of courage makes you head there to confront what could be simply a hallucination. With extreme caution you reach the corner and there!

 

Nothing, as usual. Nothing besides the couch, that is. 

You decide to head back and finish your coffee knowing that must've been a mere optical illusion caused by shadows and probably due to some residual drowsiness on account of waking up in the middle of the night. 

But no. 

There it is. In another corner. Still there, still observing. You flinch momentarily because of the startle, but immediately regain a modicum of confidence to approach it. To no avail, because it slides back and disappears.  

How? You ask yourself.  

Before long, the pair of eyes that seemingly float completely bodyless is in another corner, skulking and observing, but not where two walls meet. Instead, the corner of a cupboard. 

It hides in any corner... or not only that, it moves from one to another, this is your realization.

 

Paranoia ensues. You look around trying to find it; you can see it's observing your every move but cannot capture it, for the thing, whatever it is, quickly slides back, only to reappear in another angle, of the many in the house.  

Days pass by and you either learn to live with it, constantly looking over your shoulder and scanning every angle in your house or simply allow yourself to grow accustomed to the feeling of being observed. 

But that is precisely what it wants. It feeds on your distraction for it not only likes to observe, but this thing will eventually approach and steal something from you. Something random. Big or small. One of the five senses, a memory, a personality trait or a part of your body... 

Paranoia may save you, but for how long? Distraction will come and so will this thing, this "Cornerer", that will observe and stalk, waiting for the right opportunity to act.