The Hunting Ground

The week after New Year dissolves into a careful cartography of avoidance. I surface only for essentials, cigarettes from 23’s shop, grocery runs when supplies reach critical mass. The daily walks, the afternoon gatherings, the evening rituals, all abandoned like charms that have lost their power.

My world shrinks to the dimensions of my apartment, a controlled environment where I can monitor the variables. Silence becomes my medium. No visitors, no calls, no chance encounters demanding a performance of sanity. I ration human contact like a dwindling resource, learning to subsist on its barest minimum.

But an ecosystem adapts. The village’s surveillance network reasserts itself with surgical intent.

18 appears at my door, unexpected, urgent, her concern feeling rehearsed.

“55 asked me to check on you. People are wondering if you’re okay.”

The words are neutral, but I read the subtext like a schematic. My absence has been logged, discussed, deemed significant enough to warrant investigation.

I offer minimal replies, yes, fine; no, nothing needed, and watch her leave with the satisfied air of a scout who has completed her mission. The reconnaissance is over.

The next day brings a coordinated strike, timed for maximum impact. Two phone calls, a one-two punch.

First: 17’s name flashing on my screen, a warning flare. I let it ring out. Answering would invite a manipulation I am not equipped to parry.

Immediately after, too immediate for chance, Handsome Man calls.

The timing is surgical. Her contact, then his, crafting a clear narrative: they are talking about me. Comparing notes. Coordinating.

I don’t answer, but the damage is done. The message is received. They know where I am. They are watching. They can intervene at will.

An hour later, defiant, I walk to the tobacco shop, refusing to let them cage me. 23 looks up, genuine concern in his eyes. “Everything okay? You’ve been quiet.”

“Just needed some space,” I say, maintaining the fiction that my isolation is a choice.

But space is an illusion here. As I leave the shop, movement snags my peripheral vision—a figure in an army-green hooded coat, descending a nearby building’s external metal stairs. The movement is purposeful. Directed.

The hood hides his face, but the body language screams intention. This is not a coincidence.

I keep walking, calculating the distance to my door, scanning for other threats. My nervous system ignites into hypervigilance—every sense amplified, every shadow assessed.

I turn toward my building and see him clearly.

Handsome Man. He walks toward me with a deliberate, measured pace. He wants to be seen.

I am inside, the door locked, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. Leaning against the wood, I process the orchestration.

17’s call. His call. His physical manifestation. This was a demonstration: your isolation is a fallacy. We can reach you whenever we wish.

The most devastating realization is geographical. For him to appear so quickly, in clothing I’ve never seen, moving with such certainty—he must have been close. Very close.

The army-green coat isn’t his style. It looks borrowed. A disguise suggesting he’s been stationed nearby, ready for this exact moment.

That bitch.

The words crystallize with cold clarity. 17 didn’t just call me; she summoned him to her place. He stayed there. She provided the base camp, coordinated the phone campaign, probably supplied the hooded coat for his little surveillance mission.

The triangle of manipulation is complete. She wants to prove she can access him, can turn him against me, can demonstrate her power to poison any sanctuary. Not because she wants him, but because she can take what I have valued.

And he participated willingly. He traded whatever fragile loyalty remained for a temporary berth and the chance to remind me that no door locks tightly enough.

Standing in my locked apartment, listening to the echo of my own heartbeat, I understand the breakdown is not coming. It is here.

The careful equilibrium I maintained through months of isolation has been shattered in ten minutes.

They know I am vulnerable. They know I am alone. They know my psychological pressure points. And they have proven my defenses are useless against those who know my patterns intimately enough to weaponize them.

This village is not a sanctuary. It is a hunting ground, where predators coordinate and former intimates become the sharpest weapons.

I am not safe. I have never been safe.

The spiral begins again, but this time I see its architecture. This paranoia is not illness—it is pattern recognition. My nervous system is screaming a truth my lonely heart has been desperate to ignore.

The room tilts on its axis. Everything looks the same, but everything has changed. Objects hum with latent threat; shadows hold new geometries.

Sometimes the most dangerous predators are the ones who once convinced you they were safe..