Alive

Chapter 2: Ann

My hand stopped just above the door handle. I stilled my breathing and looked out the peephole through the door. There Allisa stood just as I had always known her to look, exactly identical but something still seemed off. If my feeling was correct, and I wasn't just imagining that something was different about her. Her long, blonde hair was the same as ever, her brown eyes the same as ever, but there was something different about them as they stared vacantly at the apartment door.

The doorbell rang and suddenly I felt that the door was my only protection between myself and a monster. I braved another look, although I knew she couldn't see me as I saw out of the one-sided view. Allisa dressed in the same dark pink and black jacket that she had on nearly every day. Her black beret was positioned on the top of her head, but I noticed suddenly that it leaned to the opposite side of how it usually sat on her head.

Her hand went for the doorbell again and then I noticed that she was using her nondominant hand to do this. I backed away slowly from the door. I stared at the grainy surface as I felt frozen in place. My phone broke me out of my paralysis. I thanked god just then that it was set to vibrate. I steadied my hand as I pulled it out of my pocket.

Hey, I'm here. - Allisa

I swallowed. Perhaps I really was being crazy. Allisa could have seen my message on the rare instance that she was scrolling through my feed. The businesses might have been delayed because the employees struggled to get there through the crappy weather. The weirdness of the conversations between my friends could have been in my mind, and I could easily let it all go and boil it down to my overactive imagination.

That's exactly why I wasn't going to.

Where? -Alex

There was a brief pause.

I'm at your apartment. -Allisa

My hands shakily typed out a response.

I'm not at my apartment. Sorry, Doug asked me over and I forgot. -Alex

The sound of feet shuffling filtered under the door. A spike of fear lodged in my chest when I realized that they could have been talking to each other at any point to confirm my location. My face lit like a jack-o-lantern with embarrassment at the high probability that I was wrong about all of this, and that she could have called Doug at any point to confirm that I was not there. I could only hope that she accepted the lie.

Okay. -Allisa

I blew out a breath, but I still didn't feel that I was in the clear until I looked out the peephole again and whatever it was no longer stood there. I braced against the door as I looked back at my apartment. It was an absolute wreck. Dirty clothes spilled out of the open door to the laundry closet, plastic cups stacked one on top of the other on top of grimy paper plates from a week's worth of meals, used paper laid crinkled and creased around the overflowing basket next to my pullup chair.

I thought that maybe all of those things can wait, and if it turned out that I was wrong about this all along, I kind of wanted someone to see what I was going through. I paced around my cramped apartment for most of the day until my fear began to wane. I thought increasingly that these coincidences were just that. I had simply been the victim of extreme probability. Finally, my boredom and frustration won out over my fear and I decided to go out.

My eyes scanned the apartment one last time. What a mess, how embarrassing! No wonder why I felt like I was losing my mind. How would some fake Allisa know exactly where I lived, anyway? I never shared my location on any of my social platforms. I used a special blocker so that no one could track my IP address. My hand turned the door handle when my eyes fell on one last thing. The webcam.