February Fiction Challenge – Part 1

           Have you ever had the feeling someone’s watching you?  Call it a sixth sense or just being perceptive if you want, but either way; you just know when someone is watching you.  I felt him watching me before I ever saw him.  My name is Ella and today is the day my life changed.  Today is the day I was seen; truly seen for the first time.

          I was standing on the train platform waiting for the 6:13pm train home.  Just like every other day for the past four years.  I had my headphones on to block out the noise of people milling about around me, all of them anxious to get home on a Friday night.  I’m sure they all had families waiting for them or a night out planned with someone special.  I had Grover, just Grover; my incredibly lazy anti-social cat.  He could really care less if I was home or not, as long as his food bowl was refilled every morning.

          As I stood on the platform listening to my IPod, I started thinking about how routine my life had become.  I don’t know when it happened exactly, I’m not sure when each new day had suddenly become a repeat of the one before.  Maybe it was inevitable, maybe it’s because I like routines, schedules, planning, and being invisible.  Maybe I just preferred being predicable, maybe I just really liked the order of my life, or maybe I’m just the most boring person on the planet. 

          Men and relationships have never been a big part of my life.  I’m not the girl who turns heads when she walks into a room.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ugly, I’m just sort of unnoticeable.  I’m the watcher, I’m the one men never really see in a social setting.  I watch, listen and make a mental note of everything.  I see them, but they rarely see me.  I work very hard to make people believe I'm just another shy girl in the corner, even though I'm typically the most dangerous thing in the room.

          When the train arrived, I boarded along with everyone else and took a seat in the back of one of the cars.  As I started to sit down, I felt something prickling my spine.  It felt familiar, like the fingers of a lover sliding lightly up my back, but there was no one there.  I tried to shake the feeling off and sat down in the seat.  It didn’t work, something was off; something just didn’t feel right.  I turned to look out the window and that’s when I saw him.  He was standing on the platform, as close as he could get to my window, just looking at me.  

          His eyes met mine and it felt like a door closed.  Click.  Everything around me went quiet and still; there was nothing else, just him.  Just those eyes, blue, blue eyes with dark eyelashes that seemed to be looking straight into my sole.  Bottomless pools of blue that seemed surprised one second and insane the next.  He never moved, and we just stayed that way, neither one of us moving, neither of us smiling, just staring.  He never looked away and neither did I.  It wasn’t until the train started moving that I felt the link between us start to break and it felt wrong.  I didn’t want the connection to end, I felt desperate to hold on to it.  When he was almost out of sight I heard a soft whisper in my ear. “I’ll be seeing you again”.

          I should have been terrified.  I should have started screaming and asking for someone to call the police, but I wasn’t.  I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t hysterical, I wasn’t even shaking at the realization that I still had my headphones in my ears, so there was no way I could have heard him.  I was unexplainably…calm and curious.  Who was he?  And why did I suddenly feel like I'd just made a huge mistake leaving him behind?

          I spent the rest of the ride staring out the window, trying to make sense of what had just happened.  The logical part of my brain was telling me I was being ridiculous and he was just some creepy guy on the train platform.  He probably got his kicks out of scaring women and to just chalk it up to another lunatic in the city.  However there was the other part of my brain, the part I keep hidden, that kept telling me it was real.  That he’d seen me, and I’d seen him and that there was a connection between us that couldn’t and shouldn’t be ignored.  Good or bad.

          As I walked up to my apartment door, I suddenly froze.  My key poised in front of the door lock, the feeling was back.  He was close, I knew without a doubt he was near.  I stopped and turned around, looking down the hall, expecting to see him standing there again, but he wasn’t there.  I stood there for a full minute, waiting for him to appear, but he never did.  I sighed and thought to myself “well, it was official; you’re losing your mind”.  I shook my head and turned to let myself into my apartment.

          As usual, I set my bag on the end table next to the door, dropped my keys in the bowl next to it and crossed to the living room.  I turned on the lights and froze for the second time in less than five minutes.  He was sitting on my couch, lightly stroking Grover, who was sitting in his lap.  My anti-social cat, who hated everyone but me, was sitting in a stranger’s lap, relaxed and purring.

“Hello Ella.  I told you I’d be seeing you again.”  Click.

This post is part of a weekly fiction challenge I'm trying. It's a new month and that comes with a new theme.  This month's theme is romance and this week's prompt was:

When was the last time you looked into someone’s gorgeous eyes? Maybe they were sea green and seemed to have all the secrets of the world behind them? What would happen if you had a chance to know this person intimately?  Then you find that person has a dark secret that would bring your perfect but lonely life to its knees.

Make sure you check out the other writers participating!

http://www.quirkychrissy.wordpress.com
http://www.worldsworstmoms.com/
http://www.bulamamani.com/
http://www.susannenelson.wordpress.com/
http://www.itsadomelife.com/
http://www.debiehive.blogspot.com/
http://www.mollyfield.com/
http://neargenius1.blogspot.com/
http://the-suds-box.blogspot.ca/
http://www.quirkychrissy.com/
And make sure to visit our tweet pages at:

@clearlykristal
@worldsworstmoms
@BuLaMamaNi
@SusanneNelson1
@ItsADomeLife
@DeBieHive
@MollyFieldTweet
@Near_Genius