YOU RUN FAST - Part III

The Hunter’s Face

The text kept me awake every night.

"You run fast. Next time, I’ll be faster."

I thought I was being hunted.
But I hadn’t realized yet: I was already in the trap.

Two weeks after the message, I found the envelope on my car.

Inside were screenshots. Messages from my old phone number. Some were innocent, like jokes with friends or school plans. Others were more personal. One even had my address from a post I made months ago looking for a local dog-sitter.

I hadn’t changed any of my old account logins.

He had been watching me through the windows I’d left open myself.

I stopped going to school. The cops said he was likely long gone. But I could feel him. Not just in the shadows, but in the silence. The way the air felt still when it should have moved. The way my skin knew when I was being watched.

My dad was doing his best. He upgraded the security system and started sleeping with a crowbar by the bed. But I knew the system had already been breached.

Then, one night at 2:12 a.m., I got a motion alert from the backyard camera.

It showed a man standing beneath my bedroom window.

Just standing.

Then the feed glitched.

When it came back, he was gone.

But something else was there. A symbol is drawn in chalk on the ground. A rabbit.

That night, I made a decision.
If he was hunting me, I would set a trap of my own.

I posted on my deactivated old account, reactivating it just long enough to leave a new message:

“Parents are out of town for a week. Alone again 😴.”

Then I logged out.

We waited.

Three nights later, I heard the window in the laundry room crack open. The silent alarm went off. My dad and I moved fast. I went upstairs. He slipped into the garage. We had planned it over and over.

The man stepped into the house just after 3 a.m., quiet as breath.

Red flannel. Beanie. Pale face, blank and distant like a mask trying to look human.

He moved through the kitchen, gliding more than walking. One gloved hand carried a long blade. The other held a phone. He was recording.

He wanted a trophy.

He moved toward the stairs slowly, one step at a time.

When he passed the pantry, my dad burst out with the crowbar raised. The man swung the blade quickly, but not quickly enough. My dad knocked it from his hand.

The fight was brutal. Messy. Not clean like in the movies. More rage than technique.

I called the cops as the two of them slammed into the cabinets.

The man tried to run.

But I was ready.

I met him at the back door with the taser I had bought with every saved-up dollar I had. It took two full charges to drop him. When he hit the tile, he started laughing. Slow. Unhinged.

“I told you,” he gasped, blood in his teeth. “You run fast.”

Police came.

They arrested him.

His name wasn’t real. Neither was the license on the car he parked two blocks away. But he had photos. Videos. A hard drive full of “projects.” Girls in other towns. Some still missing.

And a chatroom. Private. Encrypted.

He had posted about me there.

“She’s the one.”
“This one fights.”
“She’s better than the others.”

They said I was lucky. They said it was over.

But I have seen the chat logs. The screenshots.

He wasn’t working alone.

And that symbol, the rabbit, wasn’t just a calling card.

It was a label.

There are others.

We moved after that. New town. New names.
I sleep with a bat now. Not because I think he’s coming back…

…but because one night, six months later, my phone buzzed again.

Blocked number. One message:

"We liked your video."

THE END.