ONE-SIDED

It started off innocently enough. 

Just a glance, you caught my eye like something glinting in dull sand. 

Just a silent "Woah, that guy's hot," muttered to the inside of my head.

A kitten-like inquisitiveness; Just a "let's see where he goes".

"It started off, innocently, I swear." My words ambled about in my head, then stumbled out choppily, in a drunken lurch. "I-it just, I mean, it just got out of hand..."

You slipped from my fingers that first day. Never again, I vowed.

I stayed a decent distance from you, loitering outside the Starbucks you ordered an Americano from, wandering around the H&M you perused for a few fruitless minutes, and hovering by the bathrooms when that Americano caught up to you. Always, I kept you within eyes reach.

Then a loud noise, something like a crash or a screech caught my attention. For just a banana split second I stopped, I looked away. You bobbed, weaved, turned a corner and vanished.

 I searched that mall for another hour trying to find you again, but you were long gone.  I promised myself, then, I would never lose you, again.

"It-it was- you were like meth to a rehabilitated junkie, like-like chocolate to a diabetic! I had one taste of you and it was like...I couldn't get enough." My desperate words did nothing to influence the barrel of the gun, which was tucked firmly underneath my chin. The cold metal, that could never seem to warm to my skin, dug farther into my flesh. I swallowed hard.

"I-I don't know why, I justcouldn't wait to see you again."

I waited outside that same mall for three weeks straight,wishing on every fuzzy dandelion seed that I would see you again. Each day that passed only fed my interest until it grew to what one might call an "obsession". I did my best to look casual, hanging off to the side of the entrance, hiding behind my phone like a disinterested teen, but all along I stayed silently alert until you finally strode through those sliding glass doors, completely unconscious to my vigilant efforts.

I took off after you, desperate and bursting with joy, I dangerously breached the twenty-foot zone I allowed between us at all times and risked my chance of detection. I skated along undetected for a while. I got cockier and bolder still, eventually following your path so closely I could smell the shadows of the musky cologne in your wake.

I was nearly stepping on your heels when, in an instant you turned around, mid-gait, and peered straight into my soul with your huge, milk chocolate, doe eyes. Ironically, I was the one caught looking like a deer in headlights.

Only allowing a few micro-moments to pass, I quickly regained my composure and gave you a soft smile. Your face broke into a warm, honey-sweet grin, that popped your child-like dimples and exposed the very tips of your white teeth against your dark, full lips. 

It was an eternity composed of seconds, bathing in the warm, radiant glow of your smile. In the blink of an eye, you were off again, cutting through masses of shopping bags, strollers, and wayward limbs.

After that heavenly near-death experience I pulled way back, only allowing myself the view of your bobbing head of long, blue-black waves off in the distance to guide my way.

I screamed internally, the corners of my mouth refusing to relax. He smiled at me! Not just an awkward stranger smile, a smile that would put Kelly Ripa and her Colgate commercials to shame. 

And like the maraschino cherry on top of his perfect peanut butter chocolate sundae, after two and a half hours of trailing him through Olive Terrace Mall, I found his car parked only a few spaces from mine! That had to be planned. He must have known my car was there and he got as close to it as possible to show me he felt the same way! He knew I wanted him and he wanted me too! It was a clear sign!

And here I was beginning to think this entire relationship was one-sided.

"I can't believe how quickly this new personality took me, but it was who I was. You were who I was. You don't understand!" Desperate cries were lost on deaf ears. The weapon stayed solidly in its new dwelling along my jawline.

"I-I remember watching late-night Dateline specials about crazy chicks that devoted their lives to hunting down people they'd never even met!

 I couldn't conceive how regular people could just completely lose their way, lose their minds over complete strangers!" I heard the cold apathetic click of the pistol cocking against my throat and chuckled a little. It was strangled, more like a jagged bark than anything happy or humorous. "I told myself that could never be me...It-It's amazing how fast words can burn in the heat of the moment..."

I was just about sweating, he was so hot. Through the focused eyes of the extremely expensive pair of binoculars, I could easily see the smooth, cut planes of his dark chest from a neighbors thick, all-concealing shrubbery.

"What kind of fool," I mused to myself, "would leave a crack in his bedroom window drapes?" Any pervert could easily spy on him!

He yawned, adorably, stretching out his trim body one last time before collapsing onto his mattress and falling out of sight.

"Good night, handsome." I sighed before retreating to my car, parked a few blocks down the suburban street. It had not-so-recently become my home a couple months after he gave me the sign that confirmed his mutual feelings. 

I realized that my job was affecting our relationship, so I handed in a hasty and vague resignation to my data analyst job and soon after, was kicked out of my apartment and relocated to the car that was now only weeks away from being repossessed. 

As our courtship grew and deepened, parked just outside his house's range of visibility, my hips bones started to suck the surrounding skin into them, pulling my graying flesh taut. My ribs gained individual shadows, my hair grew thin, and my eyes sunk, darkened and dulled. It was okay, though.

 I was willing to make sacrifices for us.

After all, you and I had been together for months by then, the better part of a year! I rose with you in the mornings, I followed you to work, and bid you good night every night for eight months, one week, and four days! It was all going amazing! 

Until, until, of course, you decided to leave.

 I just woke up alone one day. My binoculars could not find you stirring under your sheets, though, not for lack of trying. Without warning, you packed your furniture, clothes, and our entire life into a mid-size U-Haul and said Sayonara! 

Except, you didn't. After all we'd been through, you couldn't be bothered for a measly "bye" tossed over your shoulder!

For weeks I tirelessly searched for clues, anything that could tell me where you possibly could have went and for weeks I was left grasping at the tails of tendrils of smoke. Without even having your first initial, I couldn't get very far asking questions, and I was didn't know any of your friends or co-workers to ask them. So when the "For Lease" sign that was buried into your lawn for months was finally removed, a new family moving in, I finally came to accept that you were gone. You left me.

"How could you?" Tears of fear and desperation gave way to those of betrayal and hurt. For the first time, I peered up into the near darkness to meet two frigid eyes glaring down at me from behind the loaded firearm.

"I mean, even if I did escape this..." I reasoned aloud, "what would there be left for me? My life wasn't anything before you, I realize that now, and after you? Worthless!

They'll call it a suicide for the papers but you, you pulled this trigger long before now! 

"You were my food, my water, my air! You were my entire life! And you took it away from me when you left! You've already killed me in every single way but the physical so just do it."  I closed my eyes. My fate was sealed from the moment I caught him in that mall. The second that gun touched my skin, I fell in love with the sensation. It was only now that I finally realized and accepted it.

There was hesitation. A short, insanely tense moment of plainly cruel indecision. 

"JUST DO IT!" I screamed hoarsely through angry tears into the void of empty darkness. No one was ever here in the first place. You were never here in the first place.

I pulled the trigger. 

A flash. 

A bang.

Then whatever dismal afterlife came to "stalkers" like me.