Chapter 4
AZRAEL
Routine is the only thing that keeps me from going off the rails and ending up in jail, or in a mental institution—which would be slightly unfit, since I’m a psychology professor. Well, at least this is the public title that doesn’t make people run the other way.
I go to the same café every day at exactly the same time. They could probably fix that broken watch on the wall based on my arrival, which is always after the end of the workday, when everything is quiet. But not today.
Today, the café buzzes with noise, filled with fools jabbering about God-knows-what. There are too many people in this rathole. I shouldn’t have come.
It was supposed to be a quiet day, uneventful at its finest. It would have stayed that way if some messed-up student hadn’t decided to pass out mid-lecture, forcing me to cut it short. And I…well, I ended up here. Slightly off-schedule and very much irritated.
I take my usual seat. Same table, same chair, same awful coffee that I cannot seem to skip. I can recite what happens in this place in my sleep, which is why the shift in pattern feels like a system glitch.
I try to fill the time by checking the stupid forum, when the familiar hum fades away into the background as a prickling unease crawls up my spine. My fingers pause mid-tap on the table as I’m trying to detect what piqued my interest.
I feel it before I see it. The heat of eyes in my direction. There. In the far corner, sitting too still for it to be just a coincidence. And not just the casual glance of a passerby or the stupid glare of a horny girl. It’s the pure, haughty stare of someone way too interested.
The server approaches, forcing a terrifyingly thin smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. She leans in to hiss, “More coffee?”
I catch the change in posture in the stranger behind her and, for a mere second, a tension in her shoulders as she tightens like a wire about to snap.
The way her muscles tighten just as the server speaks?
I have seen it a hundred times before in a hundred different subjects.
That tiny, telltale sign of possessiveness.
I don’t even fucking know that person, yet she feels possessive.
Cute. But does she even know what she’s doing?
I’ve studied this concept for years. Most people don’t even realize they are turning psychotic over something or someone.
And if they do, it’s usually too late for redemption.
Call it reverse Stockholm syndrome. It’s done in steps, each one pushing deeper into the fascination.
And her? She just performed the perfect first step.
It’s true that it’s almost unnoticeable. And I could be wrong. But who am I kidding? I’m never wrong.
I keep my voice even. “I’m done.”
Now it’s about time we test this new little fucker. Is she really worthy of my attention, or just horny? The perfect name for a TV show.
I leave the café, pretending I notice nothing, and follow my same everyday path. If she is really special and does her stalker job well, she would know if I’ve changed anything.
I have like twelve stalkers on the roster at all times, and I know the system. But that’s a different story.
I keep a steady pace as I weave through the crowds.
With each step, I can feel her presence from a few yards behind.
Her moves are almost unnoticeable, the pacing is clean, and the distance consistent.
She is not my first stalker, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person she secretly follows either.
I intentionally stop just so I can inspect her reflection in a window.
She mirrors my pause with a slight shift in her body, a subtle adjustment to maintain the distance.
She matches me like she’d rehearsed it. Either she’s a natural, or someone trained her.
Regardless, she’s reacting to me and might actually be worthy.
My lips curl slightly in a barely-there smile, and a familiar thrill courses through my veins. It feels like coming home—a place where I can study deranged minds as I please, needing only to grant them the slightest attention.
She is perfect for my experiment.
If I were just a nobody, she would have been invisible. But I spent my life searching for a subject like her, a creature so calculated yet susceptible to me.
She stops at the entrance of my building. Good. So this is just the beginning of the game.
I unlock the door to my apartment, but before I step inside fully, I pause, all my senses alert.
The air is still, and there is no shift in scent.
My eyes move over the room—furniture, curtains, floor.
Nothing is out of place, not a single hint that someone stepped in besides me.
Almost disappointing, like there should have been a sign.
Instead, I find only silence and the strange sensation of nothing when something should obviously be here.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, Azrael. But it’s hard to be patient when you are about to fuck up someone’s life.
She just became my new experiment, and she—unknowingly—voluntarily walked into it.
The rest of the evening is uneventful. I move through the motions without even having to think about what I’m doing: light a cigarette, pour two fingers of whiskey that burns just right, and settle into my chair by the desk with the pile of papers waiting to be torn apart.
Students’ incompetence is astonishing and begs the question of whether I made a mistake years ago by taking this insignificant job.
I chose this life because it offers a different kind of access.
I could have continued with government experimentation.
As much as they like to disagree with my methods, they know I’m the best. I’m able to manipulate human minds in ways they have never seen before, and my techniques, while unorthodox, always yield results.
Here, on the other hand, I have access to young, untrained minds—a fresh set of variables to test my hypotheses on without them ever noticing what I was doing.
Throughout the years, I’ve subtly manipulated these idiots.
The changes are minuscule and constant until my imagination becomes their reality.
They’d never think to question why a strange pleasure in seeing someone’s blood dripping out of their body begins to manifest, or why a sudden urge to burn a house down is a pleasant thought.
Indeed, I have to keep a limit—and I fucking hated it. But I’m waiting for the moment when a subject will be interesting enough to say “fuck it” and burn down everything around.
This routine grounds me, keeps me away from giving free rein to my demons, and consequently away from doing something that will make the others wish they were dead.
The last time it happened, a building full of psychopaths was released into the world, some of them still haunting me to this day. What a memory.
But now is not the time to reminisce about what I had. I have her, my new subject. How long will it take before I break her? How long before she begs me to hurt her again just so I can look at her one more time?
Tonight, the plan is to map out the experiment’s baseline.
Each subject reacts differently at first, but it’s only a matter of time before they align with the narrative.
With her, emotional manipulation should work—considering the way she reacted to the server—but it would be fun to see how she reacts to physical stimulation.
Maybe a little bit of pain followed by an “I love you”?
All I have to do is make her take the bait.
But luring a subject into a desired action without direct access to said subject is more than difficult.
Hopefully, she continues her stalking, which will simplify the process.
If I’m right, it’s only a matter of days until the next contact.
Again, if her pathetic brain has any notion of how this should be going.
But just as I settle on that thought, a message comes through. I would usually just ignore it. Only my stupid psychopathic crowd would message me so late. Yet I check it because what if…? And here it is: something worth my attention. The fucking subject escalates the situation on day one.
I cannot help but laugh while I read her message.
user26093003: Professor, we are gonna have so much fun together.
The room seems to contract, the air thickening with a tension that isn’t entirely unwelcome. Not the cheap, fleeting feeling I get from a lecture hall full of students hanging on my every word, but a deep, primal satisfaction.
Her message states the obvious. She wants to be seen and to control the game, all while giving herself to me. The line between control and damnation is a tightrope, and she is already walking it with a devilish smirk. She isn’t just baiting me. She’s offering herself up to me on a plate.
Oh, she fucked up really badly.
And slowly, my world shifts.
It begins in my office, with a misplaced folder.
Not stolen or destroyed. Not even obviously tampered with—just…
misaligned. A few inches to the left of where I left it, not enough to raise suspicion to an untrained mind.
But when your life is structured down to the breath, even small things like this are alarming signals that something is not how it’s supposed to be.
No one in this department touches my stuff. They know better than to mess with my things. The placement of every book, every pen, every sheet of paper—each object in this room is meticulously arranged. Even the dust that is settling over the old manuscripts is part of the order.
Yet there it is: a misplaced folder. And if that was not sign enough, a small piece of paper that was not here when I left yesterday. The words are simple and impossibly confident.
So now that I’ve grabbed your attention…
I stare at it for a long time, trying to decipher what my stalker wants to achieve by leaving this here. Who really is this little intruder? Is she foolishly brave, blind to the consequences? Or is she simply intriguing, a real match for my darkness?
For now, all I know is that I can’t look away. She’s a stalker, hiding in the shadows, yet stupid enough to let me know she follows me.
I know better than to get ahead of myself. She could still be just dumb, with no idea what this is all about. So I filed it away as mere stubborn persistence, the antics of someone desperate for attention.
The messages are consistent but never predictable. Some land at 2:13 a.m., others precisely ten seconds after I end a lecture. Each one escalates the situation further, to a point of no return.
user26093003: If someone wants to be broken properly, what would they need to forget first?
I don’t need a special invitation to play this game. I’m craving it. Seconds later, my reply appears beneath the message.
Azrael: Forget you were ever safe.
user26093003: How far is too far before you give up on yourself?
Azrael: If you can still ask the question, you’re not there yet.
user26093003: Is it better to crush someone’s will outright or make them think they did it to themselves?
My fingers hover only briefly before responding.
Azrael: Control is sweetest when the victim believes it’s their own choice.
user26093003: Can you really destroy someone?
Azrael: Is this what you want?
Instead of repulsion or fatigue, I read every message with a strange pleasure and a dark amusement. She’s just feeding my own monstrous ideas. The more I listen to her obsessive thoughts, the more I want to give her exactly what she’s asking for.
I find myself checking her profile more often than I care to admit, drawn to the emptiness of her feed. No posts, friends, or interactions. Nothing. Just those questions, each demanding something deeper, something darker.
I could look away and not waste my time with useless people, but user26093003 is intriguing, and I haven’t had fun in a while.
I almost admire that she has no boundaries and says everything that goes through that twisted brain of hers.
It’s like she doesn’t even have a plan and just goes with the motion based on my input.
The only thing that matters is her and her persona.
This kind of personality both infuriates and intrigues me. I hate it, and I want it gone—people and their sense of “free will” is just so stupid since they have no clue what to do with it, but I also take pleasure in being the one to destroy it.
As her mere attempts to grab my attention online were not enough, she became visible. The sixth row. Left side. The same seat every Thursday. Perfectly aligned with the cameras in the lecture hall so she will never fully appear on the records.
She doesn’t fidget when others shift. Doesn’t laugh when prompted.
Doesn’t partake like the rest of the crowd.
Her mouth doesn’t twitch at any cue—it’s almost like she’s a statue.
But she’s there. Watching. Listening. Supervising me, waiting, as if poised to catch a single slip, a trace of weakness in me she could exploit.
The little piece of shit doesn’t yet understand with whom she is playing.
She wants me to see her, acknowledge her presence, but not yet know her. If all she wants is my attention, she has it.
I’m curious about what kind of brain damage produced this fixation. And more importantly, how long will it take until she gets to the fucking point about why she’s here?
By the third week of April, I stop showing up to teach lectures. Instead, I come to study her, the latest variable in my controlled experiment.
My unexpected stalker.