Didn't sleep after I recorded that. Couldn't. Just sat there with every light on watching the door. Four days. 6am, first light coming through the blinds I haven't moved from this chair, been running it through my mind every angle, every entry point, every possible way something gets into a sixth floor apartment and stays long enough to compose a message, find the drafts folder navigate an interface, type a name, get it over with before I wake up — six hours twelve minutes flat I set three alarms, never needed them, woke up exact at 3:58am like something tapped me on the shoulder not a sound, not a touch, just — awake, the way you're older versions of yourself right after something shifts the way you feel the morning after something lifts or lands, I don't know which one this was yet I just know I was asleep and then I wasn't, and the threat isn't in the message — that's the part I keep returning to the message isn't threatening, the message is a thing left for you by something that already knew you'd need it already knew the name would mean something once you read it I pulled every lock apart by 7am inspected every window, every hinge, every seam in the doorframe, every inch of every surface looking for — I don't know what, something, purpose evidence of entry, evidence of presence, evidence of anything that makes this make a physical sense found nothing Not a scratch, not a mark, not a displaced object not a single thing disturbed in the whole project of this apartment that I've lived in for eleven years and know the way you know a place when it disappears into the background of your daily life, becomes invisible, becomes just space, becomes the sum of habits, corners, sounds — I know this place I know when something's wrong with it, I know this space and nothing was wrong with it which is the wrongest thing of all Spent the morning on Edmund Reyes every database, every archive, every trail he leaves publicly — and there's plenty up to 2019 behavioral analyst, published three papers, worked between a university research department and a government contracted think tank whose client list was confidential, spent eleven years documenting what he called in paper two "non-standard integration patterns in civilian populations" — who writes that, what does that mean, what does that phrase contain that got his funding pulled his access revoked his name scrubbed from the think tank's site his university page taken down his LinkedIn gone his published papers staged for removal — two of three no longer indexed one surviving in a cache I found and annexed into my files before it disappeared as well read the whole thing, forty-seven pages, I can tell why they pulled it every page is evidence of exactly what she said on air forty-seven pages of it By afternoon I knew the bus route, knew the schedule knew the cash fare, knew the stop, knew the interval between connections, knew the two mile walk from where the last bus drops to where the address sits out there in a place I'm keeping to myself on this recording because I learned from her — the anchor — learned the boarding of information matters, learned that some things stay inside until you're somewhere safe enough to say them I bought the ticket at the bodega kiosk, cash didn't use my card, didn't use my phone, the last version of myself that left a digital trail did it Tuesday — no, that's next Tuesday — did it, trail goes cold from this point, I decided that at 3pm standing at the kiosk watching the receipt print, when I folded it and put it in my left front pocket I felt something change, a key turning in a socket somewhere in my chest, a click, a lock releasing or engaging — I still don't know which one, I'm still increasing the distance between what I know and what I'm willing to say out loud on a record that something has already demonstrated it can access Tonight I called my mother. Didn't plan to. Just dialed. Talked for two hours about nothing. The restaurant on Amsterdam that closed. The neighbor's dog. The weather. She asked if I was eating. I said yes. She said I sounded different. I asked her how. She said — quieter. Like something settled. I didn't tell her about the message. I didn't tell her about Edmund Reyes. I didn't tell her about Tuesday. I just talked. About nothing. About everything that used to be enough. When I hung up I sat in the silence and thought about how that felt. How normal felt. Like something I was visiting before a long trip. Three days. I've been sitting here for an hour now. Just watching. People coming home from work. A kid on a bike. The bodega guy pulling his gate halfway down. Normal Friday evening. And I'm sitting
