The barista across the street was staring at me again, I could feel it. He did it when he thought I couldn’t see him. I know, because I only ever caught him in the mirror. My antique shop has a section dedicated to them, the fancy kind made of polished silver, or in some cases, polished obsidian. The largest, and most impressive, was a gold framed piece that took up the entire back wall.

  I was working on some shelves near the gold framed mirror, when I felt my veins grow icy. From the corner of my eye I saw the barista, his leering gaze reflected back at me from across the street.

  Normally, when a creepy guy stares at me he’s usually looking down my shirt, or undressing me with his eyes. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what he was doing. In his eyes I saw desire, but it was devoid of lust, or banal perversion. It made my stomach churn with disgust, and made me feel very, very alone. Suddenly, being in the dimness of my antique shop felt dangerous.

  I turned around quickly, to let him know that I’d caught him, but when I did he was already looking away, pretending to wipe down the coffee shop’s counter. Not wanting to get hung up on some creep staring at me, I returned to fixing things on the shelf, but when I did he was already there, in the mirror, with that uncanny predatory gaze. I felt my heart jump inside my chest, and not for the last time.

  That’s more or less how I’ve been getting on the past few weeks. I fix my shelves, talk to customers, and check the register knowing that his disgusting eyes are crawling all over me. I’ll check the mirror now and again just to be sure, and without fail, there he’ll be. I should have done something about it, but I just learned to live with it.

  For a while anyway.

  I ran into him on the street today, in the predawn darkness. I was going to open my shop, when his too-skinny frame and gangly limbs appeared from a dark alley, like a spider crawling out of its hiding place.

  He stared at me, as usual, but his normally predatory leer was twitching with nervous energy. He looked like a cornered animal. It felt like I was one wrong move from setting him off.

  He raised his arm, and I nearly started crying. I wanted to run, but fear held me in place. That was it, I thought, my ticket to the afterlife was being punched, and I could only hope it would be quick. I waited for death to strike, but it never did.

  He waved at me. That fucker just waved at me. He put on an awkward, crooked, smile, and crossed the street to the cafe. Had he been planning something only to chicken out right at the end? I wasn’t too sure. The nervous eyes, the awkward smile, had he himself been afraid of something? Maybe he was just a creepy loser. One that lost his nerve in front of the woman he’d been creeping on.

  I thought about that awful encounter all day. I let it eat me up inside. He was creepy, sure, but was he really worth living in fear over? Did I really see fear in his eyes too? Had I been blowing this out of proportion? I was on the verge of believing so. Then I caught him in the mirror again.

  That’s when I snapped.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Maybe he wasn’t a homicidal psycho killer, maybe he was just some guy. Fine. That still made him gross, and I was done putting up with it.

  On my lunch break I marched into the coffee shop, like a woman possessed. I marched with righteous indignation. The bastard knew what he was in for, and scuttled away to a backroom before I could confront him. One of the owners, the “mom” of the mom and pop establishment, came out to deal with me.

  “Can I help you ma'am,” she said, filled with righteous anger that I couldn’t believe she had the audacity to direct towards me.

  “Can you– yes, I hope so,” I said. The woman stood proud, with crossed arms, and a raised eyebrow that would have cowed a lesser human being, but not me. “Your barista has been ogling me for god knows how long. He does it the entire day, for his entire shift when he thinks I can’t see him. It’s creepy, makes me feel unsafe, and I want it to stop.”

  She lowered her eyebrow, and softened her scowl. I crossed my arms, and readied to raise my own brow. It was the small business equivalent of an armistice.

  “Wait here ma’am.”

  “Waiting,” I snapped.

  She disappeared into the back, returning a few minutes later with her creepy barista in tow.

  “He’s been telling us for weeks that you’re the one creeping him out,” she said. The creepy barista didn’t look at me directly, choosing instead to sneak glances at me when my eyes fell elsewhere. “Well, go on, tell the woman.”

  He cleared his throat, and timidly said “I’ve been telling the other staff here about you. Ever since I caught you in the mirror I–.”

  “YOU caught ME?” I yelled. The barista flinched.

  I remembered the fear I saw in him this morning. I didn’t want to believe him, but the older woman corroborating his story made it hard to deny. I thought about the first time I’d caught him, or I guess when we “caught” each other. I had a deer in the headlights moment, maybe he did too. When I really thought about it, I had technically been sneaking peeks at him about as often as I had suspected him of sneaking peeks at me. Had it all just been a misunderstanding? By the end of my lunch break, we both agreed that it was.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said, standing in the threshold of the coffee shop.

  “It’s a bit rude that you think I look like a ghoul, but that’s okay I guess,” said the barista, who turned out to be a cool guy. Though he could do with some more time in the sun.

  “I don’t think you look like a ghoul!”

  “You didn’t say ghoul, but you thought ghoul.”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s fine, I’ll take that over being psycho-killed. You have a wicked crazy-face.”

  “I was just scared! I thought you were gonna psycho-kill me!”

  I said goodbye, making promises to return for lunch another day.

  I started crossing the street to my antique shop, when I was violently held back. The barista’s hands forming an iron grip on my shoulders. For the second time today I thought I was dead. This time however, fear did not freeze me where I stood. I struggled against him, turned to slap him, punch him, claw his eyes out, anything, but I stopped.

  His face was contorted in fear, fear was so palpable it became an infectious disease, and I could feel it spreading, locking my joints, ruining my ability to control my muscles. I wanted to ask him why he looked so scared, but I couldn’t speak. All that came out of me was meek stuttering, fractured syllables.

  “Look,” he said, pointing to the back of my antique shop.

  On the back wall, in the gold framed mirror, two reflections with too-wide smiles stared back at us. The barista’s reflection, and my own.