Act I: Seeds of Unease

Daniel Price lived by routines. He had to. It was the only way he felt the day wouldn’t scatter itself into pieces — one more shattered thing in a life that already seemed like a junk drawer of failures. He rose at 6:30 every morning in his Queens apartment, showered, dressed, and left at 7:15 sharp, walking three blocks to the subway station. The train rattled into Manhattan, delivering him to the gray mid-rise office where he worked as an architect’s assistant. At 6:00, he came back, microwaved leftovers or ordered cheap takeout, and sat with the television murmuring into the early hours of the night.

It wasn’t much of a life, but it kept him afloat.

The divorce had been final six months ago, and though Daniel wouldn’t admit it aloud, he was lonelier than he had ever been. His ex-wife Emily had moved uptown, remarried already — to a litigator whose teeth and suits both gleamed brighter than Daniel could ever afford. Friends from his younger years had either drifted away or belonged to Emily in the settlement of social circles. Daniel was thirty-eight, with thinning hair and a paunch he tried to hide behind black coats.

The city didn’t notice him. That suited him fine. But one night, the city seemed to notice.

It was a Tuesday in early March, the kind of day when the sidewalks bled with slush and black puddles formed around the gutters. Daniel left work late, around eight, carrying a cardboard box of blueprints that his boss had asked him to mark up at home. The office lights had been too sharp for his tired eyes, so he was grateful for the dusk swallowing Manhattan.

The subway platform at 59th Street was crowded but quiet in that New York way — a low hum of murmurs, headphones leaking tinny beats, shoes scraping cement. Daniel stood apart, box balanced on his hip, scanning the yellowed advertisements for Broadway shows he’d never see.

That’s when he felt it: a prickle between his shoulder blades.

At first, he ignored it. A crowded platform always carried the sense of bodies pressing close, strangers’ eyes grazing across your back. But when Daniel glanced sideways, he thought he saw someone standing just beyond the edge of the crowd — too far back, half in shadow, yet staring directly at him.

The man — or was it a man? — was tall, thin, his face pale in the fluorescence. A dark coat hung to his knees. Daniel couldn’t see details, not from this angle, but he was certain the figure was looking at him, and only him.

The train arrived, metal screeching on metal. The crowd surged forward. Daniel lost sight of the man as he was pushed into the car.

He told himself it was nothing. Just another commuter, one face among thousands.

Still, the sensation lingered through the ride home — the feeling of being observed, even in the reflection of the subway window where his own eyes looked back at him, hollow and rimmed with fatigue.

Three days later, it happened again.

This time, Daniel was in Midtown, walking back from a client meeting. The evening crowd pressed around him, heads bent against the wind, taxis honking in frantic choruses. He ducked into a Starbucks for warmth and stood by the window while his name was butchered on a paper cup.

Across the street, amid the blur of bodies, the same tall figure stood motionless. Dark coat, pale face, a stillness that marked him apart from the restless city. He wasn’t doing anything. Just standing. Watching.

Daniel blinked. A bus passed, blocking the view. When it rumbled on, the figure was gone.

He laughed under his breath, embarrassed by the small spike of fear that had lodged under his ribs. New York was full of strange people — loiterers, addicts, eccentrics. He was projecting. That was all.

And yet… the stillness, the directness of that gaze.

On the walk home, Daniel checked over his shoulder more often than he liked to admit.

By the second week, he was seeing the figure everywhere.

On the far end of the subway car. Across the intersection, while Daniel waited for the light to change. Reflected briefly in a darkened shop window before dissolving into the crowd. Always still, always silent, always watching.

Each time, Daniel tried to rationalize. Maybe it wasn’t the same person — just someone who resembled the first man. A trick of his stressed mind. A symptom of too much caffeine, too little sleep.

Still, he began avoiding certain routes, choosing different subway lines, even leaving work at odd hours. None of it mattered. The figure was always there, just distant enough to doubt, just close enough to chill.

The dreams began soon after.

Daniel would wake in the night, heart pounding, sheets damp. He couldn’t remember details, only the sense of being pursued down endless corridors, his breath fogging in the dark. Sometimes he saw glass — subway windows, office panes, even mirrors in his apartment — and behind the glass, that pale face gazing in.

He stopped looking too long at his reflection. The eyes staring back seemed tired, yes, but also faintly… wrong.

One evening, he decided to test himself.

He left the office at midnight, long after most coworkers had gone. The streets outside were nearly empty, slick with rain. Daniel walked fast, collar up, scanning every reflection.

At the corner of 42nd and Lexington, he saw him. Clear as day.

The figure stood beneath a flickering streetlamp, thirty feet away. Tall. Still. Head tilted slightly as though listening.

Daniel froze. His pulse hammered in his ears.

For the first time, he thought he saw the man’s face in detail: smooth, expressionless, almost featureless, like wet plaster not yet carved. Eyes too large, too dark.

A cab passed between them. When it was gone, the sidewalk was empty.

Daniel staggered back, bumping into a trash can. His breath rattled.

He hurried home, every step dogged by the conviction that someone walked just behind him.

The next morning, Daniel nearly convinced himself it had been a hallucination. Stress. Insomnia. He wasn’t crazy — but anyone would unravel a little under the weight of isolation.

Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted. That the city itself had turned its face toward him, and was watching.

And so began the long descent.

Act II: The Downward Spiral

Daniel tried to tell himself it was exhaustion. That was the word he used when he called in sick the next morning, his voice thin and papery against the receptionist’s chipper tone. Exhaustion.

It sounded more respectable than: There’s a faceless man following me through the city.

He stayed in bed until nearly noon, blinds drawn, the sounds of traffic leaking through like static. But rest did nothing. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the tall figure framed by the streetlamp, still as a photograph, waiting for him to blink.

By evening, he ventured out. He needed groceries, or maybe just the comfort of being among people. The corner 7/11 was warm with a fluorescent hum, shelves crammed with cans and boxes. Daniel stood in the cereal aisle, trying to remember what he liked, when he noticed the convex security mirror above the register.

The angle was strange, a wide fisheye sweep of the store. He saw himself — a shrunken man in a dark coat, hunched over his basket. And behind him, in the warped reflection, someone tall and thin stood near the doorway.

Daniel spun around.

No one. Just a woman with a stroller, struggling to fold it, muttering curses.

When he looked back at the mirror, the figure was gone.

He left without buying anything.

At work, his distraction grew impossible to ignore.

“Dan, you okay?” asked Marissa, the junior architect who shared his drafting table. She was kind, younger by a decade, and wore headphones that leaked the faint sound of jazz.

“I’m fine,” he said. Too quickly.

“You don’t look fine.” She tapped her pencil on the blueprint. “You keep checking the windows. Like you’re waiting for somebody.”

He tried to laugh it off, but the laugh cracked. “Guess I’m just jumpy these days.”

Marissa tilted her head, studying him. “You should get some sleep. You look haunted.”

The word struck too close. Haunted. Yes. That was the right word.

One night, leaving the office, Daniel spotted the figure across the street, half-shrouded in steam rising from a subway grate. His pulse stuttered. He ducked into a deli, pretending to check the menu posted above the counter. Through the glass door, he could see the tall man still standing, framed in the fog.

Daniel waited. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Pretended to buy a coffee he didn’t want. When he finally stepped back out, the sidewalk was empty.

It became a pattern.

The tall figure in the reflection of a subway window, seated three rows down. The same pale shape on the far platform as Daniel’s train pulled away. Once, horrifyingly, in the reflection of his own apartment window at night — even though he lived on the twelfth floor.

He stopped inviting people over. He stopped answering his phone.

Emily called him one Sunday.

“You sound terrible,” she said after a long silence.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. Dan, I know that voice. What’s going on?”

He almost told her. Almost confessed that he was being hunted through the city by something he couldn’t name. But her silence on the line felt sharp, skeptical, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her pity.

“Work’s just heavy,” he muttered.

There was a pause. Then her voice softened. “Look… maybe you should see someone. A doctor. Or… you know. A therapist.”

He hung up soon after.

By late March, Daniel was keeping notes.

Scraps of paper littered his desk: times, locations, crude sketches of what he’d seen. His handwriting grew jagged, frenetic. He taped a city map to his wall, marking the sightings with red circles.

The pattern meant something, he was sure of it. The figure appeared across boroughs — Brooklyn on Tuesday, Midtown on Wednesday, Queens on Friday — distances impossible to cover at the speed he moved. Unless…

Unless it wasn’t one man at all. The thought curdled his stomach.

He made his first attempt to confront it in early April.

It was past eleven, the subway platform nearly deserted. Daniel stood at the far end, pretending to read a folded newspaper. His heart thundered.

And then: there. Across the tracks, half veiled in shadow.

Tall. Still. Waiting.

Daniel dropped the paper. His legs moved before his brain agreed, carrying him down the platform stairs, across the passage, up the opposite side. Breath tearing in his throat.

But when he emerged — nothing. Only peeling posters and a flickering light.

He leaned against the wall, dizzy, choking on his own laughter.

The city grew hostile.

Every crowd seemed full of faces turned his way. Every shadow stretched toward him. He stopped taking the subway, started walking miles across the city despite the ache in his knees. Taxis felt unsafe — glass always carried reflections, and reflections were where the figure lingered longest.

He knew how it looked. Delusional. Paranoid. Crazy.

But each time he began to doubt himself, the figure reappeared — sharp, undeniable, patient as ever.

By April’s end, Daniel gave in and booked an appointment.

Dr. Hoffman’s office smelled of peppermint tea and old upholstery. The man himself was soft-spoken, with rimless glasses and hands folded neatly in his lap.

“Tell me why you’re here,” Hoffman said.

Daniel hesitated. Then he told him everything. The subway, the reflections, the feeling of being followed by a tall man no one else seemed to notice. His voice trembled as he spoke, spilling out weeks of fear.

Hoffman listened without interrupting. When Daniel finished, the silence was unbearable.

Finally, the doctor said, “What you’re describing sounds consistent with heightened anxiety, possibly paranoia. Stress, isolation, sleep deprivation — these can all contribute.”

“So you think I’m imagining it.”

“I think your mind is under strain. That doesn’t mean the fear isn’t real to you. But yes, I believe the figure is a manifestation, not a literal person.”

Daniel laughed bitterly. “A manifestation that knows how to ride the F train?”

Hoffman only made a note.

After the appointment, Daniel sat in Bryant Park with a paper cup of coffee, staring at the crowds.

The doctor had sounded so certain, so rational. Part of Daniel wanted to believe him — to chalk it all up to stress and exhaustion, to accept that his brain was staging a cruel trick.

But then, across the park, he saw the figure. Tall. Motionless. Among the benches and tourists, staring only at him.

Daniel dropped the coffee and ran.

By May, he was hardly sleeping. His apartment walls closed in with the weight of maps, notes, and sketches. His reflection seemed to twitch in mirrors a second too slow.

Marissa cornered him at work. “Dan, this is getting bad. You’re scaring people. You’re scaring me.”

“I’m fine,” he insisted. His voice cracked.

“You’re not. You’re pale, you’re shaking, and you jump every time someone walks past your desk. Please, talk to somebody. Take a break. Something.”

He wanted to tell her she didn’t understand. That if she saw what he saw, she’d never sleep again.

Instead, he nodded, mute.

That night, Daniel dreamed of glass. Endless subway windows, office panes, mirrors stretching into infinity. And in every one, the tall figure stood closer, closer, until the glass pressed between them like skin.

He woke with a scream lodged in his throat.

For the first time, he wondered if Hoffman had been right. If he was truly unraveling, piece by piece, until nothing would remain but this terror.

Act III: Reflections

Daniel stopped checking his mail. The slot in the door had become another watching eye, another slit of vulnerability. Bills piled up under the table in unopened stacks, white envelopes growing yellow at the corners.

He stopped shaving, too. The mirror was unbearable — a portal that reflected not only his own exhausted face but, he was sure, something waiting just behind his shoulder. When he did catch his reflection by accident, it seemed subtly wrong: his lips lagging a heartbeat behind when he moved, his eyes darker than they should be, as if they belonged to someone else.

The world outside was worse.

Every time he ventured into the city, he caught glimpses of the figure: in the reflection of a shop’s glass door, on the opposite side of the street, the slick surface of a taxi’s windshield, in the windows above a deli. Sometimes, he thought he heard footsteps behind him that matched his own, halting when he did, resuming when he walked again.

It was destroying him.

One evening in late May, Daniel returned home to find his apartment door ajar.

His chest seized. He pushed it open with trembling fingers. The apartment was dark, curtains drawn, but he sensed something was different. The air was heavier, carrying a faint smell like damp soil.

He flicked on the light.

Everything looked the same. The table stacked with papers, the couch sagging under a pile of laundry, the cold remains of takeout on the counter. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been there. That someone still was.

He searched the apartment twice, opening closets, checking under the bed, even yanking back the shower curtain. Nothing.

And yet, when he looked at the bathroom mirror, his reflection was smiling.

Daniel’s hand flew to his mouth. His face was slack, terrified, but the reflection grinned wide, teeth bared like a cracked mask.

He smashed the mirror with his fist. Blood ran across his knuckles as he slid to the floor, sobbing.

The next day, Marissa found him in the office stairwell, sitting on the landing with his head in his hands.

“Fuck, Dan,” she whispered. “What happened to your hand?”

“Glass,” he croaked.

She crouched beside him. “You need help. Real help. Please.”

He looked at her through bloodshot eyes. For a moment, he wanted to tell her everything — the reflections, the smell of soil, the grin in the mirror. But he saw pity in her gaze, the kind of pity reserved for lost causes.

So he only said, “I’m fine.”

Dr. Hoffman increased his sessions to twice a week.

“You’re describing classic symptoms of delusional paranoia,” Hoffman said, pen scratching softly across his notepad. “It’s not uncommon in individuals undergoing intense stress. The divorce, your isolation, the workload. Your mind is externalizing your fear.”

Daniel laughed bitterly. “Externalizing it into a man who appears in every mirror I see, across every street, every subway platform?”

Hoffman folded his hands. “Our brains are powerful machines. They create meaning from noise, faces from shadows. What you’re experiencing is terrifying, yes — but it’s a trick of perception, nothing more.”

Daniel stared at the carpet. He wanted to believe him. God, he wanted to. But that night, he found muddy footprints on his living room floor.

The city blurred into a waking nightmare.

He saw the figure in every reflective surface now — sometimes faint, sometimes vivid. Once in a restaurant window, he thought he saw its pale hand press against the glass, long fingers splayed. Another time, on the subway, he glimpsed its face in the opposite window: eyeless sockets staring at him.

He stopped eating out. Stopped riding trains. He walked everywhere, head down, avoiding shop windows.

But the reflections found him anyway: puddles in the street, the gleam of a car bumper, even the shine of his own bloodied knuckles.

June arrived with humid nights. Sleep became impossible. Daniel roamed his apartment at three a.m., lights blazing, whispering to himself.

You’re imagining it. You’re imagining it. It isn’t real.

But sometimes, when he stopped whispering, he swore he heard breathing. Not his own. Low, steady, constant, patient.

He began to consider escape. Leaving New York — leaving everything. The figure had only ever appeared here. Maybe, if he could get out, he could leave it behind.

He started checking bus schedules, researching flights he couldn’t afford. He even packed a duffel bag with clothes, though he never carried it farther than the apartment door. Each time he tried to leave, he found himself frozen by the certainty that the figure was waiting outside.

The city had become a trap.

One sweltering evening, he stood on the Roosevelt Island tramway platform, duffel slung over his shoulder, watching the cables vanish into the skyline. He thought: This is it. Just get on. Just go.

But then, across the platform, he saw the figure.

Tall. Motionless. Half-turned toward him.

The duffel slid from his hand. His chest locked tight. And when he blinked — the figure was gone. Daniel staggered back, laughing hysterically. People gave him a wide berth, unsure and perhaps a little afraid of what he might be capable of.

He returned home. Alone.

By late June, he was certain of only one thing: he was losing his mind.

The figure wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. No one else ever saw it. Every doctor, every friend (the few who hadn’t abandoned him), told him the same: stress, delusion, paranoia.

And yet the fear remained. Heavier than anything.

On the first night of July, Daniel woke at 2:14 a.m. to silence. No traffic, no hum of the refrigerator. A silence so total it rang in his ears.

He sat up. Across the room, in the black glass of the window, the figure stood.

Closer than ever.

Act IV: Through the Glass

Daniel sat frozen on the edge of his bed, staring at the black window.

The figure stood in the glass as clearly as if it were inside the room. Tall, pale, featureless. Its head tilted, watching him with infinite patience.

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream. His heart battered his chest in frantic bursts.

For a terrible moment, he thought it might only be his reflection again — some cruel trick of his mind. But when he lifted his hand, the reflection did not follow. It remained still, arm at its side, faceless head cocked.

The truth hit him like ice water: it was not him. It had never been him.

His breath tore loose in a sob. “What do you want from me?”

The figure didn’t move.

Then the glass rippled.

It was subtle at first, like a breeze skimming water. The windowpane shimmered, distorting the city lights outside. The figure pressed its pale hand against the glass, and the surface bulged inward, stretching like skin.

Daniel stumbled back. “No—no, no, no—”

The glass split soundlessly. A crack ran downward like lightning. The hand pushed through, long fingers gleaming wet, dragging darkness with them.

Daniel fled to the door. His hands fumbled the lock, slick with sweat. Behind him came the sound of breaking — not just glass, but something deeper, like bones splintering under weight.

He yanked the door open and bolted into the hallway.

The city outside was suffocating with heat, the air thick with the stench of garbage left too long on curbs. Daniel ran through Queens like a man possessed; he didn’t look back. He didn’t dare.

But every reflective surface betrayed him.

In the black mirror of a shop window, the figure walking calmly behind him.

In the glint of a rain puddle, its face hovering above his shoulder.

In the chrome of a parked car: its hand, reaching.

He staggered into the subway, desperate. The station was nearly empty at this hour, the fluorescent lights buzzing. The tracks stretched into darkness. The tunnels smelled of rust and mildew.

Daniel sat on the far bench, chest heaving. Maybe he was insane. Maybe Dr. Hoffman was right. Maybe this was all in his head.

But then, across the platform, the figure appeared. Not in glass. Not in reflection.

It was standing there.

Tall. Pale. Still.

Watching.

Daniel rose, trembling. “Why me?” he whispered. His voice cracked in the vast, empty space. “What do you want from me?”

The figure tilted its head.

Then, impossibly, it stepped down onto the tracks.

The sound was wrong. Not the crunch of gravel, but a slick, wet noise, like something being pulled from mud. The air filled with the smell of damp soil, heavy and choking.

Daniel stumbled back. The train lights bloomed in the tunnel, a roar building.

The figure did not move aside. It stood as the train thundered toward it—

—then vanished.

The train screamed into the station, brakes shrieking, carriages rattling. Commuters spilled out, blinking in exhaustion. Daniel stared, wild-eyed, heart thrashing. It was gone.

Had it ever been there?

He pressed his palms to his face, tears streaking his cheeks. Maybe Hoffman had been right. Maybe it was all madness.

Maybe—

A hand touched his shoulder. Daniel flinched so violently he nearly fell onto the tracks.

It was only a man — just another commuter, weary in a business suit. He frowned. “Hey, you okay?”

Daniel swallowed. Nodded. “Yeah. Just—just tired.”

The man gave him a wary look, then walked on.

Daniel sank onto the bench. His body shook with the aftershock of terror. He told himself it was over. Just stress. Just his mind. He almost believed it.

Until he looked up at the train.

Every window reflected his own pale face back at him. Dozens of Daniels. And behind each one, standing in the reflection, was the figure.

Closer than ever.

Three days later, Dr. Hoffman visited Daniel’s apartment. The door was locked, the blinds drawn. No one answered the knock. Eventually, the superintendent opened it with a spare key.

The apartment was empty. Clothes strewn across the floor, dishes molding in the sink. On the walls, Daniel had scrawled drawings in frantic ink: tall figures, faceless heads, hands pressed to glass.

In the center of the living room, the largest sketch covered an entire wall. A subway window. And in it, a figure standing just behind the viewer’s reflection.

Of Daniel, there was no sign.

A week later, a young woman on the F train glanced at the dark window opposite her seat.

She frowned. Her reflection was there, pale in the glass — but someone tall and thin stood just behind her shoulder.

When she turned, the seat behind her was empty.