The Viper's Possession

My mother used to tell me that if you stared into the dark for too long, the dark would eventually start to stare back. I didn't understand what she meant until the year I turned twenty-one. That was the year the shadows in the city stopped feeling empty. It started as a prickle at the base of my neck when I walked home from my shift at the bakery. Then, it was the suffocating, heavy sensation of being watched while I played my violin on the dimly lit stage of *The Velvet Note*. I would stop playing, my heart hammering against my ribs, and scan the room. But there was never anyone there. Just the same tired patrons nursing cheap whiskey. But I knew. You don't grow up in the Narrows without learning how to sense a predator. Lately, the feeling had escalated from a quiet paranoia to a deafening roar. I'd see a sleek, black-tinted SUV idling across the street from my apartment in the dead of night. If I walked faster, the heavy purr of its engine seemed to keep pace with my racing heartbeat. If I locked my door and hid under the thin, freezing blankets of my bed, the oppressive weight of unseen eyes followed me into the dark. I thought I was going crazy. The stress of poverty, the threat of eviction, and the suffocating burden of my father's gambling addiction were finally fracturing my mind. That was the only logical explanation. After all, why would the dangerous, powerful monsters of this city care about a broke, exhausted violinist? I had nothing to steal. I had nothing to offer. I told myself I was invisible. I told myself I was safe as long as I kept my head down. I was so incredibly naive. I didn't know that invisibility was just another word for waiting to be found. I didn't know that while I was scraping together pennies to buy a stale loaf of bread, my father was sitting at a velvet-lined table in an underground casino, betting with a currency he didn't own. He thought he was gambling with his life. He didn't know the devil sitting across from him didn't want his life. The devil had already spent a year watching me from the shadows. He had already memorized the sound of my music, the cadence of my steps, and the exact price it would take to buy my soul. I thought the dark was just staring back. I had no idea it was preparing to swallow me