One perfect autumn Monday evening

“Wow, what a beautiful night,” she mumbled to herself as she stepped out of the front entrance of her swank fitness club and onto the sidewalk smack in the heart of downtown Montreal. Ste-Catherine Street was bustling with young happy-hour devotees and sharply dressed professionals taking advantage of the unseasonably warm temperatures on this first day of a new September week. While the sun didn’t stay out nearly as long as in mid-summer, the evenings were still warm enough that the terraces at the bars and restaurants were filled to capacity. The scene reminded her of the time she herself used to be one of those night-time revellers, when her only concern was which pair of shoes to wear with a particular outfit. But that seemed like so long ago. Now, she was a hard-charging career woman, just days away from her thirty-third birthday, grinding through the rigors of a hectic daily schedule. Yet, she managed to end each evening with a rigorous workout at the posh new gym one block away from her office, followed by a quick meal in her Plateau Mont-Royal upper duplex apartment.

            Within minutes, she was walking briskly toward her car in the basement parking lot of her employer’s building. Given the number of cars still in their spots at this late hour, she figured that quite a few of her colleagues might be among those people she had seen on the streets just moments ago. The eerie quiet of the cavernous space was broken only by the monotonous clack and echo of her heels knocking against the cement floor in rapid succession.

            Then, she heard a shuffle coming from a remote part of the garage, and it stopped her right in her tracks. She swung her head around 180 degrees but couldn’t detect anything unusual amidst the placid sea of car frames and wind shields. After a ten-second pause she resumed her march toward her car with the same clack and echo-producing rhythm as before. She was twenty metres from her car when she suddenly stopped and swerved around again, absolutely certain that the sound behind her was real. Unable to make out anything, her heart began to race and she broke into a high-heeled sprint to her car while frantically searching for the keys in the jumbled mess that was her gym bag. In what seemed like one swift, fluid movement, she dropped into the driver’s seat, started the car, and sped out of the underground garage and onto the side street.

            Driving at a speed that was far too dangerous for the number of cars and pedestrians in close proximity, she quickly reached the first busy intersection adjacent to the building she had just walked past. As she reassured herself that she was now safe, she broke into a bemused smile upon realizing that her heart was still pounding a mile a minute. Maybe she was just on edge because of work-related stress, she thought, and maybe this edginess was morphing into paranoia. Just to be safe, she decided to take the slower, busier boulevard to her apartment instead of snaking through the quicker, emptier streets that were part of her usual route. At each red traffic light her eyes would dart frantically and intensely across the rear-view mirror to see if anyone might be following, but it was difficult to distinguish among the myriad of glaring headlights of the trailing cars and the dark silhouettes of the people inside them.

            Once she left the busy part of downtown, she had no choice but to turn up into the quieter residential streets of her own neighbourhood to approach her apartment. With an ever-vigilant eye firmly glued to the rear-view mirror, she could swear that one car always behind her kept a steady forty-metre distance. Even though she had to make two quick turns in succession to get to her street, that same car, after having disappeared momentarily from her sightline, somehow made the same two turns and ended up behind her once again. If there’s a thin line between paranoia and denial, she was now straddling it. She parked in the first available spot on her street, hastily gathered her bags from the passenger’s seat, and made a mad dash to her apartment a mere thirty paces away. All the while she kept looking over her shoulder at the approaching car that had been following her. There was no one else on the street, and she didn’t know whether to be worried for her safety or thankful that her neighbours wouldn’t see her running like a lunatic.

            When she got to her apartment she quickly opened the front door. Before entering, she turned to see where that car was. As it passed by her apartment it seemed to deliberately slow down. She could make out what looked like two male occupants in the front seats, neither of whom turned to look at her. She let out a sigh of relief and wondered if she was just imagining a danger. Maybe she needed a long vacation to get a grip on her nerves. With the car fading from view, she turned toward the stairwell when a figure on the other side of the narrow street suddenly came into focus in the periphery of her vision. Wearing a baseball cap, his hands were in the pockets of what looked like a dark leather bomber jacket. This time there was no mistaking it, the man was clearly staring right at her.

            The chill down her spine and a sudden rush of adrenaline made her slam the front door closed and bound mightily up the stairs, tearing her skirt and breaking a heel in the process. She threw herself on her couch and started shaking uncontrollably as she burst into tears. She reached for her phone, hit the speed dial button and before the person at the other end of the line could say hello she yelled out, “I can’t do this anymore!”