NOTE: This work contains material not suitable for anyone under eighteen (18) or those of a delicate nature. This is a story and contains descriptive scenes of a graphic, sexual nature. This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Edna Curtis’s front door offers no challenge. The latch surrenders on the first try, barely a click. Deadblot isn’t thrown. Dumb bitch, the young woman thinks. The moon drags a rectangle of light across the entryway tiles, and the Intruder glides through it, head ducked, face angled down. Her shadow looms tall behind her. Shoulders block half the doorway, arms coiled tight against her torso, gym-swollen and deliberate. No one waits up. No dog. No warning. Carpet drinks her footfalls.

Familiar layout, unfamiliar scent. The house wants to close in around her, but muscle memory, the kind built in years of locker rooms, gyms, and rented rooms, navigates the darkness without apology. Straight through the foyer. Left at the stairs. The air holds a note of lemon floor cleaner, a hint of something floral beneath. A painting slumps on the wall: overwrought landscape, sunless. Living room ahead, kitchen to the right, the glow of a digital clock seeping over the countertop. 2:11 a.m.

A pause in the gloom. Shoulders square up. She listens. Houses breathe. This one holds its breath. The silence crushes ... A sound. Barely a thread, but sharp enough to carve through the hush. Not a footstep, not the metallic whine of pipes. A moan, stretched thin, breaking into smaller, helpless notes. Bedroom, second floor, door ajar and inviting.

Her lips tug sideways, not quite a smile.

The stairs complain, but only in the softest whimper. One at a time. Each step calculated, no weight wasted. The bulk of the young woman moves with unexpected grace, as if the heaviness exists only to intimidate, never to slow. At the landing, she stops again. The sound below grows louder, clear now: a woman’s voice, spooling through muffled whimpers and gasps. Punctuated by short, sharp breaths.

She imagines the scene on the other side of the door. Not out of prurience. Out of necessity. Preparation.

She moves up the hallway, hand brushing against the wallpaper for bearings. The walls narrow around her. At the far end, in the anemic glow of the nightlight in an outlet, the bedroom waits. The door stands open enough. The Intruder’s chest brushes the frame as she passes through.

Inside, Edna Curtis writhes in the center of a queen mattress, quilted comforter shucked halfway down. Legs bare, knees drawn up, foot scrabbling at the sheets for traction. Right hand works furiously beneath the elastic of pale pink underwear, left hand mashed over her face, smothering sound, not quite succeeding. The pulse in Edna’s throat jumps and retreats with every gasp.

From the dark, the intruder catalogues: Edna’s hips, rounded and soft but desperate to press higher; the way her stomach contracts with each stifled breath; the panicked rhythm of her fingers, frantic and clumsy. The face—she recognizes it from faculty photos, but those never captured this slackness, this surrender. The laugh lines dig deeper now, mouth open and bitten red.

No signs of a partner. No backup. Even the faint blue light of a phone left face-up on the nightstand fails to summon rescue. Edna rides the edge alone, oblivious.

A shock of satisfaction courses through the Intruder. Not arousal—something colder, cleaner. This is the moment she engineered.

She keeps her body low and moves around the foot of the bed, boots ghosting over the hardwood. Edna’s eyes clamp shut, tears beading in the corners, chest heaving, hips bucking. She arches, and the duvet slips lower, exposing more thigh, a flash of stomach, the swell of a breast, and a fat, stiff nipple, a pink and puffy areola, under stretched-out cotton. For a moment, the woman on the mattress looks childlike, lost in her own need, defenseless as a cut flower.

The Intruder fills her lungs, savoring the hush before the rupture. She towers at the edge of the bed, arms folded, breath steady, heartbeat slower than the trembling form before her. Her own breasts, compressed beneath a tactical sports bra and dark T-shirt, ache with their weight, a contradiction sewn into her DNA and trained into compliance.

With her voice rising, Edna edges toward climax and breaks off into a shuddering whine. The Intruder waits for the perfect cadence. A vulnerable note, a last gasp, and drinks it in.

She shifts her weight, toes flexing in thick socks. A wood plank groans underfoot, sharp and sudden, no longer an accident but a signal. Edna freezes. The silence tightens into a garrote.

For a second, the only sound is the shivering of Edna’s breath, trapped behind her bitten lip. Sightless at first, Edna’s eyes snap open in a second, wide and animal. She doesn’t scream. The moment before she does, the Intruder locks eyes with her, all the promise of violence condensed into that silent transaction.

Edna’s hand drops from her underwear, leaving it twisted and wet against her thigh. She claws for the covers, but the quilt tangles around her knees. The Intruder simply stands there, backlit by the low light, casting a shadow long enough to swallow the woman and the bed together.

No words yet. The presence alone speaks enough. This is a hunt. This is what the Intruder came for.

The standoff stretches. Edna, eyes blown wide, hands knotted in the sheets. The Intruder waits, hands on hips, feet planted below the edge of the mattress. There’s an unnatural bulge in her jeans. Edna’s chest hitches, breath locked in her throat. The covers barely shield her, and the trembling of her limbs telegraphs every pulse of panic.