Jonathan woke up the next day with a jerk, still sitting against the dresser with the knife on the floor next to him. He checked his phone. It was almost noon, and he had two missed calls and a voicemail from Vic.

He rubbed his eyes with the balls of his palms and stared loosely around the room. Last night had rattled him, badly, and an almost sleepless night didn’t help anything.

Finally, he drew up the energy to stand up and push the dresser back into place beside the door. Slowly, he opened the door and found everything as he had left it the night before. By the window, a small puddle of water catching the sunlight nicely to shine on the broken glass surrounding it.

His shoulders slumped as he took in the atmosphere. He felt a jolt of pain suddenly as if a truck had run him over. If anything, his muscles were sore from how he had slept. He felt dumb, letting his mind play tricks on him like that. It was almost definitely nothing and he was just overreacting.

He desperately needed to get out more and have some kind of social life, he thought suddenly. Jonathan played back the events of the night, and wished that even once, he had called someone to tell them what was happening.

Whoever he called would’ve calmly explained away what he saw, noting that Jonathan had had a long, lonely, quiet shift and he had lost focus. The person on the phone would have an explanation for everything.

But Jonathan hadn’t told anyone. Instead, he let his mind run wild with random anxieties, connecting unrelated details. A pale customer caught him unfocused during a long shift, and he got dizzy making their cappuccino.

When was the last time he’d eaten before that, anyway?

His stomach grumbled at the thought, and he went to the kitchen. Soon enough, he had a late breakfast and did his best to clean up some of the glass while sausage links were fried in a pan.

After they were done, he plated them and left them in the microwave to keep their heat while quickly making some scrambled eggs. During his first year of living alone, he’d depended a lot on pre-made, frozen foods but had done his best to teach himself some cooking basics. Now, most weeks, he managed to cook the majority of his own meals, even if it was mostly the same few dishes.

Every mouthful reaffirmed to him that his dizziness last night was because he was hungry, bored, and tired and hadn’t realized it. Never mind the customer’s bizarrely impactful appearance, which Jonathan realized he could recall almost perfectly if he tried. Everything had an explanation.

He finished his breakfast, and routine eventually took over. After washing dishes and putting on a pot of coffee, Jonathan slowly felt more like himself. Last night was a fluke, a random freak occurrence. Surely.

Jonathan even started to feel cheery as he watched a random video on his TV while drinking the coffee.

He was about to start a weekend off from Ghouls ‘n’ Brews, and Vic had been kind enough to give him the following Monday free as well. He’d be working a long week after that, but the string of days away was nice.

‘I’ll even have time to research for my thesis’, he thought, and the mood crashed around him. His thesis. Right.

He sighed and glanced at the library stack of books he’d checked out. They weren’t primary sources by a long shot, just books he’d hoped would lead somewhere, but they never did. He had read a bit of one of them, but the words had all started to run together.

He sat forward on the couch now and set his hand on the stack, drumming his fingers on the cover.

“Folklorique: Anthology of French Tales” stared back at him, its cover a dull brown.

Jonathan’s thesis was supposed to be about commonalities between folklore traditions in otherwise very different cultures. What he wanted to discuss especially was whether certain common tales came up under similar circumstances in different groups.

For example, and this was the one that had drawn him into pursuing the thesis initially, Jonathan was surprised to learn that many different cultures had vampire analogs. They didn’t all look the same, act the same, or have the same powers or weaknesses, but vampire and vampire-like stories were found worldwide.

The problem was twofold. To begin with, finding sources that could pinpoint the circumstances around when different stories began to get harder to find the further back you go. Often, these stories would be tied to a long oral tradition before being put into written form, making it difficult to tie them to a specific time period or even region.

The more pressing issue was that he couldn’t conclude these connections. What would it mean if stories about witchcraft tended to crop up during lean years or that tales of princesses locked in towers were more common during the war? The best he could come up with was that it was interesting.

Jonathan sat still a moment, and inspiration came over him. No, today would be different. He was going to approach the issue with fresh eyes, without assumptions, and really dig into all the materials he could get his hands on.

There were at least one or two books talking about how folk stories arise and catch on that he had initially discarded for being too dense, and there was another anthology at the San Luis library he hadn’t touched yet, focused solely on German tales.

But first, a shower.

Finishing his coffee, Jonathan rose to his feet and began to head back to his bedroom when his phone rang.

Jonathan pulled it out of his pocket, and saw it was his mom. He hesitated for a second before it rang again and he answered, sitting down on the couch again.

“Hi Mom, how are you?” he said, consciously making an effort to sound a little extra cheery.

“Hi, I’m good, I’m good. I wanted to call you and see how you are, are you enjoying this summer weather? Is it too hot over there?” his mom answered. She was calling from halfway across the country, in Michigan where he grew up. The winter there was much more dramatic than it was here in California, which he was thankful for. He’d never much cared for shoveling snow.

“Yes, mom, it’s, oh, eighty degrees here. I’m actually going to go out on my bike soon, good weather for it.”

“Well that’s good.” She responded. There was a pause, and Jonathan braced internally, knowing what came next.

“So… How’s your studying going?” She asked, and he winced.

“It’s going alright mom. Classes start again soon at Van Gannison, so I’m going to try and talk to some of the professors about my thesis again, start, y’know. Working up to an application next year.” He answered.

“That’s good.” Another pause. “So you’re still talking about um. Stories?”

“Yeah, stories mom.” Jonathan’s mom had never really understood what it was he wanted to talk about, but he had to admit he’d never been good at explaining the idea. “I really think there’s connections there, that there’s a reason some of those fairy tales and folk legends get popular at different times in different cultures. I think that when certain things happen, we tell certain types of stories with certain types of fantastic details that are always the same.”

“Uh-huh.” She said slowly. “Well, dear, I guess so. I mean, if you think so. So listen, ticket prices are good now so let me know soon if you think you’ll be coming for Christmas. I love you, Jonathan.”

Jonathan’s shoulders sagged a bit, but all he said was “I love you too, mom. I’ll let you know about Christmas.” And hung up.

He let out a long breath of air. Maybe that’s what he should focus on. If he couldn’t explain what he wanted to write about to his mom, what were his chances with convincing a thesis committee?

Jonathan got up again, and made it to his bedroom uninterrupted this time.

He began to undress, peeling off his t-shirt. He went to empty his pockets before taking his pants off, when his hand brushed something hard.

Ah. The note, left by the man last night. A shiver crept up Jonathan’s back, and he swore when he closed his eyes, he could almost see the man, staring back at him.

A sick feeling stuck to his stomach until he got under the hot stream of the shower, the water taking his discomfort, along with the night’s grime, down the drain.