The writer stared at the post-it on the wall and could not understand it.

No. That wasn't quite right. Of course she could understand it. The words were simple. The handwriting was tidy and small and legible and so very, terribly familiar. As it should be. It was her handwriting, after all.

DON’T LOOK UP.

She clenched the edge of her desk, white-knuckled. Her lips were dry and so she licked them and it did not help. The post-it note was hers, yet she did not remember writing it. And it seemed so silly a thing to fear; it seemed so simple a solution, to look up and see nothing but ceiling and shake her head and move on with her third draft edits, because even if the note was ominous, there couldn’t possibly be a… something on the ceiling. Right? If that were the case, however, why did she shake so? Why was there a sick, constricted feeling in her chest, like a snake had wound down her throat and wrapped around her heart?

The writer clenched her eyes shut. Inhaled, exhaled, once, twice. She forced her grip to relinquish from the table. She resolved to look up.

She didn’t.

The writer hissed a curse under her breath. She was a woman of thirty-three years. She had endured the birth of twins. She had endured the ensuing single motherhood. She had endured the raising of one child and the working of two jobs, all while typing up her dream of a better life for the last twenty-seven months. The least she could do was get over this bizarre, childish fear, act her age, act her nature, and LOOK UP.

She didn’t.

And the ceiling creaked.

The writer stiffened.

A hand, from somewhere above, somewhere behind, caressed her jaw. A forearm, with skin like sandpaper, scratched her scalp.

"Well done," it whispered, and the writer could not move. "Truly. Well done."

The writer shrieked and sprang from her chair, which crashed against the ground. Her gaze was wild, and she hunched like an animal and screamed. Yet there was nothing to hear her, nothing to be seen.

It was gone.

And the chair clattered.

Clattered.

Click.