Another narrow escape.

Even narrower this time. The first time had just been bad luck. It was instinct, nothing more, that’d had her turning towards the bushes where he was crouching as quiet as a mouse. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Hadn’t made a mistake. And he’d kept his head, kept his cool, as she’d swept the bushes with those big brown eyes that seemed to look right through him.

He’d kept still, and within seconds she’d turned her eyes away and walked on. Then only had the sweat burst out in great beads along his forehead, his upper lip, all the damp and secret parts of him. But this time he’d made a mistake. Yes, and he was man enough to admit it. He’d been watching them. He’d been leaning across the flower bed and watching them eat pizza in the kitchen. It disappointed him that Jamie would let a man into her house. What did she know about him? One couldn’t be too careful.

He hoped Jamie wasn’t going to turn out to be a disappointment like the others. She hadn’t lied about herself in her photos, and that was a good sign. But had she lied about being a focused young woman who didn’t need a man to complete her? Only time would tell.

It wasn’t his fault that his foot had slipped in the mud and he’d fallen against the window. Was it?

Yes, yes. He would be honest. He could afford to be. He’d always prided himself on his honesty.

Perhaps falling against the window hadn’t been accidental. Perhaps he’d sort of, kind of, allowed his foot to slip in the mud. They’d been ignoring him – that was the problem. They’d been unaware of him watching them from the garden. Like he didn’t count. They were so wrapped up in each other. Smiling into each other’s eyes. Chatting intimately. Like he didn’t exist. Wasn’t important.

He’d frightened them though, hadn’t he? Yes, he had. Alarm. Fear.

That’s what he’d seen on their faces when they’d heard the crash.

For one terrifying moment, he’d thought he was going to shatter the window and fall through the glass. But it hadn’t even cracked.

Again, he’d reacted quickly. He’d been across the garden and over the wall almost as soon as they’d stood up. Not into the garden with the dog. No. He hated dogs. Horrible, smelly things with loud voices and snuffling noses.

The other side. The house with no pets and nice, low walls. And only once he was out in the street had the sweat come – pushing through his pores like a live thing.

He needed to rein himself in now. To regroup. No more taking chances. No more narrow escapes. Give it a few weeks. Let her get comfortable again. He should spend more time following her online and less time watching her in real life.

If only the narrow escapes didn’t make him feel so wonderfully alive.

––––––––––

Jamie read through her blog again, slowly this time. Normally she did two quick read-throughs and a light edit before pressing “post”. But the traffic to her site had spiked in the last few days. Someone was paying attention, and that meant it was time for her to pay attention, too. No more typos or sloppy phrasing could be allowed to slip through.

Some women monitored the All Share Index, some kept track of current affairs, some weighed themselves every day. Jamie watched her blog statistics. She monitored them like a hawk, even subscribing to a service that analysed the data for her, breaking her page views down by country of origin, search terms used to find the blog, amount of time spent on her landing page, and repeat visits. And of course she kept track of all pingbacks, trackbacks, social media mentions, and indeed any reference to herself or her work throughout the entire internet.

Something was definitely up.

Someone was watching her online activity, and watching it closely. There was no way this was just a normal increase in traffic caused by growing popularity.

Trying to focus, she read through the last paragraphs of her post again.

Eve felt for eggs. If there was one, she offered up a little prayer of thanks to the hen. Through the door of the henhouse, she could see Abraham carrying a bucket into the cowshed. It was kind of him to take over the milking during her last month of pregnancy.

Possibly her last month of life, she thought with a flash of self-pity.

Pulling herself together, she focused on the thought that human death was nothing to fear, nothing to mourn. Hadn’t she been taught that since birth?

It was good for the earth when humans died – a cause for celebration, not sorrow. Human beings were a contagion on the face of the planet. They were dirty and greedy and selfish. If too many of them lived, they would once again become a burden upon nature.

In the natural course of things, Eve would have perhaps ten children, of which maybe two would survive. It was wrong for her to be so invested in the well-being of this, her first baby. First babies didn’t often survive. The mother was inexperienced and the birth canal tight. If the birth took too long, the midwife would often elect to cut the baby into sections and deliver it piecemeal.

It made no sense for Eve to have fallen so much in love with this parasite that had taken over her body.
Back in the kitchen, she took the dough out of the lower section of the oven where it was proving, and beat it down. Then she shaped it into loaves and returned it to the oven for its second rising. A glance at the slanted sunrays that were creeping into the kitchen told her that it was earlier than usual. She was ahead of schedule. She could afford the time to visit her grandmother.