HE LEFT HIS LAPTOP OPEN AND THE FOLDER TITLE FROZE MY BLOOD
My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped the laptop screen before lifting it. The cool metal felt heavy and slick, sitting on the kitchen counter where he always leaves it after work, the screen still stubbornly awake. My eyes locked onto the desktop icons, finding the simple folder labeled “PROJECT PHOENIX.” It felt wrong immediately.
I clicked it open, the bright screen washing over my face, illuminating the lingering mess of dinner plates still waiting to be cleared from the table. Inside were cold, sterile spreadsheets filled with names, dates, and coordinates I didn’t recognize, alongside encrypted files I couldn’t access. A shiver traced down my spine.
Just then, my phone buzzed loudly on the counter next to it, making me jump violently, displaying his name. I stared at the screen. “What are you doing?” his text read, sent just thirty seconds ago. How did he know I was even near the laptop?
A knot of dread tightened in my stomach, cold and sharp, spreading outwards like a bruise. This wasn’t work, not the boring, mundane project he’d described for months. The names weren’t colleagues, the coordinates weren’t office locations. This felt like… something sinister. He was monitoring me somehow.
He wasn’t supposed to be home for another hour.
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the sudden silence of the kitchen. He wasn’t supposed to be home. He *knew*. I scrambled, my fingers fumbling with the mouse, trying to close the ominous folder, shove the laptop away. But before I could even move the cursor, the text appeared again, just below the first one: “I see you.”
Panic seized me. It wasn’t a guess. He wasn’t just checking in. He was watching. Now. How? My eyes darted around the kitchen, searching. Was there a camera hidden somewhere? A tiny lens tucked into the smoke detector, a lamp, a decorative plant? The mundane objects in the room suddenly felt alien, potentially hostile.
The sterile spreadsheets and encrypted files on the screen seemed to mock me, symbols of a secret life I knew nothing about. The dread twisted into a sharp, icy terror. This wasn’t just a secret; it felt like a betrayal of the most fundamental kind, built on a foundation of lies and surveillance.
I heard it then – the familiar sound of his car pulling into the driveway, earlier than expected. My breath hitched. He was here. My mind raced, but there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide in the open kitchen. The laptop sat accusingly on the counter, still displaying the contents of PROJECT PHOENIX.
I froze, one hand hovering over the trackpad, my body rigid with fear and anticipation. The front door opened, then closed. Footsteps sounded in the hallway, approaching. I didn’t look away from the screen, couldn’t peel my eyes from the evidence of his deception.
He appeared in the kitchen doorway, his face unreadable for a split second. He wasn’t smiling. His gaze went from me to the laptop, and then back to me. “You saw it,” he said, his voice low and flat, not a question but a statement.
The air thickened, heavy with unspoken accusations and fear. I couldn’t speak, could only stare at him, my earlier terror replaced by a cold, brittle anger. “What is this?” I finally managed, my voice trembling. “What is ‘PROJECT PHOENIX’? And how did you know I was here? Are you… are you watching me?”
He sighed, a weary, heavy sound, and stepped fully into the kitchen, letting his bag slide to the floor. “We need to talk,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Sit down. It’s… it’s not what you think. Not entirely.” He gestured towards the table, towards the mess of dinner plates. “But yes,” he admitted, his eyes meeting mine, “I was watching. Or rather, I was notified. I installed a program. For your safety.”
My safety? The idea felt absurd, insulting, terrifying. “My safety from what? From *you*? What is going on?” I demanded, gesturing wildly towards the screen.
He walked closer, his movements slow, deliberate. “Please. Trust me. Just sit down. It’s a long story, and it’s why everything has been so… complicated lately.” He glanced at the laptop again. “That project… it’s real. It’s dangerous. And it’s why I had to put the monitoring software on our network. It alerts me if someone accesses sensitive files, or if the network is compromised. It was supposed to keep *us* safe. From *them*.”
The relief that he wasn’t directly spying on *me* for malicious reasons was instantly overshadowed by the chilling implication of his words. ‘Them’? ‘Dangerous’? PROJECT PHOENIX wasn’t just a work project; it was something that required surveillance software in our home and involved unknown dangers. I looked at the screen again, the cold data no longer just mysterious, but menacing. The “normal” life I thought I had dissolved completely in that moment, replaced by a terrifying reality I was clearly only just beginning to understand.