I

I Was Almost Afraid...¹The name of one of Paul Verlaine's poems ^^

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Jean-Paul felt as though he was being followed.

It was the weirdest thing. He'd left the little conference room in the School of Fine Arts where he met two bizarre twins one of which had promised him his death by midnight. And ever since that moment, the sensation of a gaze probing his back wherever he went didn't fade.

He had a constant urge to turn and see, so distinct it was.

This was paranoia. Like a tiny worm wriggling in Jean-Paul's mind.

A hard hand landed on Jean-Paul's shoulder, and he flinched.

"Care to go see the guillotine at La Roquette? Or maybe one in the wax museum?" one of his friends, Andre, laughed. "Hey, you look a bit flustered. Is any mention of a guillotine scaring you now? Ha-ha, did those twins get into your head that much already? It's not even noon yet!"

Guillotine. Yeah.

He'd picked this method of his death himself, hadn't he?

Ha-ha. A guillotine. Well, Jean-Paul wasn't dumb. He'd picked it precisely because of how ridiculous such a method seemed in this day and age. How many people -- good, upstanding citizens like him -- would even have the chance to be guillotined in their lifetime? Let alone by the end of this very day.

The chances were zero.

That was why it was so funny. A joke.

So... laugh.

Jean-Paul forced himself to ease down. All the eerie premonitions fled him the moment he remembered how implausible such a death would be.

"Come on, come on! Let's make a guillotine parade for our dear, forsaken friend Jean-Paul!" another friend lamented, hugging Jean-Paul from the side. "Let's visit all the guillotines in Paris, just to pick one that Jean-Paul fancies the most. He has a date with one this midnight! Even better. A grand wedding night."

Laughter broke out all around him. Of course Jean-Paul joined in.

But only in laughing.

He wasn't stupid, after all.

"Well-well, gentlemen," he said slightly less merry. "Calm down, I am not getting 'married' yet. Let's go see all the cute little guillotines in Paris tomorrow. For tonight -- I'm a monk. No dates. Definitely no marriages."

"Awww. At least a bachelor's party?"

No, not even that.

He was not in the mood.

Which one of his friends was looming behind him, staring at him with black eyes wide open?

Jean-Paul turned to meet that gaze, but... there was no one. All his friends had light-colored eyes, crinkled up in smiles. And none of them stood behind him.

Irritated, Jean-Paul rubbed his neck, feeling some unwelcome soreness in it. He told the others he would go home instead, maybe have a bit of wine, maybe sketch something on the roof of his apartment building. The usual. A calm, nice evening.

And he intended to do exactly that. Only...

Something about the city itself felt odd to him today. As though amiss.

He strolled down the busy streets, swinging his cane, and whistled into his tasteful mustache. He gave the passing ladies a nod and a tip of his hat and waved greetings at vendors he knew. What a nice, balmy afternoon.

But the longer he went, the more he felt that the people around him stared.

They stared at him. In a hollow, blank way as though not recognizing him or finding something weird about him that they derided and maybe even scorned him for. Even under the direct hit of the sun, Jean-Paul's back felt a creep of chill down the spine from all these looks.

A twist in his gut.

His smile weakened and his cheery whistle wandered out of tune. Abrupt, he turned to the passersby to catch them staring.

Yet they never were.

Everyone was facing the other way and nobody gave him more attention than they would to any stranger on the street.

Even the color of the sky seemed to have grown unpleasant when he finally reached his small apartment at the top story of a decrepit, old building. A share of green veiled the sky like a poisonous mist or a fog slowly covering the city, slowly clogging all the windows and doors and pipes.

Jean-Paul chased all such thoughts away as the nonsense of an addled mind. He lit a paper tobacco roll and sucked on it, dismayed. Then he shook his head at himself and even let out a chuckle.

"Ah, what silliness," he mused, stretching his legs as he lounged back on his moth-eaten sofa later. "Jean-Paul, my friend, you are one hell of an impressionable bastard, aren't you?"

Who knew he could be so superstitious and gullible?

You know what they say about artists.

Mind like a sponge. Imagination and creativity like a fountain that cannot be plugged when you need it most.

Jean-Paul shook the last dregs of his anxiety off and forced himself up. Up, up! He had work to do and rent to pay. No point in moping around like a frail maiden!

Decisive, he lifted the window frame and poked his head outside to peer into the dust-soaked street. A deep breath, and he inhaled the toxic air of Parisian life. But as a true Parisian, he never found it foul. It was cozy, even dear to someone like him, instead.

Jean-Paul couldn't help a smile on his lips when--

A squeak.

Adrenaline chilled his scalp. A second later, the window frame above him squeaked again as though loose.

His heart lurched.

Jean-Paul shoved himself away from the window just in time to see how the entire top half of the frame crashed down on the spot where his head had just been.

No. Not his head.

His neck, to be precise.

The heavy wooden frame slammed into the sill with a deafening clang. The wood cracked, the glass shattered. And Jean-Paul, having crashed into his table, could only stare in shock.

What was that?

Did window frames just... spontaneously become unhinged and almost kill their owners?!

His breath came in rushes -- the loudest sound in the room as he heaved and heaved, unable to comprehend. Except when he stilled long enough, he also heard something else.

Something incredibly unsettling.

A rhythmic, rickety, howling noise that came in bouts from high overhead.

Jean-Paul's eyes slowly trailed upward to the chalky ceiling of his apartment, covered with a fine spiderweb of cracks as most ceilings were.

He had seen this image every day of his recent life as he woke up in his bed and stared at this same ceiling while his mind gradually came to awareness.

Only this time, the image was drastically different. The old cracks were leaking thin trails of plaster. And the cracks themselves -- they were widening. As though a mysterious force was pushing on them from above.

From the roof.

Jean-Paul carefully moved away from the center of the room, his eyes never straying from the ceiling.

Another booming noise. A dragging, scraping sound like a rusty spade raking through the roof.

Something was moving up there.

Something was creaking, cracking, dislodging in the empty expanses of the attic. And it made this sound. This horrible pattern of --

Squeak. Rumble. Snapping crack.

Jean-Paul's thin hair on the back of his head slowly rose in creeping horror.

He remembered that the roof he lived directly under was plated with tin sheets. And if a section of the wooden roof would, by chance, collapse, this metallic sheet would...

...come crashing down onto him.

Just like...

Yeah. Just like a guillotine.

Another reverberating crack broke the unnerving silence of the room.

Without a second thought, Jean-Paul bolted. He grabbed his coat and darted out of the apartment, not even remembering to shut his door. He tripped and stumbled down the steps, unable to stop until he reached the very bottom.

His whole body shook in clammy sweat.

But he wasn't staying here! He didn't know where he needed to go but it definitely wasn't any place where there were sheets of metal or glass or anything else of the sort nearby!

Outside, the foggy streets of Paris tinged with green welcomed him. Jean-Paul ran into this fog, immediately disappearing in its blur.

The silence of the streets swallowed the sound of his footsteps after a while, but not the sounds of someone else, steadily walking after Jean-Paul with their fine, lonely steps.