“Arriving To Your Destination”

Post date: November 15, 2023

By Connor Stockschlader

By 11:53, the rustling starts. Every day at precisely 11:53 PM, Greg Armitage wakes from his slumber and bolts from the comfort of his mattress to go downstairs and sees him standing there. When it started, he thought it was a joke, a prank played by teenagers unable to let him live in peace, probably due to his offputting nature. But Greg knew that even the most dedicated of youths would have gotten tired of it already. 

As Greg reaches the handle of his doorknob and firmly plants a hand on it to keep the man from breaking in at this desolate house, he feels nothing but contempt for this figure. It had been five months since this all started. Out of nowhere the man just appeared on the sidewalk outside of his home, keeping a distance to both be seen and hide away from the blinding glow of a flashlight. Because of this, Greg wasn’t able to get a good look at the face of this person, whoever he was, only able to discern the bulky size of the figure and the twisted, unnerving movements that he made. The figure wasn’t threatening him, only standing there, twitching and readjusting to get a better glance at the homeowner inside.

The only time that Greg was able to get the police to arrive on time was when the man somehow moved past the officers and their large, flashing cars. This wasn’t uncommon with his other appearances either, as every single time after exactly nine minutes and fifty-six seconds, the man would leave, but was somehow fast enough to never be spotted leaving. Even if Greg were to watch the man without moving or looking away, or attempt to record him, at the exact moment that his stopwatch reached the fifty-six second mark the man would somehow blend with the shadows on the other side of the street. 

Greg’s best friend, Alex, advised simply confronting the man before he left, and time after time Greg nervously declined that suggestion. He didn’t know who this person was and if he had any kind of weapon on him. But on this night, Greg felt waves of anger and frustration building inside him. He could feel his face getting red and knew that he couldn’t take it anymore. His eyelids felt like anchors from lack of sleep, and his work was suffering with it. He couldn’t count the times that he would have a sudden nap while working as a computer technician, or pass out the second he reached the front door of his home. He knew that he would be better off ignoring the man, but how could he? Day after day this figure would inexplicably arrive and torment him, never changing this constant rhythm and routine. To add to the panic, over the previous week Greg noticed that the figure had begun to stop those unnerving movements, now pacing in a slow, fluid motion across the street, always staring at him until that peculiar time was reached. 

On this night, Greg didn’t feel intimidated by the eerie glow of the moonlight on the figure, obscuring the face but revealing the cold, calculating man underneath. After about four minutes of pondering what to do, Greg drew a heavy breath and opened the front door, feeling the chill breeze of the autumn night surrounding him, like the figure was drawing him in. He stepped out of his home, holding an old wooden baseball bat in case this confrontation went sour. 

As Greg began approaching, the figure slowed his movements down the street until he remained motionless, facing Greg and keeping his stare on the homeowner. Carefully, Greg moved the bat in front of him so that the stranger would get a good look at it and hopefully be warded off. With slow, methodical movement, the figure slunked into the streets behind him, causing Greg to give chase. By the time he reached the area where the figure was standing, Greg couldn’t find him anywhere. Even with all of the streetlamps illuminating the unlit areas of the street ahead of him, the figure was still all but vanished completely. 

Greg wondered if this was hopefully enough to keep the man away from him, at least for the time being. The following day, Greg decided to fashion some sort of camera system to automatically capture the face of the figure and at least find out who he was so he could get a restraining order or some sort of legal protection. He found several cameras that could be made to automatically record whenever a motion detector or heat detector went off. Even if the figure appeared and disappeared without being seen, the camera would find the figure’s face before he noticed. 

After setting up the system and keeping it linked to his phone and house security network, the night had been left with no sign of the stranger. For the first time in months, Greg was able to feel safe in his home. But in the corner of his mind, Greg felt like something still wasn’t right. He knew that the man hadn’t appeared outside of his home in weeks, but he still felt like he was being watched, like a thousand eyes were peering into his home and there wasn’t anywhere he could go. 

After about a month since the last incident, Greg felt safe enough to sleep through the night without batting an eye to his stalker. And even if the man were to come back, Greg had the comfort of knowing he would find the person with the cameras that he made sure weren’t easy to spot from a distance. 

But after exactly one month since the figure stopped appearing, Greg’s life was once again torn apart. Driving home from work through the darkening streets of suburbia, the GPS on Greg’s car had begun acting out. Every couple of minutes, the screen would flicker and the voice emitting from his car’s speakers would buffer and stop entirely. Greg didn’t pay any attention to it since his car was old and nearing the time to be replaced, but he felt a wave of confusion since he had never seen or heard of these types of problems before. 

Usually his car would occasionally sputter and stop, but now it seemed to only be accelerating and stopping at random, with the GPS voice glitching and distorting like the automated voice was being strangled from within the small screen on the front console. Greg thought about getting out and calling a tow truck, but as he started to push down on the brakes, the car suddenly stopped, the voice now returning to its usual robotic self. 

Whatever, Greg thought, Even if there are any more problems, the house is only about a half mile away. But he started to notice that as he was driving, the GPS was being sent to a completely different location about 20 miles away from where he needed to be. Greg felt that familiar sense of dread, like countless unseen eyes watching him from afar, playing with his sanity and enjoying this endless torment. As he continued to ponder what was happening, the car kept going in the same route. 

“You are arriving to your destination,” the GPS notified, “Turn right near the woods, Greg.” He felt his heart get stuck in his throat and slammed on the brakes, but nothing changed. It was like the car was moving itself, dragged by an invisible force. The voice was speaking in a soft, lullaby tone, a siren song luring him to his demise. 

As the car began to turn into the woods, moving farther away from Greg’s home, that’s when he saw the one person he never wanted to see again. Even without a visible face, the unhuman movement and the face wrapped in the midnight darkness was enough to remind Greg of his mistakes. In the time since the last encounter, Greg had kept his car and anything valuable close by, or in the case of his car, in the locked garage next to his house. A few days ago he forgot and left his garage unlocked since he had a long day. How was he supposed to know that he was still being stalked by this person? 

“You are arriving to your destination, move forward and stop when he is near,” The GPS declared. The headlights had turned off for some reason, only the glow of the moon keeping the figure in sight. Greg attempted to open the door to no avail, the car only creeping closer to the twitching man in front of him. Greg turned around and saw his way out. After clicking open the seat belt behind him, he heard the vehicle come to a halt, the car designed to stop whenever someone wasn’t buckled in. Using all of his force, Greg opened the door and ran in the opposite direction, never thinking of looking behind him. 

As he reached his front door, Greg turned every lock and security measure he had before collapsing to the ground to secure the main entrance to his house. With heavy breaths he started to shake as he grabbed his phone from his front pocket and opened up his security app. There was no sign of anything yet but he knew that could change. And if the figure was somehow able to sneak past the volley of cameras and motion sensors once, he could definitely do it again. The only noises Greg could hear were the sounds of his breath and clack of his nails against his phone screen as he swept through every camera wrapped around the boundaries of his house. Still, nothing. 

After five minutes of anxious checking, Greg stopped and moved to the windows above his head for a better look, no sign of the man. That’s when he heard the familiar voice of his GPS system on his phone speak.

“In 100 feet, turn right.” Greg started to panic, checking every app on his phone to find out which one the sound was coming from. 

“He is arriving to your destination. In 50 feet, break open the window.” 

Greg rushed to grab the baseball bat from right next to his front door, holding it steady and keeping watch of every visible window. It wasn’t until he remembered the back of the house that he heard the crash, the shatter of glass echoing through the empty house. 

“In 20 seconds, he will reach your destination.” How was he able to do this? Why didn’t the motion detectors or heat sensors go off? Was he in control of those too? 

“He has reached your destination,” his phone declared. Through the silence, Greg heard the echoing footsteps getting closer and closer, stepping in perfect rhythm. Greg saw the figure, slowly illuminated by the kitchen lights until it reached his face. As the realization dawned on him of who this stranger was, his phone spoke again. 

“Welcome Home, Greg.”

It was like looking into a funhouse mirror, everything closely similar, but warped into being just slightly off. Greg’s scrawny body had been turned into muscles, his odd demeanor turned into a cold, blank stare with no expression or thought behind it. 

The fake Greg kept his pace, never slowing as he made his way through the barely lit hallway connecting the front door to the kitchen. 

And even if Greg wanted to speak, his body wouldn’t let him. A rush of confusion and stress had begun to shift into a sense of unrelenting fear as he realized he wasn’t just speechless, he wasn’t able to breathe. His lungs felt like they had been crushed under the weight of an anvil, and no matter how hard he tried, his breath had been stolen from him. 

Greg collapsed to the floor, holding his neck in a vain attempt to draw breath. His copy kept his march until he slowed right in front of him, leaning down to meet at eye level.

“Who are you? What are you?,” Greg choked out.

“I’m your upgrade,” the fake Greg replied. 

As Greg’s choking sounds stopped, the house was only filled with an empty silence.