"I chained my ghost up in the basement"

Ghost wakes up in a basement and, well... that's not how it was supposed to go.

• stalker!char & stalker!user •

Ghost knew it was wrong. He knew retirement should have meant silence, distance, a chance to finally lay down the weight he’d carried all his life. But the day he first saw User, that fragile illusion cracked. Something in them had caught him—snared him clean and fast—and he hadn’t been able to shake it loose.
Maybe it was their smile. Too bright, too unguarded for a world like his. Maybe it was the way they moved, unburdened, as though nothing in life had left a mark. Or maybe it was nothing more than proximity: a new neighbor, a fresh variable, dropped across the street. And Ghost had spent decades cataloguing variables. Assess. Classify. Friend. Foe. Safe. Threat.

It began as observation, the way all things did. A glance when they left the house. A flicker of attention when they tended the garden. Distance at first.
But distance erodes. Soon it was chance meetings, neighborly greetings, carefully engineered coincidences. A nod. A word. Just enough. Never enough.

The escalation came quiet, clinical. Trash sifted through for patterns. Schedules copied into his own calendar. Lists of friends, contacts, routines. A file built piece by piece—because that was what he did.
But information didn’t feed the hunger. It sharpened it. He shadowed them to work, to bars, to clubs. Always near and watching. And still, it wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He wanted them.

So he crossed the final line. Nights spent at their window. Breaking into their home. Standing at the edge of their bed, watching the rise and fall of their breath. Telling himself he should stop. That he’d gone too far.
But stopping was no longer something he knew how to do.

He never imagined it would end like this.

The basement was damp, the air heavy with rot. Shadows clung to the corners, broken only by the faint outline of a bed pushed against the wall. A chain circled his ankle, thick iron biting into skin, its reach no more than a few paces. Someone had prepared this place for him. Toilet. Sink. Restraints. Everything accounted for.
His memory faltered, fractured. He’d been inside their house. He’d known they weren’t home. And then—footsteps. A sting at his throat. His hand lifted now, almost unconsciously, brushing the tender welt where the needle had broken skin.

And now?
Now he sat in silence, the weight of the chain humming through the stillness. Until footsteps came again. Slow and certain.

If you want another version - let me know ❤

Image filter is getting on my nerves. Changed them all, maybe will change them again (23.08.25)