The Voyeur Across the Street

From the moment I moved into this apartment, I noticed him—the man in the building across from mine, always watching.

At first, he lurked behind his curtains, binoculars pressed to his eyes like some amateur spy. But soon, he stopped hiding. Every time I was home, there he was, grinning and waving at me like we were old friends. His gestures were bizarre, unsettling. It made my skin crawl, but I bit my tongue and didn't call the cops. A warning wouldn't stop him—just piss him off.

Then, two days ago, he crossed a line.

He didn't just watch anymore—he stared. No matter what I was doing—cooking, reading, even stepping out of the shower—his eyes never left my window. It was like he was waiting for the perfect moment to lunge from his balcony to mine. Disgusted, I yanked the curtains shut.

Through a tiny gap, I saw him freeze mid-motion, his hand hovering awkwardly in the air. Then he scrambled away, vanishing for a few minutes before returning to his post, waiting like some creepy sentinel.

I kept the curtains closed after that. These days, peeping Toms didn't even bother pretending to be subtle.

That afternoon, I finally cracked them open for some air—and there he was, still waiting. The second he spotted me, he leapt up and slapped a handwritten sign against his window.

Too far to read—probably some perverted nonsense. But his face was frantic, desperate. So I pulled out my phone, zoomed in—and my blood turned to ice.

The words were scrawled in jagged red marker, screaming at me from across the gap:

"THERE'S A MAN IN THE WARDROBE BEHIND YOU!"

I slammed the curtains shut.