The Follower (standard:Suspense, 931 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Sep 30 2024	Views/Reads: 108/51	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
If you are being followed, it's not paranoia. Better run.

Was it paranoia? Perhaps it was, as the train pulled away from the
station which was a three-minute walk from Frazier street maternity 
hospital, with the little bundle of joy she cradled, sat looking out of 
the window. Was she being observed? Somebody had been following her she 
was sure. A man who looked like he slept on the streets. A scruffy 
individual of no fixed abode. 

She didn't like to stare straight at him. In fact just wanting away,
glad she was on the train. He had been many metres behind, so perhaps 
it really was paranoia after all, having left the hospital with her 
emotions in turmoil, caused by the baby boy wrapped in swathing in her 
arms. 

Nothing unusual about a woman cradling a baby, so why should anyone look
at, or follow her? 

Maybe they were jealous, she thought. They want to steal it. 

The train lost sight of the hospital, gaining speed, but still the
feeling of paranoia wouldn't go away, so she leaned out from her seat 
to look down the aisle, through the intersecting doors to the rear, 
last carriage. 

There he was, walking slowly along, looking at the people in their
seats. It was obvious he wasn't asking for spare change. He was looking 
for somebody. 

Me, she thought. Why does he want me? I'm not paranoid. He really is
following me, and wants to kidnap my precious little miracle. 

So she stood up, and headed along the aisle in the opposite direction,
fear and panic overcoming her, the baby gurgling, oblivious. 

An over-weight woman in her early sixties was leaning down and talking
to someone in a seat, blocking the way. 

She stood up straight and saw her with the baby and smiled. “Aww, little
baby,” she said, “I remember when I had my first,” but the woman being 
followed was too flustered and panicky to stop. “That's nice,” she 
muttered, and barged past, the passenger falling into the lap of whom 
she had been talking to. She never heard her complaints, rushing into 
the next carriage. 

How long to the next stop? she thought, but did not know. Most seats
were occupied, so whoever wanted to steal her baby had plenty to see 
before he got to her as she rushed to the last exit door near to the 
drivers cab of the three-carriage commuter train. 

How long to the next stop? she repeated, as if the answer would manifest
from somewhere, hoping that it stopped before the man came into this 
carriage. 

The train began to lose speed as it rolled into an underground station,
and the man then entered the carriage. A man who looked even worse than 
she had thought, having only seen him at a distance. Clothes plucked 
from a garbage bin, and wiry, greasy hair, a lived-in face, bloodshot 
eyes, possible alcoholic, drug-taker, but who knew how and why some 
people fall down the cracks of life, and some let themselves drown in 
it, and some even take a swan dive right down, and wallow in it. She 
neither knew nor cared about this man's past. He wasn't taking the baby 
and that was that. 

He saw her and pointed, walking slowly towards her, cautiously as if she
was threatening to throw the baby out the window. 

He was holding his hands out as the train came to a halt in the station.
“Give me the baby,” he said, rough throated, but the doors slid open 
and she shot out, dashing to the elevator stairs, passing by commuters 
and a train-guard in her haste to escape. She had never known panic 
like it. He wanted her little bundle of joy. What did a man like him, 
she thought, a scruffy tramp, want with a baby? Then with horror, she 
guessed, and ran much faster up the slow escalator. He's hungry and 
wants to eat it. He wants to eat my baby. 

Halfway up, panicking, she looked back and there he was, talking to the


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