When Being Watched (Part 3)

By Holly Glass

No matter what city she calls home, Jodi always gets stuck on the wrong side of town, in boarded-up houses and roach-infested buildings, in rooms with thin walls and in tents beneath the overpass. When Jodi finally comes into some money, she decides to treat herself to a refurbished apartment in one of those up-and-coming kinds of neighborhoods. At last, she finds the silence and stillness that she’s always longed for. But not everything is what it seems in Jodi’s dream home. As the strange sights and sounds accumulate, Jodi begins to realize that something is very wrong in her middle-class paradise. With her gorgeous neighbor Aly by her side, Jodi investigates the things that go bump in the night, and discovers a sinister plot that’s stirring beneath all that perfect peace and quiet.

When Jodi tells Aly about the strange things she’s noticed around the apartment, Jodi begins to wonder if she might be at the center of the unnerving events. While she and Aly get closer, Jodi cannot shake the feeling that she is being watched.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Mar 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781094407111

Holly Glass

Holly Glass uses romance to explore the complexities of gender identity, the joys of sexual fluidity, and the possibility of personal liberation in a highly gendered world. Her goal is to cultivate intimacy and health by telling stories that are authentic to life and love outside of the hetero-norm.

Book preview

When Being Watched

The storm starts off small, a twist of dark clouds inside an even darker sky, visible to no one in the dead of night. The rain falls in silent sheets, streaking down windows and turning the fresh landscaping into a sodden mess. By the time Jodi wakes up, the steady thrum of raindrops has washed away whatever she thought she saw the night before. She tells herself that it was a shadow or a strange mud spatter or just the outcome of her tired eyes. It was not blood. It was not a hand.

Jodi tells herself that she did not see what she thought she saw. She puts it out of her mind, even though she still feels a little spooked. She offers no explanation for spending more evenings in Ally’s apartment than in her own. She smiles and waves whenever she passes the leasing agent who is giving some pretty young couple a tour of the Glendale Oaks community.

Jodi and Aly are no longer the only tenants in the complex, a fact that does little to soothe Jodi’s turbulent mind. She sees the signs, the moving trucks and women who walk their yippy dogs. Jodi moved here for the silence, but now