I went into the grocery store with a very simple plan. Get in, grab the essentials, and get out without overthinking anything. Coffee filters, pasta sauce, something green so I could pretend I had my life together. Pandora came along to make sure I didn’t forget half the list, which, historically, is exactly what I do.
The store felt normal at first. Bright lights, organized chaos, people quietly navigating their carts like it was some unspoken social contract. Pandora was already halfway down the aisle loading up the cart with things we actually needed while I lingered near produce trying to make a responsible decision about vegetables I probably wouldn’t eat.
That’s when I noticed him.
He wasn’t doing anything obvious. No dramatic movements, no suspicious gestures. Just standing there near the avocados, wearing a hoodie and sunglasses indoors, which immediately raises questions. Not enough to confront someone, but enough to stick in your brain longer than it should.
I tried to ignore it. People are weird. That’s not new information. But as we moved through the store, I kept seeing him. Different aisles. Same distance. Never interacting with anything, never committing to a direction. Just… present.
Pandora didn’t seem concerned when I pointed it out. She glanced over, shrugged, and kept moving like a person who refuses to participate in unnecessary paranoia. I envied that level of confidence. Meanwhile, I adjusted my awareness to include one mildly suspicious stranger and tried to continue shopping like a normal human being.
It didn’t work.
By the time we reached the middle aisles, I wasn’t really shopping anymore. I was tracking movement. Not in a panicked way, just enough to confirm that something felt off. Every time I stopped, he stopped. Every time we moved, he reappeared somewhere nearby, just outside of being obvious.
At checkout, things should have reset. That’s the natural ending point. You pay, you leave, everyone goes their separate ways. But he showed up again near the exit, standing just far enough away to look casual while still watching everything happening in front of him.
That’s the moment it stopped feeling like coincidence.
I didn’t say anything dramatic. I didn’t escalate. I just finished unloading groceries, paid, and walked out with Pandora like nothing was wrong. Because most of the time, nothing is actually wrong. It just feels like it is.
Outside, everything looked normal again. Cars, carts, people loading groceries. The kind of scene that makes you question whether you imagined the entire thing. Pandora laughed it off when I brought it up again, and honestly, I wanted to agree with her. It would have been easier.
But the feeling didn’t go away.
Back at home, the whole thing should have ended there. Grocery run complete, nothing unusual happened, move on with the day. John Mercer was already on the couch pretending he had responsibilities while doing absolutely nothing useful, which felt like a return to reality.
We unpacked everything, settled in, and for a while, it worked. The normal routine took over. Conversations drifted, distractions kicked in, and the tension from earlier started to fade into something that almost felt ridiculous.
Almost.
Because once something gets your attention like that, it doesn’t just disappear. It lingers in the background, waiting for something small to bring it back.
For me, it was the realization that I had spent an entire grocery trip not thinking about groceries. I was focused on a single detail that may or may not have mattered, and it completely shifted the way everything felt.
That’s the part no one talks about. Not the event itself, but how quickly your perception changes once you start paying attention to the wrong thing.
Later that evening, everything felt normal again. Quiet, predictable, controlled. The kind of environment where nothing unexpected happens. And maybe that’s the point. Most situations don’t escalate. Most moments don’t turn into anything meaningful.
But the feeling stays with you anyway.
Not because something happened, but because something could have.
And sometimes, that’s enough.