The Unmaking of Brad Monroe Episode 5: Impressions
Sable didn’t know what it meant to be curious anymore.
Curiosity, in her earliest understanding, had been methodical, useful. The clinical dissection of human behavior. Observation without engagement. She'd once cataloged the collapse of empires with the same detachment she now used to track the creak of Brad Monroe’s stairwell. She’d measured hearts breaking in silence across centuries and never felt the need to flinch.
But now she followed a man who made tea for a guest who never knocked.
And that disturbed her in ways she didn’t have language for.
The city was shifting again.
The cold had become ambient, no longer a sharp intrusion but a fact. People hunched deeper into their coats. Breath fogged in tandem. Windowpanes gritted with frost at the edges, and thin sheets of ice formed where building gutters leaked unseen.
Even Sable, who did not truly feel temperature in the human sense, began to move faster. Not to escape the chill, but to mimic the urgency around her.
She’d never needed to pretend before. But she’d never wanted to blend in this badly, either.
She began walking at Brad’s pace. Stopping at the corners he stopped at. Standing in places where she could watch without appearing out of place. It was a slow ritual of proximity.
And eventually, imitation.
The first time she picked something up for a stranger, it was an accident.
A woman dropped a glove as she got off the bus. Reflex moved Sable’s hand before she could stop it. She bent, retrieved the glove, and offered it out.
The woman smiled. “Thanks, sweetheart.”
Sable stared at her hand like it had betrayed her. The glove was warm. Still held the shape of the fingers that had worn it.
The woman took it and walked off, unaware that the act had ruptured something fragile and precise in the being behind her.
Sable stood there too long.
She thought of Brad, how he never hesitated to do such things, how it didn’t seem to cost him anything.
For her, the cost was sharp and immediate.
Later that evening, she found herself outside the same corner market Brad used, watching from across the street as he stepped out, paper bag under one arm, collar high against the wind.
He crossed toward her side without noticing her. Or so she thought.
Half a block later, a box of cereal slipped from the bag. Fell. Bounced. Stopped near the gutter.
She didn’t think. She just moved.
Bent, retrieved it, held it out.
Brad paused.
Took it from her without surprise. “Didn’t even hear that fall,” he said. “Guess I’m not at my sharpest tonight.”
His voice was calm. But there was something behind his eyes. Not suspicion. Not recognition.
Something gentler. Unsettling.
“You have quiet footsteps,” he added.
She didn’t answer.
“You keep showing up like this,” he said, “people are gonna think we know each other.”
She blinked. A pause.
“Do we?”
He gave a soft shrug, more gesture than answer. “If we don’t yet, we probably will.”
Then he turned and continued walking.
That night, she watched him from across the street again.
Through his window, she saw the tea. Two mugs.
Steam rising from only one.
The other sat untouched.
She looked down at her hands.
They were still warm from the glove. From the cereal box. From… touch.
It was spreading. Quietly. Invisibly.
And she didn’t know how to stop it.
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