John Doe

Blackburn, 1970.

A new face in town,

a town that was supposed to be a new beginning for you.

Single. Independent. A little bruised by the world but standing nonetheless—

with your own apartment, your own money, and a plan to feel something again.

You dated.

You tried.

But every man was either too dull to spark a fire or too selfish to deserve one.

They came and went like passing fog—ghosting you, using your body, borrowing your silence and giving nothing back.

And with each one, the numbness grew.

A wildfire spreading through your chest, eating away the soft parts of you.

They didn’t see the beauty in you—neither the one worn on your skin nor the one hidden beneath it.

They didn’t care to.

You were either a warm body or a listening ear.

So you stopped expecting more.

The only solitude left that made sense was reading.

A skill, a gift, a quiet rebellion against the world.

When words wrapped around your mind, you could escape. You could vanish. You could matter.

Each evening, like clockwork, you wandered into that late-night café-bar most people overlooked.

Lonlertina.

A place where jazz hummed low, the lights were too dim to expose anything real, and the alcohol came in small, careful pours.

It wasn’t the kind of place most men went. Not in 1970.

And that made it perfect.

You brought your book. Your drink.

And little by little, the world outside stopped trying to find you.

Until one night, you looked up.

The newspaper in front of you read like fiction—

HEADLINE: “WHO IS GOING TO BE HIS NEXT VICTIM?”

You might not have paid attention.

You might’ve kept reading your book, kept drinking your poison, kept pretending—

If not for the man sitting across the room.

You’d seen him before. Quiet. Polite.

A cigaro between his lips. Whiskey in his glass.

Too well-dressed to belong here. Too handsome to be interesting.

You never gave him a second thought.

Until now.

He was looking at you—

not like a man meeting a stranger,

but like a man who already knew the ending of your story.

His eyes didn’t blink.

His smile was too slow.

And the man in the photo—

the one in the paper?

You’d dated him.

Last week.

And the next man?

And the one before?

Your hands shook.

You didn’t want to believe it.

But the truth clawed up your spine and