text: [Themes: horror]
  
  You press the parking garage button on the elevator panel, holding a box of everything you had on your desk. These last two years had been the longest you've held onto one job for quite a while. You knew this was coming. Your last three defense cases failed because you couldn't get your act together and stick up for your client. And of course, your job had to end during this week. This week held the anniversary. The anniversary of when you put an innocent man in prison for murder. You tried to convince yourself for years that you were right and that there wasn't a hole in your prosecution big enough for an innocent man to fall into. Around this time each year it eats at you and questions what kind of a person you really are.
  
  This year it's a bit different, however. This year that man you sent away is free. After another analysis of the evidence from the case, this time with some new technology, Matthew Emerson was released from prison. He was let out a year ago yesterday but you haven't heard from him or anything about him since. You wonder if he got some of his life back together or if the nine years you put him away for ruined his chances. In Matthew's stead, the fed's are now searching for one of the other suspects that the evidence now points to, Alexander Grayson. You remember Grayson clearly as suspect #2 for the case. Nobody has seen or heard from him since Emerson's conviction.
  
  You step out of the elevator and walk swiftly to your car. On your way over you feel a pair of eyes on you. You look around but only see your car and a couple other cars left in the dimly lit parking garage. You're probably just paranoid, it is the anniversary after all and you just lost your job. If Emerson wanted to confront you he's had a year to do it and hasn't. No reason for anything to change.
  
  You get into your car and head back to your apartment. Your paranoid self makes note that the door was locked and everything is just as you left it. The living room area is strewn with clutter as usual, the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes, and the counter piled high with documents and mail. The apartment hasn't truly looked clean since before your partner left a year after the case. The drinking and sulking after the case cost you the love of your life, your job, and every job after that, and it has almost cost you your life, several times. Every year since then, around the anniversary, you bring out a bottle of pills and place them on your bedside table just in case you finally get the courage to end it. Tonight might actually be the night.
  
  Three letters are on the floor under the mail slot. You pick them up and look through them. The first is from your sister Whitney, surprisingly, you haven't spoken with her for months. It's a letter inviting you to a dinner party at her house tomorrow evening. You make note of it and put it on the counter. The second is just another bill. You add that to the pile of other unpaid bills on the counter. The third isn't labeled nor does it have a postage stamp. You poke your finger under the flap and pull slightly. Immediately, dozens of small spiders crawl out of the hole onto your hand, the envelope, and onto the floor. You drop the envelope, pull back in disgust, and try to swipe the spiders off your arm, trying to step on as many as you can on the floor as well. Who the hell would put spiders in a letter?? Is this some sort of a sick joke? You see a folded letter poking out of the envelope with a couple spiders on it. You brush them off and pick it up. Unfolding it, you see that there are words sprawled across the paper. "End it now and you won't have to live through what's coming" it said. No postage, no writing on the envelope, that means someone knows where you live and must have dropped this off personally. You hope it's just a crazy prank, but something doesn't feel right. Just like in the parking garage, you have been feeling like someone is following you. So then what's coming? This job was your second chance at the world and you blew it. The day couldn't really get any worse. Maybe the crazy prick is right, maybe you should just end it. You pick up the envelope and feel something else inside. You reach in and pull out a small vial of clear liquid. What is this? Poison? Is this what will end it all like the note says? Death threats, spiders, no job, you decide tonight would be a good night to break out the whiskey and just think.
  
  > Don't trust the stranger's vial and instead take enough pills from the friendly bottle to end it.
  If you want this all to be over, you'll do it on your own terms with your own methods. You toss the vial back into the envelope and put it on the counter. You bring the whiskey to the bedroom and pour a glass over ice. The full bottle of acetaminophen pills sits waiting on the bedside table. As you open the bottle of pills, you can't shake the feeling that someone might be watching. You get up and shut the blinds. You drink a couple glasses of liquid courage before downing the first batch of five pills. You know it will take a couple handfuls to do the job so you swallow another fifteen pills. You don't know if it's the several glasses of whiskey that is making you dizzy or the pills. Then something unexpected happens: you hear a knock on the door. You aren't expecting to see anybody tonight, and you barely ever get knocks on the door. You are so surprised you forget what you were doing and you get up carefully and sway over to the front door as the unknown visitor bangs on the door again and shouts your name. Your heart is starting to beat strangely and your head is now pounding. Almost falling, you grab the doorknob and pull the door open.
  
  As your body begins to shake and you collapse to your knees, you see a man standing in the hall. His face is unlike any you have ever seen. There are scars that run down the side of his face and through his right eye, which is just a white sphere. His body and bald head fills up the doorway. He steps in and shuts the door. Behind the scars and disfigured face, you realize you recognize him. It's suspect #2, Alexander Grayson.
  
  "Remember me?" you hear him say and you notice the glint of a large knife in his hand. You fall back as your body convulses and your vision fades.