The man in the suit had been following him for four blocks now. When Jack had first seen him waiting at the bus stop, he'd looked like just another Wall Street man headed home. He hadn't noticed when the man got up and casually started walking behind him. The first time the suited man registered with Jack was when he stopped at a pay phone and the man stopped walking. He leaned against a building and waited. Jack had assumed he was waiting for the phone, but when he finished his call and started walking away the man followed. When Jack stepped into a deli, the man waited outside. That was when Jack started worrying.
He walked another block and a half, then pretended to look at his watch and realize he was late for something. He began jogging. After a minute, he turned around. The man was calmly sitting on a bench he had not been on when Jack had passed it two seconds before. Jack stumbled over himself, and into a woman carrying a bag of groceries. He muttered his apologies and looked behind him again. The man was standing up with his hands behind his back, looking at Jack and smiling. Jack flagged down a cab and hopped in.
"Thirty-second and fifth, and fast," Jack said as he threw a fifty over the seat.
"You got it buddy." The cab driver took off and began to weave wildly in and out of traffic. Ten minutes later, Jack thanked the driver, got out, and smiled. No one could have followed him. He'd actually had to bite his tongue a couple of times to keep from telling the driver to slow down. He stepped up onto the curb and looked around at the sidewalk. The strange man was not on it. Jack laughed quietly to himself and walked towards his apartment. After he put his key in the lock, he remembered the letter he had in his pocket that he was supposed to mail. He backtracked towards the blue mail box on the curb. When he looked up, he dropped the letter on the sidewalk. The man in the suit was staring at him from across the street. Jack decided enough was enough. He walked across the street without looking for cars.
"What do you want? Huh? Do you have something to tell me?" Jack screamed in the man's face from two feet away. The man just chuckled and slowly raised his eyes to meet Jack's. When they met, Jack's breathing stopped for a few seconds, then came in ragged gasps. The man's skin was pale and wrinkled, but Jack didn't even notice the skin. He noticed the eyes. Where they should have been white, they were a dark gray with no red veins showing. The in middle of they gray circles was something that wasn't quite dancing flames, but was definitely not a pupil. Jack stared for almost twenty seconds, then turned and sprinted across the street. A truck blared its horn as Jack ran in front of it. He fumbled with the lock until he forced himself to calm down and steady his hands. He chanced a glance behind him and didn't see the man.
He ran down the hallway and up the stairs. Once he was in his apartment, he turned to close and lock the door. Jack swung the door shut, and the man was in the space between it and the wall. The man took a quick side step and cut off Jack from the apartment's only exit.
"Who are you?" Jack whimpered as he walked backwards, looking at the middle of the gray eyes ripple. The man stepped towards him and opened his mouth. His teeth looked like they had been filed down to points, and a sound like a cat hissing came out. Jack turned and grabbed the chair by the small table. He threw it through the window and crawled out onto the fire escape. He started running down, and then saw the man at the base of the stairs looking at him. He ran up to the roof instead. At the top he poked his head over the wall and looked around. The man was not on the roof. He crawled the rest of the way up and walked to the middle. When he heard the clank of metal, he turned around. The man in the suit was slowly ascending the fire escape. Jack stood on his roof, not believing it. The man advanced, and Jack retreated without turning around. The man hissed. Jack looked backwards and saw he was at the edge of his eight story building. He turned back and suddenly the man was inches away, still grinning. Jack fell backwards without thinking, and started falling. The man his stuck out his hand, offering help. Jack started to reach for it, then saw the fingernails. They were at least two inches long, gray, and rotting.
Jack unwillingly jerked his hand back, and kept falling. He turned as he fell, and was facing the ground. The man in the suit was standing on the sidewalk below with his arms out, waiting to catch him.