Gents Journey

The Patience Of Predators: Echos in Glass

• Gents Journey

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A single pill promises rest—and opens a door. We follow Aston Keller, a high-performing attorney whose sleepless nights turn his glass-and-marble life into a mirror maze where reflections stop mirroring and start studying. A voicemail bleeds into Natalie Cole, a boardroom melts into versions of his own face, and a wall of Polaroids tightens its red thread into a body that learns to breathe with his lungs. The question isn’t whether he’ll sleep—it’s who will wake up in his place.

I share why predators never rush the kill and how exhaustion is their favorite accomplice. We unpack the subtle ways stress collapses timing, how sedation blurs the line between rest and surrender, and why institutions often reward replaceable reflections over real authorship. Claire’s absence becomes both grief and glitch, and the city turns into a chorus of “Not you anymore,” forcing a reckoning with identity, memory, and consent. This is a tense, cinematic chapter packed with practical takeaways: guardrails for decisions, rituals that return your breath, and five reflection questions that cut through numbness without shame.

If you’ve ever medicated your defenses, if your work reads wrong in your own handwriting, or if your reflection feels like it learned you too well, this story will hit home. Listen, then sit with the prompts. Share it with someone who knows your real face. And if it helps, subscribe, leave a quick review, and pass it along—your support keeps this journey honest and alive.

"True mastery is found in the details. The way you handle the little things defines the way you handle everything."

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to the Gentleman's Journey Podcast. My name is Anthony, your host. And today we are in episode seven of the Patience of Predators. So let's go ahead and let's get into the cold opening. The pills did nothing. They rattled in their amber bottle, lined up neatly on the glass coffee table beside a crystal tumbler. He had measured them out with precision, as if the act of arranging them could force order into his life. One, then two, then three. He swelled each with a sip of McClan, the scotch burning down his throat. The burn was all he felt. The haze never came. The skyline sprawled outside his windows, dazzling, endless. Towers lit like monuments, traffic winding in ribbons of red and white far below. He had once loved this view, a silent reminder that he was climbing, rising, inevitable. Tonight it mocked him. The city throbbed with life. His body refused to rest. Days had passed without sleep, his eyes burned, jaw ached, his temples throbbed. He tried reading briefs, but the words blurred. He tried to write w notes, but his handwriting was twisted, skewed, as though someone else guided his hand. Every time his head dipped forward, he felt it. The weight of the camera above him, the click of the shutter in the dark, the puloid pinned at the center of a body on his wall. Him mouth slack, chest rising hopelessly. Sleep wasn't rest it was surrender. He rose from the sofa and began pacing. His movements were sharp, mechanical. Each circuit carried him past the floor to ceiling windows, the leather furniture, the marble corners of the kitchen, a showroom for success, a cage for failure. The photographs watched him, seventeen now, or eighteen. He no longer trusted the count. Red threads stretched across the white walls, putting through the perfect geometry of his space. No matter how often he straightened them, pinned them back into neat order. The lines wrapped again when he turned away. He adjusted his cufflinks, smoothed his tie, though no one was there to see it. Pulled the BMW keys from his pocket and turned them over in his palm. The weight of them was a reminder of control he no longer trusted in himself to exercise. He sat them down carefully on the glass table, aligning them with the edge until they sat perfectly straight. Even the keys looked like evidence. The phone rang. The sound cleaved through the silence, shrill and insistent. He froze midstep. The scotch glass trembled in his hand. Aston set it down too quickly. Amber liquid spilled across the table. He ignored it, reaching for the phone. Claire? Claire Claire Static hissed, then softened in her voice. Aston? Relief and dread twisted in his chest. He sank into the leather sofa, and gripping the receiver so hard his knuckles paled. I'm I'm here. Do you remember the last time we danced? His eyes stung. Yes. I do. He remembered, the suck of her dress brushing against him, her bare feet sliding over polished wood, the way she pulled his tie loose with laughing hands. The way he had let himself breathe for once. Head resting against hers as Isaac voice crooned through the speakers. You promised me never to leave. I I didn't, he whispered, throat row. I I never you left me. Her voice doubled, then tripled, overlapping layers of Claire, all sharp, all accusing. You left me, you left me, you left me. And underneath, faint at first, music began to bleed into the line. Not from his stereo, not from any device in his home, from somewhere else, the walls, the city itself. Natalie Cole, unforgettable. Her voice rose velvet smooth, weaving itself through Claire's chorus of accusation. Unforgettable in every way. Claire's voice bent around the lyric until they became one. You left me unforgettable. That's what you are. You left me. Aston pressed his hand into his temple, grinding his teeth. Stop please please stop. The line went dead, and the music stopped with it. The silence that followed was heavier than before. It pressed against the glass, the marble, the leather, until even his own breast sounded like an intrusion. He sat hunched forward, trembling, the spilt scotch sweeping slowly across the table, and the window, his reflection leaned closer, left at mouth. Part one The Doctor The office was designed to soothe, but Aston had never trusted places that tried too hard. The waiting room gleamed with polished wood, water flowing gently down a wall of sleep. The faint scent of eucalyptus in the air, a soft jazz track played overhead. Coltrane was slow and deliberate. But every note felt wrong, echoing a beat too long after it should have ended. The receptor's smile was immaculate, it was practice, the kind of smile that revealed nothing. Mr Keller, the doctor will see you now. He rose slowly, feeling every eye in the room linger on him, though there were only two people seated, both bent over magazines. His reflection stared at him from the water wall as he passed, pale, hollow eyed, lips parted like it might speak. He kept moving. The doctor's office was another kind of performance. Martinart hung in precise frames. The desk was glass and steel, gleaming untouched by clutter. The man himself, doctor Abrams, was in his fifties. Silver hair cropped close, glasses that glinted sharply under the light. Mr Keller, he said warmly, extending his hand. It's good you came in. Too many men at your level don't take their health seriously until it's too late. Addison said stiff. I don't usually this isn't he cut himself off. His voice sounded raw and frayed. He cleared his throat. I haven't been sleeping.

unknown:

Dr.

SPEAKER_00:

Abrams leaned back, pen poised over a notepad. Okay, tell me how long. Three nights no more a week maybe three I don't know. It's been a while. He rubbed his temple, ashamed of the omission. I've tried, but it doesn't come, and when it does it it isn't rest. The doctor scribbled, Aston glanced at the pen. At the way its reflection the glass desk's surface lagged about a half a beat behind. Any changes in your life? Aston? Any stressors? I'm a lawyer. Stress is the job. More than usual. Aston hesitated. The photographs, the wall of doubles, the shutter clicking while he slept. Claire's voice twisting into accusation, Janine cutting him down in the boardroom, Elliot silent. Yes, he said finally. doctor Abrams nodded, as though this were simple. Perfectly normal. Sleepless under stress is common and manageable. The words hung in the air longer than they should have. Perfectly normal? Perfectly normal. Ashton shifted in his seat. It doesn't feel manageable. That's why you're here. You're doing the right thing. The pen moved again, but this time Ashton swore he heard it scratching long after it lifted from the page. doctor Abrams tore a slip from his pad, sliding across the desk, paper gleamed under the light. This will help. A mild sedative, nothing heavy. Aston stared at it. His name was written at the top, the litter strangely sharp, and for a moment the word keller shifted, almost doubled as though another hand had written over it. He blinked, was steady again. Take one tonight, doctor Avum said, folding his hands. You'll sleep, you wake up clear, and everything will be sharper in the morning for you. Aston nodded slowly, slipping the prescription into his breast pocket. His cufflinks gleamed under the light, but in the glass surface of the desk. His reflections cufflinks were already undone, short collar open. He rose quickly. Thank you, doctor Abrams. Of course. The receptionist handed him a small white bag on the way out. The pills already filled, fast and efficient. Too efficient. Take care, Mr. Keller. Her voice followed him to the elevator. The mirrored walls caught him again. His reflection stood taller, eyes clear, small faint but certain. He looked nothing like the man carrying the bag. Not you anymore at mouth. The elevator's door slid shut. Part two The First Dose The prescription bottle looked harmless under the lamp, white plastic, orange label. Black type spelling out his name with clinical certainty. Keller Aston R. Take one by mouth at bedtime as needed for sleep. Do not operate machinery. Do not make important decisions. May cause dizziness, confusion, and changes in perception. Important decisions. Ha he almost laughed. His life had been nothing but important decisions. His success was built on choosing better and faster than anyone around him. He set the bottle on the glass coffee table beside the crystal tumbler. The McKellen caught the city lights and threw them back in amber fractures. The apartment was a museum still, leather, chrome, marble, everything curated to suggest control. He could see himself in every surface. Like this base had been designed as a hall of mirrors, the windows, the framed art, the lacquered black of the Steinway he never played. He turned the bottle in his hand. The pills clicked together, a small sound, a domestic sound, and yet it felt like a verdict. He loosened his tie, slipped the cufflinks into his pocket, aligned the BMW file parallel to the table's edge, rituals of a man who used to be in command. The photographs watched him from the wall. He had stopped straightening them, pen after pen had pierced the plaster, neat and measured at first now scattered like a field after battle. Red threat webs from corner to corner crossing the middleman's space with surgical indifference over the leather sofa arm. Hooked around the chrome floor lamp draped against the shadow inside a white picture frame, eighteen images, then nineteen when he blinked. Then the same eighteen when he counted again. The new range of suggested shoulders, a chest, the start of a face. The copy was learning how to hold itself together. He poured a one finger measure. The first sip burned and studied, the second only burned. He placed the glass down, centered it, uncapped the bottle. The pill lay on his palm like a white seed. No important decisions, he murmured, and heard the dry rasp in his voice. He took it. Nothing happened at first. The room held its breath, distant traffic traced red lines far below, and the river beyond the towers looked like light oil. S remained upright on the sofa. Elbows on knees, watched the window because it felt safer to stare outward and turn back to the wall. His eyes adjusted to tiny shifts in the city's glow. The way a billboard cycled, the glide of an aircraft, the blink of a radio tower. And then those shifts began to slow, as if the skyline were not a horizon anymore, but a photograph. A photograph pinned to the glass with invisible tracks. He stood to test his balance, to decide whether the drug had touched him yet, and the room did a small polite tilt. Not much, just enough, to make the floor feel unfamiliar underfoot, like marble that had been polished one time too many. The HVAC exhaled from a ceiling vent, soft and even. He had never noticed that sound before. Now it seemed to coordinate itself with the second rhythm underneath, quieter still, coming not from the duct, from the wall of photographs. Inhale exhale. He shut his eyes and they opened them. The vent was just a vent. The photographs were just photographs. He walked to the kitchen and rinsed the tumbler, then left it to dry on a rack that was always empty because he preferred nothing out of place. The pill bottle waited on the table when he returned. Label facing him again, although he had left it turned away. Do not make important decisions. Smiled with humor, not planning on it. The phone vibrated on the console table. It flinched not at the sound but at the timing. It didn't ring. Just simply lit the room in a cold blue color. A single notification crept across the glass. Voicemail O three. Three seconds? You not even heard it ring. He had not felt it ring. He had three seconds of prayer he didn't know he had missed. He tapped the message, it didn't play. He tapped it again the but still didn't play. As if time had been taken away and coming back incorrectly. When he finally played the speaker gave him a hiss of night air, then the faintest smear of music stretched thin as a thread. Unforgettable. A woman's voice, not only coal, flat as if heard through a wall, and beneath it clear, already merging with the song, already being used as accompaniment. Left the message cut, three seconds gone. The room expanded outward from him, empty and huge. He set the phone down face first, as if the sight lines mattered to sound. The first ray reached him as he crossed the living room. The sense of stepping a fraction of a second after his foot, of walking inside a delay. The pillar finally opened a scene between motion and awareness. Every surface brightened. The comb floor lamp wore a sharp halo. The black lacquered of the piano reflected a city turned to ink. The window became not glass but a film stretched tight over the darkness. He could see his breath on it for the first time since winter. He put his palm to the pane and felt nothing, no cold, no heat, as if the city had been replaced by a projection. The copy in the window did not put up its palm. Aston lowered his head. The reflection lowered its hand more slowly, as if negotiating a truce. He waited for the usual faint curl of the mouth, the almost smile that the doubles favored. But tonight the reflection only watched him with flat interest. That was worse. That meant it no longer needed to taunt him. It was studying him instead. He turned from the glass and faced the wall. The photographs had rearranged while his back was turned. The geometry was cleaner now, the red thread tensioned into straight lines that met at measured angles, shoulder to shoulder, rib to rib. The copy was learning the language of blueprints. Pin at the throat of the outline. Where a knot would sit and a tie was a new Polaroid. The frame showed the prescription bottle on his palm. He reached instinctively for the table and found the bottle was where he left it. He had swallowed the pill. He had definitely swallowed the pill. The photograph did not show a pill missing or taken. It showed a choice as an external present. A moment made permanent because someone had wanted it to be. Who's taking these? He asked the room, and the room did not care for questions. He remembered doctor Abram's office with clarity of an accusation, perfectly normal, calm and manageable, the pen scratching even when it stopped. Reflection of the glass desk that undid its cufflinks. Reception's voice saying take care and atonic suggested someone else's body. He could call the office now, demand proof that he had really been there, but the idea dialing turned his stomach. Numbers led to messages, messages led to songs, songs led to the voice that had been gone for months, and yet kept returning without permission. The pill did its second thing. It dissolved the meanings of distance. He was standing beside the window, and then he was by the piano, and then he was sitting at the edge of the bed, with his fingers pressed into his eyes so hard the colors burst. The apartment lines bent under a small pressure. You can call it chemistry if you're feeling generous, or you could call it what it felt like an invitation extended to anything that had been just waiting outside the glass. He lay back on the coverlet fully clothed, stared at the ceiling. The vent above the bed exhaled. So did the wall of the photographs in the living room. Their rhythms began to meet in the middle, like two halves of a long corridor lining. When they matched, the lights dimmed for a fraction. Not because the power waved, but because someone had decided that dimness was appropriate for the moment. He closed his eyes and saw the elevator still doors. Not you anymore, the reflection mouth behind them. He opened his eyes, and the ceiling was still the ceiling. Somewhere in the building a door closed with a soft seal. Air moved. Then he were above him walked to the kitchen and back. And through it all, a fragment of nineteen ninety one threaded the dark, first the wrong instrument, then the right melody, then a lyric cut to stay legal as a whisper. Exit light, enter night. He smiled despite himself. Metallica? A lullaby about nightmares? The building had a sense of humor. He rolled onto his side. The photograph at the copy's throat weighed in the other room with patient gravity. He didn't want to sleep. He wanted to fall through. There is a difference, subtle until it isn't. He stood without remembering the moment he chose to stand. The pill had done its third thing. It made choices look like consequences. Back in the living room, the city was a smear of static, not fog, not weather. Static. As if the air were an old television between channels. He walked until his knees touched the sofa. He sat. He let his head fall back, eyes to the crown molding. He had paid extra for, and never noticed it until tonight. The phone lit again, no ring, another voicemail. Two seconds long. You listen the way you listen to a sound you hope it's the sound of an ending. The photographs clicked. An incinctuous shift of pen and paper. He felt rather than heard. The copy lean. There are breaths that belongs to bodies. There are breaths that belong to rooms. This one belonged to a decision he made thirty minutes ago when he upended a white seed onto his tongue and took water after it. The copying held that decision and tested how it fit inside a chest he had drawn for it with a red thread. Aston's own breath stuttered. He matched the room instead. Slow, even, unforgettable, the wall said it, not as music now, but as a word spoken from the place where the throat would be if the photographs had throats. He closed his eyes again, not to sleep, but to see. Behind the lids the doctor's glass desk with his name written on the white slip, the receptionist hand pushing a small back forward. The elevator numbers frozen at eighteen, reflection's mouth forming a sentence that required no air. The skylight pinned like a polaray to the black. Red thread drawing asternum over the place as an apartment where his heart usually stood. He opened his eyes. The room had edged closer to him, or he had slid toward it. The effect is the same. On the coffee table, the prescription bottle now faced away. It had it facing toward. This mattered, which meant the copy knew it mattered. Enough, he said softly. Enough. He stood with care like a man on a ship. He crossed to the window and placed both hands on the glass. In the reflection, the copy placed its hand beside rather than over them. Its fingers were longer, its wrists stronger. Do not fog the pain. Not you anymore. It mouthed again, and this time the words were not cruel, so much as fractal, as if the copy were reading a label the way he read the label Keller asked an R, and deciding the R stood for replaceable. He took his hands away. The pill had a last trick. It softened sounds until they could walk through walls. Three stories down a car paused at the light, and radio lifted Whitney Houston's promise into the air, bright and clean, utterly wrong for the hour. Whatever you want from me. The car turned the corner. Lurk broke on the glass like a wave. He returned to the sofa and lay back without removing his shoes. He wanted to keep one ritual intact, no face buried in a pillow, no blindness that could be used against him. He folded his hands on his chest and watched the photographs arrange themselves into sleep. His eyes finally slipped. It was not down, but sideways, to a room that included this one, but also a second living room laid over the first with airs. The piano stood at the slant. It did not have in the day. Lamp cast light from the dark side. The window looked in rather than out. The copy breathed the way a practice actor breathes. In four old two out four a calm design to convince the audience they are safe. The audience was him. Unforgettable, the room repeated, not as a phrase, but now as a diagnosis. He thought of the warning on the label. Do not make important decisions. He understood finally that the warning had not been written for him as a patient. It had been written for the thing that had been waiting for him to be a patient. He understood that the most important decision had already been made not by the man who swallowed a pillow, but by the faces on the wall that wanted him slower, softer, easier to move. The copy leaned, the pins and the plaster creaked like old floorboards. Aston's last waking thought was not a thought but a memory of Claire's hands pulling his tie loose in a different apartment on a night with music that did not accuse. The moment refused to hold its shape. The tie became a thread. The thread became a line across a white wall. The line became a sternum that belonged to someone was not him, and would nevertheless answer to his name when morning came. He slept, where he did the thing that the pill and the copy agreed to call sleep. The room exhaled, and somewhere inside the frame of the apartment, a shutter answered with a soft, satisfying click. Part three The Firm Melts The boardroom shimmered like a mirage. Aston didn't remember leaving his apartment. He didn't remember the car, the subway, the walk. One moment he was staring at the At a prescription bottle. The next he was here, forty second floor, Glass Cathedral, Skyling blazing like a witness. The long mahogany table stretched out, polished to a perfect sheen. Reflections ran through the length of it like water. The leather chairs were filled, associates, juniors, familiar faces arranged in unnatural symmetry. Every pin lifted at the same angle. Every notebook sat in the same place. It felt rehearsed, choreographed. At the head of the table sat Elliot. No Janine. No both flickering. One heartbeat Elliot's silver hair caught the light, his regal posture radi in judgment. The next Janine leaned back in her charcoal suit, lips curved and a faint knowing smile. Aston blinked. The flicker didn't stop. Begin, Elliot said, or Janine said, or the table said. Aston rose file in hand. His notes were crisp, ordered. He had read them over and over, rehearsed the cadence, the points of impact. His success has always been in control, control of facts, of timing, and of voice. When he glanced down the words were wrong. Sentences blend into each other, arguments collapsed midline, paragraphs rearranged themselves as though redrafted by a hand that didn't care for logic. Tried to steady himself to read past the distortion. Line after reformed line into the same phrase, stamped across every page in his own headwriting. Not you anymore. A murmur rippled across the table, pens tapped, pages turned, but the mouths of the sociates didn't match the sound. One woman's lips were still where her laugh rolled low across the room. A junior leaned into a whisper, but his mouth opened too wide, jaw descending as if the words needed more space than a human frame could give. Aston slammed the folders shut. This isn't mine. The room hushed. Elliot leaned forward, or Janine leaned forward, or both leaned at once. But you brought it. I didn't write this. His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. Someone's changing they're changing my work, copying it, altering it. The table faces washed, eyes glassy, movement slow. A hand tapped the table. A pen scratched through it, hovered above the blank paper. You can't trust it, Aston pressed. Desperate now. It's not me. It's not you anymore, the room said. His pulse hammered. He stepped back, colliding with the glass wall. Manhattan glared outside, light sharp towers like teeth, and the reflection the boardroom was wrong. The faces were blurred, their features melting into versions of his own. Table of Astins, each smirking faintly, each mouthing the words he had tried to deny. Not you anymore. Not you anymore, not you anymore. His stomach lurched. He pressed his palm against the glass, needing something solid, but the reflection's palm didn't raise with his. He rested flat on the table, tapping once in rhythm, tap. The sound echoed behind him. He spun back, only silence, only still faces. Until Keller steadies himself, Janine said, her voice sharp now dominant, I'll take point. Elick gave a slow nod, regal and final. The room shifted around them, papers rustling, pens moving again. The current carried forward the tide reassuming, as though Aston had never been there. He tried to speak, but no sound came. His throat closed, his reflection of the window smirked, lips forming the words for him.

unknown:

Not you.

SPEAKER_00:

The Mogany table pulsed just once, like a heartbeat. Then the boardroom began to melt. The walls dripped downward, glass bending like wax under heat. The ceilings bowed, lights stretched into streaks of gold, faces blurred, features sliding from skulls like paint running in rain. The table elongated, reflections warping into grodesque doubles of himself. He stumbled backwards, chair legs screeching. His notes fluttered from his hand, pages hitting the melting floor only to dissolve, letters withering like insects. The room laughed. At the people. The room. The polished wood, the dripping glass, the warped reflections. Aston clutched the edge of the table to study himself. But the wood was soft, playant. His hand sank into it like flesh. Yanked it back, trembling. Stop grasped. Please stop. Laughter cut. Silence regained again. When he looked up, every seat at the table was filled with himself, dozens of Astons, each wearing a different suit, a different tie, a different expression, smirks, frowns, sneers, all of them staring at him. And together they spoke. His knees buckled, the room tilted. The boardroom dissolved entirely, leaving only reflections, endless glass, polished steel, and mirrored surfaces. He stood in a cathedral of himself, surrounded by versions that weren't him. His chest heaved, his hand shook. The doubles leaned forward in unison. Not you anymore, not you anymore, not you anymore. Part four The City of Doubles The City didn't sound right. Aston stepped out of the boardroom or thought he did. He found himself in Midtown without knowing how. One moment glass walls melted around him, the next he was standing on the sidewalk, the night pressing close with its neon and noise. Yellow cabs steamed past, headlights flaring, horns punctuating the darkness, but every sound was slightly off, pitched wrong, slowed and dragged. The crowd moved around him in polished streams, men in suits, women in heels, tourists in bright coats, yet their faces blurred in motion, each and every one flickering into its own. He caught glimpses of himself in their jawlines, their profiles or mouse curling with faint smirks. He pushed forward, but the sidewalk rolled beneath him like a treadmill, stretching endlessly. Billboards towered above, but they weren't selling anything. Each advertisement was his face, his smile from the awards center, his reflection in the BMW showroom glass. Across Broadway a twenty foot image of himself grinned down with the words Not You anymore. He staggered, cliding with a passerby. The man snapped, his briefcase shut, glared, and in Aston's own voice muttered, balance deferred. Then he was gone, swallowed by the crowd. Music drifted faintly from a cab window as it rolled by. At first it was tinny, easy to dismiss, then lyrics cut through. Chris Isaac, what a wicked game you play to make me feel this way. The cab slowed at the light, and the voice rose too clear for distance. Isaac's croon melted into Clara's voice, accusing again You left me. Aston covered his ears, but the sound didn't stop. It came from the billboards now, lips moving on his giant face, singing her words instead of Isaac's. You left me. You left me. You left me. The crowd turned in unison, dozens of strangers mouthing it back at him. He bolted into the street, weaving between cars, ignoring shouts. He pressed against a window shop, needing something solid, something real. The glass was cool under his palm. He forced himself to look. The reflection stared back, but it wasn't him anymore. The Allen of the body from his apartment all stood in the window, built from photographs, red thread stitching, its shoulders together. The face was blurred but smiling, always smiling. The devil raised its hand pressing against the glass from the other side, its palm aligned with his. Aston pulled back in horror, his reflection stayed palm flat, smile widening. Shop door opened suddenly. A man in a rumpled suit stepped out holding a coffee. He glanced at Aston without recognition, but the reflection stayed. The window still held the copy, grinning. Even as Aston stood inches away in the open air. He stumbled backward, colliding with another stranger. This one didn't turn, didn't even acknowledge him, just walked on. Aston stood frozen in the stream of people, his breath fogging the night air, his heart hammering too loud, the billboards above cycled again. His face, his face, his face, all of them smiling and together they mouthed not any. Part five Claire's apartment. He didn't remember walking there. The city bent around him, streets folding in directions that didn't exist, until suddenly he was standing in front of Claire's building. The brick was the same faded red, the wrought iron railings the same sharp black. He had been here hundreds of times. But tonight it felt staged, like a set piece wheeled onto the stage of his unraveling. The intercom buzzed faintly, though no one touched it. A bulb flickered above the entrance, he climbed the steps, fingers trailing the railings, needing the texture to prove solidity. He knocked once, twice. Claire? Claire, you there? His voice caught, ragged. He waited, no sound from inside. He knocked again harder. Claire, it's it's me. The door across the hall opened instead. A neighbor stepped out. A middle aged man in a faded t shirt, hair uncombed. Irritation already on his face. She doesn't live here anymore. Aston blinked. What? The man sighed. Rubbing his temple. Claire, Laurent, right? She hasn't been here in months. This place has been empty. You've got the wrong idea. He started closed the door, muttering about people showing up at all hours. Eston staggered back against the wall, the air gone from his lungs, empty. Months? The words didn't fit together. He turned back to Claire's door, but something else waited. The glassy surface of the neighbor's door reflected in the hallway, and in that reflection, Claire stood behind him, barefoot, hair loose over her shoulders, eyes hollow. You left me. Her lips moved, but no sound reached his ears. The words were written on glass. Aston spun around, nothing, only the hall, only silence. He turned back to the reflection. Claire was still there. Her hand lifted slowly, pressing flat to the inside of the glass, as though she were trapped behind it. His breath shook. No. The neighbor slammed his door. The reflection fractured into darkness. Claire vanished with it. Ashton stood alone in the hallway, the carpet stretching endlessly in both directions. The light above him flickered once, then went out. The silence pressed like a hand over his mouth. He whispered her name again. Claire? But the door didn't open. Only the walls seemed to breathe. Part six The Predator Moves. The apartment didn't welcome him back. The moment Aston crossed the threshold, he knew it wasn't his anymore. The air pressed against him heavy, as though it had been waiting. The familiar details of leather sofa, glass coffee table, black marble counters were still there, but warped. Angles bent slightly too far, shadows stretched in directions they shouldn't. The perfection he had created now felt like a stage set, ready to collapse. And the wall? Photographs had multiplied, not just in numbers but in confidence. The red thread no longer sagged loosely between pens. It hummed with tension, lines drawn taut, as a sinew, binding image to image with deliberate geometry. The outline had grown clear. Shoulders, torso, legs. A body nearly complete. At its center pinned like a heart was a new Polaroid. Aston, standing in Claire's hallway, the exact moment from minutes ago, captured without his awareness. His knees weakened. He staggered towards the leather sofa, gripping the back for balance. The air vibrated faintly, as though the apartment itself had begun to breathe. The photographs rustled, paper brushing paper, pens creaking against plaster. Then the outline twitched. A shoulder shifted and arm jerked slightly, like a marionette testing its strings. Aston froze his eyes got wide, his breath trapped in his chest. The outline leaned forward, the red thread tightening, pins straining against the wall. Sound deepened, no longer just paper and plaster, but breath, real breath. Inhale, exhale. His old lungs tried to match it, but caught in its rhythm. The city beyond his windows blurred, lights smeared and ecstatic, towers dissolving in the fog. Sky no longer looked like buildings at all, but like photographs of buildings penned to glass. His home, his city, his life, all rearranged by someone else's hand. He pressed his palm to the window, his reflection stared back. But it wasn't him. It was the copy, taller, broader, smiling faintly. His reflection exhaled. The window fogged. Assen's breast shook, he pulled his hand back, but the fog remained, spreading wider across the glass as though reflection's lung filled the entire room. Behind him the wall pulsed. The body of doubles inhaled sharply and for the first time. It stepped, just one foot forward, tugging the red thread tight. The pins groaned, the plaster creaked. As his heart slammed into his chest, he stumbled backwards, colliding with the sofa, collapsing into it, his eyes locked on the wall as the body leaned farther out of its frame. It wasn't content with reflection anymore, it wanted flesh. And it was building itself from his. He pressed his hands to his face, sobbing now. But the sound wasn't his alone. Came from the wall, from the reflection from the room itself. The predator had his voice and was using it. Not you anymore. Not you anymore, not you anymore. The words filled the apartment, spoken a chorus by every double that had been pinned to plaster, reflecting in glass, photographed in sleep. Aston dropped his hand shaking, and the body of doubles exhaled. The fog spread across the apartment, and the shutter clicked. Eston's monologue. I don't know if I'm awake. I don't know if the floor beneath me is marble or the edge of a photograph tacked to plaster. I don't know if the walls breathe or it's just my chest struggling to keep rhythm with something. It doesn't belong to me anymore. I thought the pill would give me rest, it didn't, it gave me this. A seam ripped between waking and dreaming. And the predator slid through like it had been waiting. Maybe it had. Maybe it's been waiting for me to close my eyes since the first moment I walked into this apartment, since the first time I let silence settle too long. The firm doesn't believe me. Elliot looks at me like I've already been replaced. Janine smells blood every time I enter the room. They don't have to believe me. They just have to watch me bleed out. And Claire God Claire. She hasn't lived in that apartment for months. That's what the neighbor said. Empty, abandoned. She was there, I saw her, her hand on the glass, her mouth whispering, but I already knew. You left me. I don't know what's worse that she's gone or that she isn't. Or maybe she's both. Maybe the predator doesn't care what's true. Maybe it only cares what will rape me fastest. Everywhere I turn I see myself smiling in the boardroom glass, in the city billboards, in the window reflection that exhales fog while I choke for breath. The predator doesn't just doesn't want to haunt me anymore. Wants to take me. I I don't know if I'm strong enough to stop it. Maybe I don't want to stop it. Between Claire's voice and Pretter's mimicry, then what's the difference? Or I should say really what difference does it make? Where's my face and hand? I don't know if I'm awake. I don't know if I'm alive. I only know that something else is breathing with my lungs. Alright guys, let's get into my uh my monologue. This is how predators wait. You know, they don't ever predators don't rush the kill. They don't waste energy chasing what exhaustion will deliver. They wait until the prey stumbles, until the prey decides it's safe enough to close its eyes. See, Aston thought he was taking a pill to find rest. What he really took was an invitation, a sedative that doesn't only quiet the body, it quiets his defenses. It blurs the lines. And that's all a predator ever needs, the blurred lines between safe and unsafe. Between what is yours and what can be taken. See, tonight, Aston Keller surrendered more than his sleep. He surrendered ownership of his reflection, his voice, and his memory of Claire. He swallowed a seed and the copy sprouted. See, that's the patience of predators. They don't just strike when you're strong. They wait until you medicate yourself into believing you're safe. Until you let them breathe for you. By the time you realize the rhythm and your lung isn't yours, it's it's already too late. So let's get into these reflection questions. Number one where do you medicate yourself into surrender? Calling it rest when it's really just an escape. That question right there will really hit you hard if you're in a depression. Cause when you're depressed, you're sleeping all the time because you're just trying to escape your reality. So that's a great question for number one. Number two What defenses do you drop when you're exhausted? And who is watching you in those moments? That's a big question. Big question. three. If your reflection begins to breathe without you, what would you inhale first? Number four. Which voices from your past still accuse you? And how much of them is real versus invitation? That's such a when you're I'm gonna tell you this, when you're starting to do self-development work, that is a question or something you'll run up against all the time in the beginning of your journey. And number five, do you really know the difference between awake and being alive? I'll tell you this. For that, for me, I didn't know the difference from that for a long time. Because a lot of us live our life on autopilot. That's just being awake when you are consciously making every decision that is you being alive. So, guys, we're almost towards the end of this series. We got what three left, and then we got the um review, and then like I said, then the next series after this, we're all going into Halloween stuff, so there's gonna be four series, but just let you know they're all gonna be a week apiece, so they're gonna be very short until the point, and then like I said, then after that, we'll start our Thanksgiving series, which will be all in November, so there'll be four short ones, then December will be kind of the same thing, and then after that, we'll start the new year, and then we'll go with remembrance and really start that whole thing. So, um, yeah, but guys, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate all your guys' love and support. It means so very much to me. So thank you so much for listening today. And if you want to support the show, it's super easy, doesn't cost you anything. There's two ways. First way is gonna be just sharing this, just share with a friend or a family member, right? You like this kind of stuff, they're gonna like it, it's awesome. All right. Second way is just leave a review, takes you a couple seconds to say, hey, this you know, his stuff is awesome, you should take a listen to it. It helps the show more than you will ever know. All right. Now, also, too, I've been getting a lot of emails and DMs and stuff like that. So I'd love talking with you guys. So if you want to talk with me, if you have questions about this episode, this series, super easy. On the description of this podcast, there's something that's called Let's Chat. You click on that, you and I can have a conversation about this episode, this series, the 14 other series that are out there, and 300 plus episodes on Gents Journey. Uh, second voice can be through my email. As always, my email is anthony at gentsjourney.com. And then last but not least, you can always um go to my Instagram. My Instagram is my gentsjourney. So, again, guys, thank you so very much for listening today. And remember this you create your reality. Take care.