Lights Out: A Dark Stalker Rom-Com

You good, man?” I asked my roommate. We’d paused our video game five minutes ago so he could text someone, and I was getting bored.

Tyler flopped onto the couch next to me. “Yeah, just had to break things off with that girl Aly I was hooking up with.”

I frowned. “I thought you ended it months ago.”

He shook his head and ran a hand through his dark blond hair, flexing his bicep and turning to check his muscles out.

“Knock it off,” was on the tip of my tongue, but I kept my mouth shut. There wasn’t anyone here for Tyler to impress, but he’d been vain as long as I’d known him, and he posed even when he didn’t realize he was doing it. It was almost like a nervous tic at this point, so he must have been more bothered by the Aly situation than he was letting on.

“I thought she ghosted me,” he said. “But she probably got busy at work again.”

I turned toward the TV and tried to act natural. “She’s an ER nurse, right?”

I already knew the answer to that, along with several other facts like her address, where she’d gone to nursing school, what kind of grades she got, and what her current work schedule was. You know, normal things people knew about their roommate’s ex-hookups.

“Yeah,” Tyler said. “I don’t hear from her for two months, and then look at the shit she sends me.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it, and tossed it to me. I caught it out of the air and glanced down, freezing the second my eyes landed on the screen.

Oh, fuck.

It was happening. The day I’d dreaded since starting a secret social media account two years ago had finally arrived. My online life was colliding with my real one, and I was about to be found out.

Play it fucking cool, man, I told myself. Tyler was watching me, and I couldn’t let him see how freaked out I was. But, fuuuck, Aly had a mask kink, and of all the screenshots she could have sent my roommate, she chose this one.

I cleared my throat. “You never said she was into this kind of thing.” Which was weird because Tyler had a habit of telling me every sordid detail of his sex life, even though I’d begged him to keep it to himself.

He snorted. “I didn’t know she was, so it’s good I’m seeing Sarah because I’m not. I just want to get in, get off, and get the fuck out. I’m not down for playing games.”

How unfortunate for the people he slept with.

“I hear that,” I lied, tilting the phone toward me as if I were inspecting the picture, and, whoops, there went my thumb. “Shit. I just accidentally deleted the text.”

Tyler shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t need some shirtless dude on my screen.”

Some shirtless dude, I thought as I handed the phone back. So, he hadn’t looked at the picture too closely because if he had, he would have recognized the tattoos. My tattoos. A girl he’d slept with had sent him a screenshot from one of my videos, and I’d be laughing if not for the fear of discovery and the adrenaline roaring through my veins.

“You ready?” he asked, lifting his controller.

“Sure.”

He unpaused the game, and we went back to shooting at everything that moved. I tried to focus on the split screen before me, but all I could think of was that text. Aly wanted to be fucked by someone wearing a mask.

I’d only met her once, but she’d made an impact. It was over the summer, early one morning after she’d spent the night in Tyler’s bed, not sleeping. I’d been awake, too, cursing the weird acoustics of our apartment until I found my noise-canceling headphones and drowned them out with music.

I’d always slept like shit, so I didn’t expect anyone else to be up when I finally threw in the towel and went to make coffee several hours later. Tyler’s door cracked open right after the machine beeped to tell me it had finished brewing. I’d half turned, expecting my roommate, only to see a woman instead. A tall woman, which was unfortunate because she was wearing one of Tyler’s shirts, and it barely covered her crotch. My eyes had immediately fallen, taking in her long legs. Tyler met her at his gym, and she looked like someone who regularly hit the weights: thick thighs, toned calves, and from what I could see of her arms, they were just as muscular.

I’d lifted my gaze, realizing I was staring, and instantly regretted it. Aly was hot. Not that I’d expected otherwise; Tyler always dated attractive people. But she was more striking than beautiful, with a pointed chin, full lips that looked like they’d been well-used the night before, a nose my mother would have said was distinctively Italian, and large dark eyes. Her brown hair was a mess, falling to her elbows in loops and snarls.

The smile she’d given me when our gazes locked was nearly blinding. “Please tell me you made enough for two.”

I’d grunted an affirmative and put my back to her.

She’d tried to make small talk with me, and I hadn’t been outright rude or anything, but I’d kept my distance and my face turned away while giving her monosyllabic answers, and she’d fallen quiet pretty fast. To make up for it, I poured her coffee first and set the mug on the counter where she could reach it. Then I’d splashed some into my cup and hightailed it out of there.

Tyler hadn’t told her who I was. He knew better than that, but I couldn’t risk her seeing my face for too long and starting to wonder who I reminded her of. I looked too much like my goddamn father, and that Netflix documentary had just come out about him. It would have been my luck that Aly had seen it.

The whole summer was rough, thanks to that documentary, and I’d barely left the apartment because of it. Whenever Daddy Dearest was in the news, I’d have someone stop me on the street or in the supermarket and say, “I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this, but you look just like a guy I read about the other day.” Or they’d listened to a podcast about him. Or watched a true crime episode that focused on his many misdeeds.

With the documentary came a fresh wave of interest, and I’d been working overtime for months to keep people from finding me or my mom and stepdad. Everyone wanted the exclusive interview from George Marshall Secliff’s surviving family members, and sometimes they went to illegal lengths to track us down. It was why I’d gotten into hacking when I was still in high school. I’d wanted to help the three of us disappear from the internet, and I’d learned everything I could in pursuit of making that happen.

Those skills had paid off in the long run. Now, I worked for an exclusive cybersecurity firm writing code that kept other hackers from infiltrating Fortune 500 companies and stealing all their clients’ money. It allowed me to work from home, with flexible hours, leaving enough time to pursue other hobbies.

Like making thirst traps for all the other mask enthusiasts out there.

The same reason I stayed inside was why I didn’t date much. Even though my hair was darker than my dad’s, and I wore it shorter than his, we looked damn near identical. It wasn’t so bad when I was younger, and my face hadn’t filled out yet. Being a scrawny kid had saved me. Now that I’d grown into my man body and was nearing the age Dad was when he got caught, I was a carbon copy of his mugshot.

One of the first questions I asked the women I matched with on dating apps was whether or not they were into true crime. If they said yes, I blocked them and moved on. I only ever took a chance on the ones who said they hated “all that gross stuff.” On the rare occasions I did meet and hook up with women, it only lasted a few weeks at most. I broke things off when it felt like they were catching feelings or they got that look in their eyes that said they were trying to puzzle out where they knew me from.

Even mirrors were a problem nowadays because I couldn’t look at one without picturing my own face contorted in rage as fists rained down on me. I’d seen other documentaries about violent men, and it always baffled me when their family members swore they had no idea what their father/husband/uncle had been doing in their free time.

My dad was a fucking monster, and there was no disguising it. He’d only gotten away with his crimes for so long because he targeted marginalized women, was handsome, and could put on a good show for short periods. Just long enough to convince the sex workers he frequented to get in the car with him.

A lot like his idol, Ted Bundy.

The only communal mirror left in our apartment was the one in the half bath, and I turned my head down every time I was in there to avoid it. So, yeah, my face was a problem, which was why the thought of wearing a mask was so appealing. I’d been fixated on it for years and finally found an excuse to don one after a story popped up on my news feed about the rise of thirst trap accounts with people wearing masks. It was a lofty think piece about the psychology behind the trend, but I ignored all that bullshit and zeroed in on the videos embedded into the article.

I could do that, I realized, the thought striking like lightning. Here was a way to finally join social media, show off the body I worked so hard for, and fulfill every human’s desire to interact with others. Plus, I’d inherited some shit from my father, and one of those traits was wanting to be admired. I’d suppressed it for most of my life, but lately, my therapist had been trying to convince me how normal it was to chase after fame and acclaim. Our primitive brain craved it because back when we were still bashing each other’s heads in with mammoth bones, to be popular was to be safe and protected inside the cave.

Deciding it was okay to indulge my desires for once, I’d placed an online order for some high-end videography equipment, spent hours designing and 3D printing a custom mask, and watched far too many YouTube videos on filmmaking before I even created a social media account.

And I’d told absolutely no one about it. Not even Tyler, who’d been my best friend for as long as I could remember.

“Dude, you’re fucking trash today,” he said as we both died onscreen. Again.

“Shit, sorry. Thinking about work,” I lied.

He tossed his controller onto the coffee table harder than was necessary. “Whatever. I’m over it. I need to get to the gym before it gets crazy.”

He stood from the couch and strode into his room.

Tyler could be a dick and was absolutely a fuckboy, but he was also the only person who hadn’t immediately abandoned me when my dad got arrested. He was a good friend beneath the douchey exterior and loyal almost to a fault. It was his idea to move to this city and start over when people at college figured out who I was. His exact quote was, “Fuck ‘em. Let’s bounce,” so I didn’t think he was serious at first, not until he filed transfer paperwork to switch schools and started sending me listings for off-campus housing.

I’d dropped out instead of switching with him. It felt like my time at school had run its course by then, and none of my professors could teach me anything else about hacking. The rest of my education lay online, and I studied endlessly until I felt ready to enter the job market. I’d applied for only one position – the one I currently held – by hacking into a huge media conglomerate and showing the company I now worked for how I’d gotten past their defenses.

They paid me a king’s ransom to keep one step ahead of emerging cyber threats, enough that I bought the most expensive amateur camera on the market without blinking, and our rent was paid off for the next two years.

I heard a drawer slam shut in Tyler’s room, and I took that as my sign to stand. My phone was on my work desk, and I was itching to get it within my grasp. I needed to pull up the video Aly sent and see if I could find her in the comment section. She had a mask kink. Or, at the very least, she was into it enough that she wanted someone to wear one for her.

So far, I’d ignored every single DM asking me to meet with people IRL and play out their fantasies. They were strangers online. They could be anyone, and I didn’t want to show up at some octogenarian’s house when I’d been expecting a hot twentysomething.

Aly wasn’t a stranger. I knew her. Better than I should have, sure, but thanks to Dad’s genetic contributions, boundaries were hard for me.

She had been in my house, the one sanctuary I had left. The need to protect my identity and keep Tyler and me safe was strong enough that I did FBI-level research into anyone Tyler invited over. Thankfully, he understood my compulsion and told me ahead of time when he planned to have company. Usually, I stopped caring when I realized people weren’t a threat to either of us, but my interest in Aly had remained long past the point it probably should have.

I snagged my phone off the desk and sat on my bed as I pulled up my account. The video Aly screenshotted was one of my most popular, with over 3.4 million views. The downside was that I had thousands of comments to look through if I had any hope of finding her in them, and even that was a crapshoot. Most people were pretty anonymous online. It’d be just my luck that Aly was one of them. I wished I could write a code to look for her, but this part of the job required manual intervention, so I settled back against my headboard and started scrolling, glancing at names and avatars for any sign of her.

An hour passed before I sat bolt upright, thumb hovering over the username “aly.aly.oxen.free”. Holy shit, was it her? I clicked on her profile, and, of course, it was private. I leaned in, squinting. The avatar was a close-up photo of a dark-haired woman. I screenshotted it, then used the AI software I had loaded onto my phone to blow it up and fix the resolution issues until I was staring at a crystal-clear picture of Aly, sure that it was her.

Just to be a hundred percent certain, I logged into my computer and hacked her account, using every trick in the book to cover my tracks and keep her from being flagged. The IP address she used to create her account was local, and when I did some more digging, I discovered that it originated from the block she lived on.

I’d found her. Aly not only had a mask kink, but she’d liked one of my videos enough to leave the comment, “Sir, I’m at work. How dare you?”

Had she left any others?

I logged into my account on my computer and created a few lines of code that would search for her in my comment sections. There were so many returns my head started to spin. She’d liked and saved and commented on almost every single one.

All the blood in my body went straight to my dick, tenting my sweatpants. This wasn’t good. I shouldn’t be sitting there lusting after my roommate’s ex…whatever she was. Not his girlfriend. They’d never been serious enough to define their relationship, and Tyler had seen other people at the same time as Aly. That meant this wasn’t breaking any bro code, right? Only several privacy laws and a whole bunch of societal norms, but I’d never really cared much about that. Tyler was the only friend I had. I didn’t want to risk losing him over a woman, even if that woman had been plaguing my dreams since I’d first laid eyes on her.

What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, I thought. And it wasn’t like I’d done anything yet anyway. What was the harm in a little light online stalking? She’d done the same to me.

My eyes landed on the first comment that my search returned.

“Is this video why I randomly woke up at 2 am? Was I summoned here?”

I grinned, shaking my head. Of course, she was funny, too. It wasn’t like it was bad enough that she was hot and probably off-limits.

I kept reading. Her comments ranged from light-hearted to downright lascivious.

“I would like to thank the algorithm for bringing me here.”

“I’m on season six of this video.”

“Well, this has me feeling feral far too early in the morning.”

“The way I would CRAWL to him.”

“Boom. There went my ovaries.”

“This is the horror movie I would die in. Everyone else would be running away while I sprinted straight toward the danger instead.”

I pushed back from my computer desk. Oh, this was bad. Because that last comment hit me harder than the rest, and now all I could picture was chasing her down and fucking her when I finally caught her.

Was this how it started? Just a quasi-innocent fantasy about ravaging a woman somewhere that no one could hear her scream? Would it get worse from here, and my desires would progress past that to fucking her and choking her a little at the same time? And after that, squeezing even harder until I watched the life blink out from her eyes while I pounded into her?

My dick instantly deflated, which I took as a good sign. I wasn’t turned on by the idea of seriously hurting Aly, so maybe I wasn’t as far gone as I’d always feared.

I rolled my chair back to my desk and read through the rest of what she’d written, which took a while because there were over a hundred search returns.

Less than a minute passed before my dick was standing straight for her again. So many of her comments revolved around coming home and finding me waiting for her, and soon, my mind began to fill with thoughts of feeding into her fantasy.

What would happen if I actually broke into her house?

In reality, she’d either shoot my dumb ass or run away and call the cops, and then my entire life would blow up when I got arrested and the headlines started screaming that I was just like my dad.

But I wasn’t living in reality right now. My thoughts were pure fantasy, and I couldn’t stop picturing myself breaking in and Aly responding exactly like she said she would. Crawling to me. Begging me to fuck her while I held a knife to her throat.

“This man is always coming onto my FYP and never on me, and that is a tragedy,” was probably my new favorite quote of all time.

I groaned and palmed my dick through my sweatpants. The things I would do to this woman if she let me. I’d play into every lustful dark thought she’d ever had. And I wouldn’t have to worry about her desire turning to terror beneath me because, with my face hidden, there wasn’t any risk of that. For once in my life, I could be free of the fear of discovery or recognition.

That thought turned me on almost as much as Aly did.

I leaned back in my chair and slid my hand into my boxers, gripping the base of my dick. What would it be like to break into her house? I knew I could do it. Along with hacking, I was pretty good at skulking around at night. I’d always been a night owl, which was especially true lately when there was less risk of anyone seeing me in the darkness than in daylight. I did my shopping at a twenty-four-hour grocery store. My workouts were saved for 2 a.m. when there wasn’t anyone in our apartment’s gym.

I stroked my hand up my dick as I imagined picking Aly’s lock. I’d learned how to do it as a teen so I could sneak into my therapist’s office and see what he’d written about me – a mistake because I wasn’t ready for what I’d found, but at least I’d learned a new skill in the process. I could dust it off now and put it to better use, slipping into Aly’s house in the dead of night while she was on shift at the hospital.

I rubbed my thumb over the head of my dick when I reached the top, coating it in precum before sliding my hand back down to grip my base again. My lids fell shut as I pictured Aly standing in her doorway, looking rumpled and tired after a long night, her eyes flashing wide with fear when she realized she wasn’t alone.

“Who’s there? What do you want?” I heard her call out in a quavering voice.

In my head, I pointed the knife at her in answer.

You.

She put her hands up. “Just take what you want and get out. Please don’t hurt me.”

I shook my head and tilted the knife tip toward the floor in an explicit command. She dropped to her knees like a good little girl. I strode toward her, watching her chest rise and fall as I approached. Her eyes moved from the knife to my shirtless torso, covered in blood, the black of her pupils inching out brown as her fear started to shift into lust.

I stopped above her, staring down at her upturned face, reveling in the vulnerability of her position. Oh, so carefully, I placed the tip of the knife beneath her chin and tilted her face up as I unzipped my fly and let my dick spring free. Her gaze lifted to the dark eye sockets of my mask for one breathless moment, and then her lips popped open, and she leaned forward, suctioning that luscious mouth around the head of my dick, and –

Oh, fuck, I was about to come.

I yanked a few tissues from the nearby box and got them down my pants just in time to soak them. The sight of Aly before me, afraid and horny at the same time? I wanted it. Bad. More than I’d wanted anything in a long time.

All I had to do was figure out a way to make it happen that didn’t end with my arrest.

Aly’s neighborhood was still lit up like Christmas, and that was, surprisingly, the biggest hurdle I had to face while planning my little stunt. A week had passed since I saw her text to Tyler. Seven days of trying to talk myself out of this insanity while practicing my lock picking, researching whether or not Aly had a home security system – she didn’t, which was unacceptable – and driving through this neighborhood at night doing recon.

Clearly, the still-rational part of my brain had failed to get the rest of me to see reason because here I stood in the shadows by Aly’s back door, trying to catch my breath after triggering a mini street-wide blackout and sprinting behind her house to unscrew her rear floodlights before the power kicked back on.

I leaned my head against the vinyl siding and closed my eyes. I was going to get caught. I was going to get caught and make international news, and because of who my father was, there was no way a jury would ever think this was my first break-in. They’d think I planned something far more nefarious, and I’d get sent to jail for the rest of my life for this stupid shit.

All because I wanted to fuck a pretty girl while wearing a mask.

I should have gone home. Pushed off the wall, got in my car, drove away, and forgot all about Aly’s mask kink. A normal guy would have. A sane guy. But I must not have been either of those things because the second thoughts of leaving swirled through my head, a resounding “NO!” cut them off.

Maybe it was time to accept the fact that I wasn’t normal, and I never would be. I wanted things most people didn’t, craved darkness and depravity instead of light and love. I’d been fighting my nature for as long as I could remember, and I was tired of it.

So fucking tired.

It’d be much easier to give in for once. A relief, really. I’d worked so hard to fix and suppress the things that I’d been taught were abnormal, but after over a decade of therapy and drugs, the thoughts and desires that most of society deemed problematic remained.

Here was my chance to finally live them out. I’d done as much preparing as I possibly could. My skin was covered head to toe, so there’d be no trace epithelial for a forensics team to find. Only one of Aly’s direct neighbors had a security system, and I’d hacked into their network to see if any of their cameras overlooked her backyard. They didn’t. Just in case I’d missed something, I wore a balaclava to hide my face. The boots I’d shoved my feet into were a size larger than I normally wore, and I’d plastered over the soles so there wouldn’t be any distinguishable tread marks left behind. All that was left to do was get in, do what I had to do, and get out.

I took a deep breath and turned toward the door. The moon was only half full, but between it and the nearby Christmas lights, I was able to make out the doorknob. I tugged my backpack off and pulled my mini lockpicking kit free. The steel tools gleamed in the moonlight as I slipped them out and got to work.

My personality sometimes skewed toward obsessive behavior, and I’d practiced this so much that it only took a minute to get the door unlocked. I turned the handle, praying it wouldn’t be this easy, and let out a relieved breath when the door wouldn’t budge because of a deadbolt. It still wouldn’t be enough to keep me or a serious burglar out, and Aly needed better security than this.

I made a mental note to place an anonymous order for her as I put the lockpicking kit away and pulled out the expensive magnets I’d purchased online. Getting the deadbolt open would take a lot longer than the lock. I could have easily kicked the door in or used another destructive method to gain entry, but I didn’t want to damage Aly’s property or make it easier for anyone else to follow in my footsteps, so that meant doing things the slower, harder way.

Sweat beaded along my brow as the minutes ticked by. Every time a noise sounded too close, I froze, my heart hammering in my chest as I wondered if I was about to get caught. I nearly bolted when I heard the sudden wail of a siren, but instead of coming closer, it moved parallel to Aly’s street and then away.

I lost an entire minute afterward as I relearned how to breathe.

This was fucking crazy. Full blown batshit. And yet, I couldn’t seem to stop myself as I lifted the magnets and got back to work on her deadbolt.

After what felt like a small eternity, the magnets caught, and the lock slid open. I leaned my forehead against the door and let out a shaky breath, so much adrenaline sluicing through my veins that my whole body shook with the need to expel it. I was still half afraid this would end in disaster, but the sheer thrill of doing something so dangerous and illegal was more exhilarating than anything I’d ever experienced, including skydiving.

Was this what it had been like for my dad? Did this same thrill drive him on as much as his more sadistic desires?

I shook my head and straightened. I could wonder about that shit later. Right now, I needed to get inside.

I turned the handle and cautiously pushed the door open. The one thing I couldn’t find online was whether or not Aly had any pets. I hadn’t heard barking while I jimmied the locks, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t an attack dog waiting for me inside that had been trained to be quiet. Sure, I could have assuaged my worry by asking my roommate – Tyler had been here a few times, so he would know the answer – but I didn’t want him to think I was interested in any of his exes, especially Aly.

The rear of the house was dark, with only a soft glow emanating from the front room, where Aly’s Christmas tree stood proud and fully lit in a window. It was enough illumination to make out my surroundings and realize there were no dogs waiting to pounce.

I quickly shut the door behind me and locked it.

An unholy yowl split the air.

Fuck! Aly had some sort of demonically possessed canine after all, and it would probably rip through my pant leg and splash my blood all over the goddamn house for the cops to find.

I grabbed the doorknob and was about to tear out of there when a small, fluffy shape darted into the room and stopped short.

A cat. Aly had a cat.

We eyed each other in the darkness. It was pretty runty despite the long black and white hair. If push came to shove, I could take it.

“Don’t fuck with me,” I warned.

In response, it turned sideways and stood on its tiptoes, fluffing up like a skunk.

Despite myself, I grinned. The cat might be small, but it looked like a fighter, and that, I could appreciate.

I’d never had a pet. Serial killers were well known for getting their start on small animals, and I didn’t want the temptation in case I was more like Dad than I realized. I worried that if I adopted one, I either wouldn’t feel anything for it – meaning none of the protective instincts or cute aggression most pet owners seemed overwhelmed with – or I’d have all my greatest fears confirmed and take one look it and think “prey”.

As the seconds ticked by, I stood glued to the doormat, waiting for some violent urge to overtake me. All I felt was slight trepidation. Cats had claws, right? What if it lunged at me and scratched deep enough to draw blood? Even a drop was enough to identify someone.

Without warning, the cat deflated and sauntered forward.

Oh, fuck. What was it doing?

I stepped back and flattened myself against the door, weirdly mesmerized by how its eyes glowed in the darkness. This small fluffy creature would be so easy to kill, yet I had no desire to harm it. That had to be a good sign, right? Or was this such a new experience that whatever horrible response I might normally have was muted?

“No scratching,” I told the cat.

There was still a chance that some monstrous craving for blood was stirring beneath the surface, undetected, and if it attacked me, those murderous instincts might roar to the forefront of my psyche and do something terrible. I’d been taught not to trust myself, and this seemed like the perfect setup for learning just how alike Dad and I really were, once and for all.

The cat strode right up to my feet, unperturbed. I remained frozen in place, waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop, but instead of biting me, it sniffed my pant leg and butted its forehead into my shin, purring so loud that it sounded like an engine turning over.

I let out a relieved breath and half fell to a squat to get a closer look at it. The thing was kind of…cute, with white patches above its eyes that made it look like it had eyebrows. Right now, they were drawn together as the cat half-lidded its eyes and butted against my leg again as if looking to be petted. Had I ever thought anything was cute before? Maybe the better question was, had I ever let myself before?

“Sorry if I fuck this up,” I said, lifting a hand to scratch the cat between the ears and then stroke down its back like I’d seen other people do on TV. This was the first time I’d ever pet an animal, and my fingers shook. Thankfully, it was from unspent adrenaline and not the rising desire to strangle Aly’s furbaby.

Crisis averted. For now, at least.

So far, I’d learned two crucial things about myself this week: I didn’t want to hurt Aly or her cat. Maybe I wasn’t a psychopath after all. They cared about no one and nothing but themselves. But that didn’t rule out sociopathy. Most sociopaths were capable of caring for a few select people. They were their rare exceptions, developing intense love and devotion for them while feeling absolutely nothing for anyone else. I cared about my mom, stepdad, and Tyler. They were my people, and I barely thought of others. But was that because of a personality disorder or because they were the only ones who had earned my trust?

I shook my head and stood, ignoring the cat’s annoyed meow of protest when I stopped petting it. I wasn’t here to bond with an animal. My time was limited, and the longer I lingered, the higher the risk of detection. I could puzzle out my mental health later.

I had a video to film and a camera to place.

It was time to find out just how serious Aly was about wanting to walk into her house and find a masked man waiting for her in the darkness.