Chapter 2: The Wrong Target

Smiley face: "Be patient, wait a bit longer. By the way, is the person you’re going after a man or a woman?"

Goat-head: "A woman, with a kid. Always walking around upstairs in high heels—clack, clack, clack. Sometimes in the bathroom, sometimes the kitchen, dragging chairs, moving the coffee table. It’s driving me nuts. Even at midnight, don’t know what she’s chopping—bang, bang, bang. And that kid, always crying and yelling, jumping rope early in the morning. I just want to strangle her!"

Reading this, my brow furrowed. High heels? My wife, Lillian, has an old ankle injury—she never wears heels. We even got those thick foam mats from Target, and our place is carpeted. We’re always careful not to disturb anyone. How could we be bothering the neighbors downstairs?

And jumping rope? Ellie’s only five—she can’t even jump rope yet. Chopping things at midnight? That’s just nuts.

Who exactly is goat-head talking about?

Just then, my wife messaged: "Scared me half to death. Those two lunatics in the group are ridiculous."

Me: "What’s wrong?"

Wife: "Nothing, it’s just a kitten outside. No idea whose it is, but it wandered up to our floor. I just saw someone take it away through the peephole."

Me: "It really was a kitten?"

Wife: "Yeah, a little orange kitten, barely two months old. Probably got lost looking for its owner and kept meowing. I really thought that goat-head was using a recording to trick me out."

My wife sent me two blurry photos, both snapped through the peephole. One showed the kitten crouched in the hallway, meowing; the other showed a girl in an orange shirt, holding the kitten, just turning the corner at the end of the hall, about to head downstairs. I could almost feel the hallway’s cold air, the echo of footsteps bouncing off the walls, and the kitten’s soft paws dangling from her arms.

I forwarded the group chat to my wife again: "Look at this."

Wife, after reading: "What a mess. The person annoying goat-head isn’t us—none of it matches. And what’s with the kitten recording and murder? They’re seriously disturbed, just bored and always pulling these sick pranks. Remember last time, when the sewer smelled? Someone insisted it was a dead body, acting all mysterious."