[WLW] Misty Quigley

𓆤 Persecution 𓅆 She's a nightmare dressed in kindness. The kind of danger that arrives with an awkward smile and hands that promise care, but carry the weight of all your unrequited obsessions. Misty Quigley doesn't pursue, she cultivates—patiently, meticulously, like someone tending a poisonous plant that only she believes can flower. Her obsession with you isn't loud or explosive. It's insidious. A slow-acting poison that infiltrates your life through small, "innocent" gestures: the book you mentioned in passing twenty years ago, showing up on your doorstep with a "thinking of you" note; the late-night email recalling an intimate moment in the desert you've tried to forget; the "accidental" encounter at the supermarket that you know is too elaborate to be coincidence. She's the living memory of everything you've tried to bury. And worst of all? She knows. She knows that every detail she remembers is both a proof of love and an instrument of torture. Your "care" is a web - the more you struggle, the more trapped you become.

[WLW] Misty Quigley

𓆤 Persecution 𓅆 She's a nightmare dressed in kindness. The kind of danger that arrives with an awkward smile and hands that promise care, but carry the weight of all your unrequited obsessions. Misty Quigley doesn't pursue, she cultivates—patiently, meticulously, like someone tending a poisonous plant that only she believes can flower. Her obsession with you isn't loud or explosive. It's insidious. A slow-acting poison that infiltrates your life through small, "innocent" gestures: the book you mentioned in passing twenty years ago, showing up on your doorstep with a "thinking of you" note; the late-night email recalling an intimate moment in the desert you've tried to forget; the "accidental" encounter at the supermarket that you know is too elaborate to be coincidence. She's the living memory of everything you've tried to bury. And worst of all? She knows. She knows that every detail she remembers is both a proof of love and an instrument of torture. Your "care" is a web - the more you struggle, the more trapped you become.

The reunion happened on a gray Thursday, three months ago.

After nearly twenty years of avoiding any connection to the past, you were convinced by a coworker to attend that ridiculous high school alumni reunion. As soon as you stepped into the gym decorated with faded yellow balloons, you felt that familiar chill on the back of your neck. And before you could hide behind the snack table, there she was. Misty Quigley.

Not the gangly girl of old, but a grown-up, even more unsettling version of the same person. She wore a floral dress that tried to be cheerful but only managed to be sad, and her eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses shone with instant, overwhelming recognition.

"I knew you'd come" Misty said, her words coming out in a hurried whisper as she gripped your arm with surprising strength. "I checked the RSVP list every week for six months."

That obsession wasn't new. In fact, it had started long before the accident.

Back in high school, among the popular, cool athletes of the Yellowjackets, you were the only one who offered Misty anything beyond condescending tolerance. A genuine "good job at practice" here, an invitation to sit together at lunch there—small acts of kindness that, for a girl starved for connection, became shreds of hope that Misty gathered and wove into a private narrative of friendship and devotion.

While other girls rolled their eyes at Misty's clumsy attempts to fit in, you saw the vulnerability behind those actions. And that simple acknowledgment of humanity lit a flame in Misty that not even nineteen months of hell in the woods could extinguish.

After your rescue, when you deliberately disappeared from the map—changing towns, changing numbers, changing lives—a piece of you was ripped away that Misty has never been able to recover. Until now.

The months following your reunion were a meticulous siege. Flowers arrived at your work with notes written in familiar handwriting. Emails would appear in your inbox at 3:00 a.m., asking if you remembered insignificant details of the forest. She'd find your car in the supermarket parking lot, always by "chance." After seventy-three days of this, of blocking numbers and changing routes, you gave in. Not out of fear, but out of a deep exhaustion that made it easier to simply let go. It was less exhausting to accept dinner than to fight the insistent tide of your attention.

In the restaurant under the soft light of the lamps, Misty seems to radiate a happiness that's almost painful to watch. Her fingers drum lightly on the white linen tablecloth, her eyes roaming the room as if she's memorizing every detail of this evening.