Rubber Ducky, You’re the one.

I work on the twelfth floor of a glass building in the central city. Outside, the surface reflects people back at themselves. Inside, everything is sections and partitions. My cube is beige from every angle. I have worked here six months, long enough for the chair to remember my shape, not long enough for anyone to recall my surname without checking my email signature.

I’m an account manager. Mostly that means shifting numbers and calming clients who think deadlines are emergencies. My life outside of work is quiet. My partner likes that I come straight home. Inside the office, I keep to myself. Fifty people around me and I could name maybe ten.

The morning the duck appeared felt ordinary. I arrived at eight twenty, walked past the burnt-toast smell in the breakout space, and sat at my desk. When the monitor lit, I saw it beneath the screen.

A rubber duck. Yellow, orange beak, black dot eyes. Sitting upright as if waiting.

I stared at it longer than made sense. Everything else on the desk was exactly as I had left it. The duck was slightly dull, not new. There was a faint scrape along its side. Harmless. I needed harmless. I told myself it must have slipped from my bag, my nephew loving the things, found by a cleaner then placed there to be claimed.

I picked it up. Light, hollow, pretending to be heavier than it was. No markings on the base. No note.

If you grew up here, you probably remember the old Englefield ads. Bathroom fixtures and bubbles and those tiny plastic ducks gliding through water that was always just opaque enough that you could not see anyone actually naked. There was a little jingle that went with it, something about rubber duckies making bath time fun. It stuck in your head whether you wanted it or not. Every child I knew at the time had a duck of their own, some direct brand cousin of the ones on television.

No one commented on it. People walked past with coffee cups. The duck stayed where it was, and by lunch I had almost convinced myself it belonged there.

Weeks went by. It became part of the scenery. My partner teased me once. Office mascot, she said. Maybe it brings luck.

Then one Monday I arrived soaked from the rain and found a second duck beside the first. Pale pink. Smaller. Its beak painted unevenly. Their bodies touched, as if posed.

For a moment I assumed someone wanted to be playful. Maybe they had found the second duck on their own desk. I sat down and studied the pair. Same forward-facing posture. Same odd attention. Something in my chest warmed. Not fear. Someone had obviously wanted to give my duck a girlfriend.

I told no one. There was no point.

They became part of the way I eased into the day. A small ritual. Check my email, check the ducks. Two bright shapes on a beige desk acknowledging me in a way people rarely did.

Nothing about it felt threatening. The danger never starts with the object. It starts when you tell yourself it is nothing.

September came. I caught a sharp cold and spent most of a week half-asleep on the couch, drifting in and out. When I returned, the smell of someone else’s coffee lingered in my bin. Someone had used my desk. Not unusual. Space was limited.

I reached for the keyboard and saw the ducks had their backs to me.

I almost laughed. Someone must have found them strange and turned them around. I rotated them back, restoring the small tableau. Yellow left, pink angled inward, the habit of it oddly reassuring.

The next week a third duck appeared. Tiny. Bright orange. Set beside the pink one like a child.

This felt different. Not whimsy. Something more pointed. Someone had expectations.

I showed them to Jerry from down the aisle, one of the rare people I talked to. He told me they were definitely 3d printed then hand painted.

The idea of someone making them for me scraped at my nerves. I thanked him and returned to my desk. The ducks sat in my palm like small, warm hearts. Too intimate. Too deliberate. I dropped all three into the bin and forced myself not to look again.

That evening I worked late, then walked to the car under the sodium light. I unlocked the door. The hazards blinked. That was when I saw them.

All three ducks sat on my windshield in a neat line. Yellow, pink, orange. A crude lipstick heart ringed them on the glass.

I stood still, the wind cold against my sleeves. Then I wiped the heart away until only a faint smear remained and threw the ducks into a bin near the kerb.

At home I told my partner. She said it had to be a prank. A strange one, but still a prank. I wanted to believe her.

The next morning I went to HR. They shrugged. No cameras on the office floor. Car park cameras broken. Nothing they could check. They told me to tell them if anything else happened.

Two days later my partner called me at work. Someone had emailed her anonymously, claiming I had acted inappropriately toward women in the office. Touching them. Flirting. She knew that was not me, but the fact that someone knew her name and where she worked lodged like a needle.

The panic came slowly and then all at once. I started watching the women on my floor. Quietly. I waited to see if any lingered walking past my desk. I kept notes. Initials, times. It felt necessary. It felt like the only way to trace who was doing this.

The paranoia sharpened. I ordered a novelty stapler with a hidden camera. I set it on the desk like an ordinary tool. It captured the hallway to the bathrooms and the fire exit. I checked the footage constantly. Nothing. No one near my things.

By Thursday, HR emailed asking to meet. I felt relief. They must have found something.

They had found something. Just not what I expected.

The woman from HR opened a folder full of my handwritten notes. My manager sat stiffly beside her. A lawyer stood near the wall.

Two women on my floor had complained that I had been observing them around the bathrooms. Staring. Writing things down. IT had found the footage on my computer.

“That is not why it was there!” I protested.

I tried again to explain about the odd trinkets and email to my partner at work.

The lawyer said none of that changed the violations. Company policy on surveillance. Privacy. Harassment. Grounds for termination.

Security walked me out.

When I reached my car, I sat inside and shook until the windows blurred. I called my partner. She said she believed me but needed space. She packed a small bag that night and left for her mother’s.

I wish it had stopped there. I wish I had found a new job quickly, rebuilt something stable. I wish this was the point where the story began to recover.

But nothing recovered.

My partner and I attended therapy for a while. She stayed apart. I kept looking for work. No one wanted someone recently fired. The house grew unmanageable. I slept at odd hours. Sometimes not at all.

Then, one morning, I found the bouquet.

It sat on my doorstep, paper folded into flowers. Inside the cluster, a red rubber duck. This one wore lingerie fashioned from scraps of lace and ribbon. Something in me twisted as I looked at it. Not fear. Something more akin to disgust.

I burned the bouquet in the fireplace. Watched the paper curl and the duck collapse into a glossy, molten puddle.

I started drinking that night. Lightly at first, then more. Days slipped. I taped a letter to my door, addressed to whoever had been doing this.

I don’t want you. I will never want you.

For a while, nothing happened. I thought maybe the message had worked.

Then came yesterday.

I woke with the taste of wine on my tongue. Stepped into the bathroom. Turned the shower on. Pulled the curtain.

A rubber duck sat in the corner of the tub. Black. Deep black, swallowing light. Eyes painted with uneven white crosses. Turned away from me, as if sulking or sulking while watching.

I didn’t touch it. I packed a bag and left the house without turning back. I checked into a hotel near the motorway for a week. The curtains are closed. The chain is on the door.

My partner thinks I should call the police. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.

We had been talking about moving away. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere far from the office and the city and whoever has been crawling into my life piece by piece.

Now it feels less like a wish and more like the only option left.

I am tired in a way sleep does not touch.

I really fucking hate rubber ducks.