Connecting the Dots

My brain roots through a year’s worth of emails received, messages opened, links clicked.

Mar 18, 2025

This is a chapter from I Hear You Watching, my novel based on my experience with hearing voices and paranoia.

But you can jump in here! The “previously on” will get you up to speed.

Previously on I Hear You Watching…
Last night, Alex was chased through the streets by unseen pursuers. He sought comfort in a second date with Lili, but she brushed off his chase story as stoner paranoia, and he fought another wave of intrusive thoughts.

A black line drawing of Alex, the protagonist of "I Hear You Watching." He is white, short messy parted hair, glasses. He stares straight at you, unsmiling. Behind him is a black background, and two skewed copies of his line drawing—one red, one blue—stretching out from behind his head.

“That guy’s got a problem.”

I’m just home from Lili’s when I hear it.

“Which guy?”

Yes, I wonder, which guy?

The living room window’s cracked open, but the voice is too faint to identify. Did Eric follow me home? Is it the people in the house next door? Maybe the stranger who saw me. My blinds are almost fully closed, but I’m still glad to be wearing pants this time.

“The guy. Remember? The crackhead.”

The clear water of my mind receives a drop of red ink that bursts in tendrils. I tilt to see past the edge of the blinds. No one down in the alley.

“Oh yeah. He’s creepy, dude.”

I fill a glass at the sink and stand in the kitchen, drink and listen.

“What’s he doing?”

“Just standing there.”

It’s darkening out and my lights are on. There has to be an angle, some sliver they can see.

“What are you guys up to?” I ask loudly.

They’re quiet.

I finish the water and pack a bowl on the couch.

“What’s he smoking?”

“I think it’s just weed. I can smell it through the window.”

Part of me feels vindicated that they can tell it’s not crack, so I leave the window open.

I take the pipe into the bedroom.

“If he’s just smoking weed in there, why the fucking foil on the window?”

“Probably so no one can see him jerking off to kiddie porn.”

“You think he’s a pedophile?”

“Oh, for sure. When we followed him last night…”

My stomach rises as if the floor has dropped out. I’m hovering over my desk chair, almost fully seated, but I don’t dare move. The slightest creak of sinew might mean missing something.

“…of all the people he passed on the street, he only looked at the young ones.”

Did I? Was it poor luck that my glances were toward the younger people on the sidewalk? They all had to be of legal drinking age to be at the bars, or at least old enough to fake it. In my memory all the faces are dark, illegible contortions. Anyone under the streetlight has a face of trembling leaves.

“Dude, next time he goes out we gotta follow him.”

I look at the clock. Less than an hour until I have to leave for work. Not nearly long enough for them to forget their new mission.

I sit at the computer and search each term that comes to mind in a separate tab: stalking, voyeurism, and harassment.

One laughs. “Dude, holy shit, he’s onto us!”

“What?”

“He just fucking Googled ‘voyeurism’ and ‘stalking.’”

How do they know? The foil is back on my bedroom window, as they noted, which means they aren’t seeing me from outside but somehow from inside.

The room is dark except for the screen.

The answer stares at me. Mere inches above the article on the legal definition and ramifications of voyeurism is the small, cyclopean pupil of my webcam.

I can’t tell if they followed me to work. I’ve gone out to the parking lot for a couple of cigarettes and heard a dog, a train, and the constant exhalation of the freeway. The rustling of leaves imitated their snickering. Two people spoke down the street, their voices muddied as they walked away.

Tonight’s task is to caption Rate Your Date. In this episode contestants use night-vision cameras to watch and instruct their fumbling partners through the dark rooms of a mansion, searching for hidden “golden condoms.”

The audio is raw, fuzzy, wildly uneven. When I turn it up to make out a phrase I’m punished with a shout or a clap that sounds like a blow to my skull.

The worst of the three teams is Justin and Kami.

Justin sits in the control room watching the monitors and vomiting words: “Over there, over there, over there, to the right, more right, more to the right, right, right, right, yeah, you got it, no up, yeah, there, got it, go, go—watch out, there’s a—yeah, go, go, that’s the door, you got the door, get the knob, it’s right by your han—no, down, down, yeah, right there, you got it, go, go, you got it, go!”

In splitscreen Kami gropes through the dark over coffee tables and couches, dodging pedestals topped with breakaway Ming vases to increase the tension and hilarity, all the time matching Justin’s blather with her own: “Here? Right? Going right, I’m going right, this way? Here? I’m trying, hang on, oh, this is here, wait, what is this? Doesn’t matter, okay, never mind, that’s not it, I’m going, more to the right? Up? Is this the door? Where’s the door? I can’t find the door—oh, this is the door, the knob is here, I got the knob, okay, I’m going, I’m going!”

I type it all verbatim, as it is my job to do so, and time it as best I can to the rapid-fire editing. I don’t think any shot in the entire episode lasts longer than a second.

The intros and outros are the easiest parts to caption because the host is the only one speaking and his dialogue is rote: “Who’s gonna go all the way, and who’s going home empty-handed? Tweet your predictions with #DateRate!”

After a cup of coffee I sit in the restroom, hidden in the most central, private, bright space in the office. The lights hum. The toilet paper dispenser only fits one roll and the others are wrapped and stacked in a small pyramid on the toilet tank. The single toilet stall in the men’s room is large. The room itself is spacious enough to lie down and still be clear of the toilet, urinal, and sink’s respective splash zones. There’s a floor drain too, which would facilitate cleaning a spot to lie down. I could take relatively thorough sink showers without concern for making a mess.

But at this point my apartment is still my desert isle of preference, despite knowing that they’re watching through my computer.

The problem is I don’t know how they got in, and I don’t have the technical skills to kick them out. My laptop is a closed, dark room. Like Kami fumbling for golden condoms, I’ll need a Justin to guide me through.

Soon after the end of my shift I’m at the back of a computer store watching the specialist drum his fingers on the counter while we wait for my laptop to boot up. He looks like he’s still in high school, which means he’s either inexperienced or tech-savvy. I tell him I believe I’m being hacked, that out my window I can hear my neighbors discussing things they see me do, which they’re probably watching through the webcam.

He says such hacking is unlikely and runs a quick scan that reports nothing malicious installed. When he checks my security settings he notices the firewall is disabled. I had assumed it was on, but he explains that the firewall is disabled as a factory default and that I “just have to turn it on…”—click—“Go ahead and enter your password for me, and…”—click. The firewall status bubble goes from gray to orange. “Okay, you’re all set. Can I help you with anything else?”

I’ve had this computer for almost a year with the firewall disabled. I stare at the orange bubble and feel suddenly naked. I wiggle my toes to confirm I’m wearing socks and shoes.

“But since the firewall was off… you’re sure there isn’t anything on here? Maybe something inactive for now that the scan couldn’t see?”

“That’s unlikely. They would’ve already gone after your passwords and money if that was the case. But keep an eye on your accounts, and keep that firewall turned on, and you’ll be good.”

A veil drapes over me. It’s like the store lights have dimmed. Beyond my field of vision people’s faces are dark and contorted as if under black pantyhose. Everyone looks everywhere except at me.

But as I pass them on my way out, I feel each head lift and turn to watch me go.

At home I use a small neon-green patch torn from a Post-It note to close the eye of my computer.

I search for the highest-rated virus and malware scanners, and pay for and install the top three. Each scan takes one to two hours. I busy myself folding strips from the Post-It pad into origami stars.

Every few minutes I glance up at the progress bar. The torn and folded strips of paper represent my brain’s progress bar while it roots through a year’s worth of emails received, messages opened, links clicked. The obvious first suspect is the sex site with all its popups and ghost windows opened and closed by my ad blocker.

“Vanessa,” who caught me with my pants down.

Lili only ever sent a photo, which the scan doesn’t flag as malicious.

The scan results are files with strange abbreviations and numbers, file types I don’t recognize. But I read that they’re important files deep in the operating system software. An article says, If these filenames are listed in a virus scan, it is normal. DO NOT delete them!

Unless the article is lying. That would be a big con to pull off, publishing fake articles framing malware as operating system components and then boosting the articles in the search results.

I tweak some settings and run each scan again.

The expanding scatter of neon green stars on my desk reveals no constellation.