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.
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Previously on I Hear You Watching…
Alex hears strangers mocking him wherever he goes. The observers can measure his heart rate and influence his bodily functions. After a harrowing night in which he “glitched” chips in his ears with a magnet, paid an unwelcome visit to Lili, and blew up at strangers in McDonald’s, he rushed to his friend Gavin’s for help. Gavin stayed home from work to tend to Alex, and Alex watched TV and drifted into sleep.
I hear a voice. The room is dark except streetlight through the open door, and Gavin is talking to someone. My heart speeds up.
“Thanks,” Gavin says quietly. He closes and locks the door.
I shift my elbows under myself, planning a route backwards off the couch and through the apartment. If we weren’t on the second floor, I could dive out his bedroom window.
He stops in the dark when he realizes I’m awake. “Oh, hey.”
He turns on the light, and when my eyes adjust I see he’s holding two pizza boxes.
“Hungry?”
One is pepperoni, the other is sausage and mushrooms. After the pill-induced sleep, my brain feels like it’s emerged from a steamy shower into cool air. But I pretend I’m still groggy and not ready to eat, until Gavin takes the first slice. Sausage.
He bites it. Chews. Swallows. Nothing happens.
Then I take a slice of sausage, trying to randomize where I take it from—not quite my side of the pie, but also not right next to where Gavin’s slice was. Despite this tactical thinking, I acknowledge that getting poisoned or drugged would mean discovering the truth. And if my best friend is involved, what’s the point of living, anyway?
“So,” Gavin says, “when I got off the phone you were out and snoring, but I’m embarrassed to admit I watched the rest of that show.”
“I captioned that one. Fun episode.”
“So you know about the bear.”
“A real fuckin’ bear.” I shake my head.
“They put the dude in a sack, hung it from a tree—in a soundstage, sure—but then they got a real bear to show up and knock the sack around. And the guy’s definitely still in it! It’s not just a bunch of pillows or whatever.”
“Yeah, you can see him moving.”
“I guess they trimmed the bear’s claws? And it’s trained, of course. But what if the sack swung the wrong way and hit him in the nose or something, and he got pissed?”
“Movie bear. Doesn’t get pissed, I guess.”
Next he takes a slice of pepperoni, which means I can try it too. I take a slice next to his to maintain unpredictability.
“Speaking of your work,” he says, “are you gonna go tonight?”
I sit back in the chair and stare at the pizzas, both missing slices like countdown clocks. This is yet another moment that I wish could last forever. Actually, not this moment but a few minutes back, when we were talking about the soap opera bear and eating pizza on the couch in Gavin’s living room. All the familiar objects on the shelves around us. There’s the weed dragon Kobayashi curled around its glass spire next to a stack of Gavin’s books about various climbers who overcame obstacles and/or died on mountains all over the world. Gavin’s shoes by the door. Mine are there too.
A feeling surges down my back like scales pushing from my skin. “I don’t know if they’ll be there tonight.”
Gavin looks at the stub of his crust. “Have they been there before?”
“Close. Outside, in the parking lot. Maybe the building next door.”
“So they’ve got full coverage on your life? All the places?”
“All the places.” I tap my temple.
“When you told me this morning, I didn’t know what to say. It’s… really a crazy thing.”
The external acknowledgment makes my chest tremble. Part of me has started to acclimate after so many false alarms and false victories. Maybe that’s the experiment. For the observers’ presence to accrete onto my life.
I say, “Yeah, I wish I knew…”
“I don’t mean anything by this, and I know you’re not fucking around…” He stares at the bitten end of his crust. “But do you think it’s possible you’re… imagining them?”
“Like just voices in my head?”
He shrugs and nods.
“It’s…” A shiver moves through me.
“Maybe you could talk to someone.”
The resigned part of me pushes out its tendrils, wants to pull itself apart, wishes it didn’t have to exist, is encouraged by his words.
“It’s possible, I guess, and I’ve wondered about it. But I never let myself stop to seriously consider it.” My eyes sting. I remove my glasses. “Because if it’s real, and I let my guard down for one second… that’s when…” I put the slice down and hold my palms over my eyes. My mouth grimaces. A warm line slides down my chin.
Alarm bells sound in my brain, orders zap to my muscles to bend my face back into neutrality, or to hide my face in my arms and hold my breath to squelch vulnerable sounds. Be still until it passes. Don’t let them win.
Is this the result they want? Why not let them win? Maybe telling another person is the end condition of the test. To see how long I’d keep this weird secret to myself. They could be coming up the stairs right now.
They know. My heart rate tells them I’m crying. And the ringing in my ears. The muffled head-down sobs in my arms. The way my torso convulses. Part of me hopes the shifting pressure in my head is the chip self-destructing, releasing me from their stare and dissolving like they never existed.
But even with my chip gone, if they got to Gavin—maybe something in the pizza, maybe something else a long time ago—they have a front-row seat through his eyes and ears, filling their hard drives and copying to numerous backup drives at several megabytes per second.
Fans whir, tower lights flash.
Next on I Hear You Watching…
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This made me feel sad and hopeful at once. I'm relieved Alex has finally told someone. I also really enjoyed this chapter. I think I've been waiting for him to make helpful contact with a friend for some time now, and possibly feeling a bit impatient that it's taken so long.