Crickets

Walk like you're leaving your own house.

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…

Alex hears strangers mocking him wherever he goes. He searched his apartment for surveillance bugs and got skepticism from the police. The observers revealed they were measuring his heart rate and influencing his actions, and then they induced a panic attack. His mounting desperation triggered an elaborate death fantasy, a dissolution into anonymity and nonexistence.

I wake in blue twilight, a lump on the floor. My limbs are cold and stiff, like empty clothes dug from the rubble of that collapsed house by the sea.

Something slips into the clothes. Uncrumples and animates them.

Volition returns to my body, buzzes in my core, pushes outward, stings through my arms and legs. I find I can move. I can stand. I am the vengeful undead.

The light is on in their window. Bright points shine through the holes where their blinds are threaded together.

I put on a coat that’s long enough to hide the hammer handle sticking out of my back pocket.

The air is cool and fresh on my skin. I witness the moment when the yellow orbs of the streetlights come on. Crickets chirp in the hedges. Let my ears bleed, and let it hurt if it must, as long as after healing I hear only crickets.

A car comes down the street. The driver looks at me. This is the end of the movie, is it not? This is the moment I take drastic action, and they intervene. They knock me out, throw me into the car, and drive me somewhere secluded where, when I awaken, one of them monologues an explanation, and at the climax of the speech another shoots me in the back of the head.

The car keeps going, stops at the sign, and doesn’t even stay long enough to see me turn and start up the neighbors’ walkway.

I remember this view of their house from when I first stepped through the invisible wall at the sidewalk. Now I reuse the hole I tore into their world, float up the walkway. I fantasize pounding through the door with the hammer. It would take many swings, but each dent would bring me closer to them. I’d pound until a hole formed, and then I’d pound around the edges of the hole. Eventually the hole would be big enough for me to reach through and unlock the door for myself.

I’d listen to their screams, focus as intensely on them as I have their tiny voices coming through the smoke detector. I’d record their screams in my mind. And after I’d destroyed them, I’d destroy my ears and replay their screams until I grew tired of them. And then I’d play the crickets and live out my days in that indifferent seesaw buzz.

I knock.

Crickets in a nearby bush quiet at the sound.

I keep my eye on the window by the door. The blinds don’t move. The cracks between the blinds are dark.

I knock again, harder.

I lean, listen, pull hard with my ear. Either I’ll hear them whisper to each other inside, or I’ll pull hard enough to suck a bullet through the door. The elation it would bring. The final spark in my mind would express, Aaaaahhh… and I’d slump into the bush, feel the leaves rattle and scratch on my skin. And hopefully my awareness would remain long enough to hear the crickets when they calm and start again.

I knock even harder.

I wish I could see them through the wall as blobs of heat pacing from room to room, crouching at the corners of windows upstairs. Maybe grabbing weapons from the closets.

I bang on the door.

Calling the police. That’s probably what’s happening. Had they seen me from a window? At such an angle to notice the hammer jutting up under my jacket? The police are noting that the caller’s address is next-door to the strange person who requested assistance very early this morning.

I knock again, and resent that it’s weaker than the last. They’re safe behind their locked door and drawn blinds. They’ve always had the advantage.

A clicking sound comes down the street—a dog’s claws on the sidewalk. An older man walks with the dog. If he isn’t already one of them, this guy would probably still report me.

“Hey, guys?” I say through the door.

I turn and go back down the walkway. I don’t look at the man. But I do shove my hand into my pocket, as if stowing my keys. Walk like you’re leaving your own house.

But he’s going the same direction as me; I can’t just turn up the stairs of my building and go to my apartment, or he’ll know something was up. Everyone’s going around looking for something to care about, their chance to be a hero. Would he see this as his chance? And if so, would he take it?

I turn down the alley. Walk like your car is parked on the next block. I shake my head, thinking, Damn street sweeping, had to park all the way—

As I walk I look up at their house and see the light on in the window. Blinds drawn. Is someone parting them with a finger to watch me go? To make sure I don’t climb the wall into their backyard? Call the cops, get me with trespassing—who knows what kind of trouble the hammer in my back pocket would add. Have me put away.

The clicking claws turn into the alley, god damn it, and now the man is pulling out his gun, or his chloroform, nodding and giving a hand sign to the eyes in the window. Once again they’ve tricked me into leaving my apartment, and when I had the chance to go home, turning away seemed like the safer option. Fucking moron.

I look for reflections out the corner of my eye, in the windshields of cars parked in the carports. I only turn far enough to see myself in them. No hands reaching for my throat. If I turn further it’ll be too obvious. Almost the end of the alley.

I don’t have the energy to walk for two hours again, to outsmart shifting shadows, so I turn to wind around the block to my building.

The man turns the other way back into the neighborhood. Exactly as he would if he were an old guy walking his dog in the evening. A fine performance.

I just have to turn right at the next corner, then up the stairs, and I’ll be home.

Cars whoosh by and shout over their own noise, pointing me out to each other. That’s the crazy guy. I saw him staring at a little kid’s ass in the grocery store. Then he gave an awful look to a Black woman in the parking lot. If there hadn’t been anyone else around, he would’ve raped her. It’s obvious he’s the type; look at him. What’s in his pocket? A gun or a knife? Why’d he circle around the block? He was knocking on his neighbor’s door a few minutes ago. A hammer? Is he going back to try again? If he turns right, he’s definitely going back. Yeah, if he turns we should call the police. That guy’s dangerous. Probably a serial killer on top of being a rapist. He’s walking around the neighborhood with a hammer in his pocket. It’s only a matter of time. Fucking watch.

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