Drones

Little mountain lions with human hands.

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. The observers can measure his heart rate and influence his bodily functions. After many attempts to obtain concrete proof, Alex confided in his friend Gavin, who suggested a camping trip with their friend Eli as a change of scenery. While packing, Alex overheard one of his observers take the other hostage. Alex and his friends hiked through the night into the wilderness.

After breakfast the three of us pump water from the creek and wade in barefoot, slipping on rocks and making “yip” and “yoo” noises about the cold water.

We leave camp with just our day packs, carrying water, snacks, some pot, and my book on animal tracks. Along the riverbank I find a walking stick and use my knife to scrape away the burnt bark.

Someone says, “Up and running?”

I look to the hillside where Eli says he may have seen an animal.

“Yeah, feed’s up.”

“Look at that, heart’s going already. You think he can hear us?”

“Alex, can you hear us?”

Yes, I hear me loud and clear.

“That’s a yes.”

“Look, fuckhead, you cost us a lot of fucking money with that shit you pulled!”

“You’re lucky we have this backup!”

What’s this “we” stuff? Isn’t one of you taped to a chair?

“Not anymore! Ha! Surprise, motherfucker!”

Nothing’s a surprise at this point. You were never a hostage, and there never was a chair. You’re right here with me.

“We’ll murder you and your friends if you do anything like that again.”

“Yeah, we’re watching all of you now.”

Oh yeah? You put chips in my friends, or what?

“Drones, idiot.”

Wouldn’t we hear them?

“Not these ones. From a distance we can zoom way in. We could read a fucking book over your shoulder, and you’d have no idea.”

Interesting. I look around. But what if we see them?

“Painted blue. And it really is a beautiful day, isn’t it? Not a cloud in the sky!”

Yes, it’s beautiful. I concentrate on a patch of sky in my mind. There’s a hint of something hovering. I can almost hear its buzz, like a mosquito, in my jaw.

“Dude, number four’s bugging out.”

“We’re out here with you now. Close enough that if you pull any shit, we’re gonna cut your friends’ throats while they’re asleep and make you disappear.”

“Hey, there’s some poop over here!”

“Alex, get the animal tracks book!”

An explosion vibrates softly in my jaw, like popping my ears underwater.

“Four’s dead!”

The sky is clear. No flash, no puff of smoke, no tinkling of shrapnel on wood and rock.

“God dammit, you fuck! Stop doing that!”

“Coyote, would you say?”

“Or bobcat.”

“Now seven’s going.”

“But seven’s looking right at them. They’re not doing anything, just looking at shit on the ground.”

“What shit?”

“Literal shit! On the ground!”

I hold back a laugh.

“Bobcat or mountain lion?” Eli asks. “They’re not the same thing, are they?”

“Check the book.”

“Alex, you got the book?”

“Listen to seven’s audio.”

“How the fuck is he doing that? He’s doing something!”

“No, he’s just standing there too.”

I pull the book from my pack, plant my walking stick with each step as I approach Gavin and Eli, and I feel like a fucking wizard. I bestow the book upon them like a grimoire to summon the creature’s spirit from the poop.

Gavin looks at me. “Why are you smiling like that? Do you know what it is?”

Eli makes a face, “Don’t tell me it’s human.”

“There’s no way that’s human.”

Another one pops in my ears and rings in my jaw. I can’t help grinning bigger.

“Shit, there goes seven!”

“FUCK YOU FUCKING FAGGOT FUCK, FUCKING STOP! FUCKING STOP NOW!”

I laugh.

“Did I step in some?” Gavin looks at the soles of his boots. “What’s so funny?”

Eli examines my face, then the poop. “Something we’re not seeing.”

I laugh harder.

And I focus again and imagine their computer sends a signal blast to all the drones. I picture each of them hovering like jellyfish above the shallow valley around us, and one by one they pop into tiny fireballs and sprinkle debris like pinches of pepper from the sky.

Distant fireworks.

I sit on a rock and watch the guys pry the poop apart with a stick.

“Some fur.”

“There’s our rabbit.”

“You think that’s a rabbit?”

“Prairie dog?”

The blackened trees dotting the valley around us stick up through new grass and wildflowers like frozen explosions. Mines gone off and paused midair. Parasitic blisters beneath the flesh of the earth bursting in the sun. I hear each of them blow as I look, one by one and simultaneously. The landscape explodes everywhere.

And they scream. So much that I think they’re dying.

---

I have an hour of peace, just the three of us tracking what we think is a mountain lion—“Gimme the book; this is a paw print,” or, “Broken branches. Something pushed through those bushes up the hill,” or, “Look, the top layer of dirt is scratched away.”

But they come back.

“Alex, say goodbye to your friends. We’re gonna murder you now.”

I’d love to see how you’ll do that. I’ve blown up your imaginary drones and two computer towers at this point. Time to send in the transparent tanks to blast us with ambient-temperature napalm?

“Look, fuck. Your implant chip is next to a nerve. If we send an impulse strong enough, you’ll have a heart attack and die. The chip is made to dissolve when it goes inactive, so no one will find it; no one will ever know we existed. And you’ll be dead.”

There’s a war on, but of the three of us in the war zone, I’m the only one who knows.

“Whether you believe us or not, you’re gonna die in the next hoar-waouwah.”

I sit on a rock looking out over the valley. Light glitters on the creek below.

“I mean, the next half-wshimawoa.”

“What’s going on?”

“I daou knwou!”

I focus on a phrase. I imagine it as immense block letters floating over the dust and dead trees, dragging heavy shadows.

“I yam aw fuhkring cowaid…”

“Dude, what’s wrong with you?”

“Ay caw mahe yeyw fukx sai woteyer I wanets! Lukit mee, I ame a peesh of shit and use my own insecurities to prey on others. But as a result, my life amounts to nothing! I want you to shove this microphone down my throat!” I feel him struggle back. “Nnooo dohn—yyyyess pleess do it! If you don’t feed it to me, I’ll eeet eyt meesailf! No, no, fucking donets do eyt! Pleayse do it, feeed mee! No! No, down’t!”

I take the observers in my hands like clay men and contort them to my will.

“Oh, fuck! Oh, my god!” I make him take a shotgun mic from the desk. “Oh-opennn wide!” He pries open the other’s jaw.

The eater’s voice gets louder as the mic enters his mouth, and I make him sing: “Hello, my bAAYbee! Hell-HOH, hy HAAARRhin! HEH-hoh, hy HAY-HIYE HAAAAA!”

The feeder’s arm is sunk to the elbow in the eater’s mouth. He struggles to remove it as he joins the song: “Send me a kiss by wire! Baby, my heart’s on fire!” Then he rips the mic back out, trailing snagged intestines like cable. “Telephooone, and tell me I’m your ooooown!”

I turn them by their shoulders like corkscrews and watch through my mind’s eye as their torsos twist into tight hourglasses, their organs constricting and displacing into their chests. Involuntary moans push from their lungs, and their spines pop, one after the other.

Small sounds, like chicken bone cartilage.

Gavin is on his hands and knees searching tiny ground-out pockets in the rock. He crawls sideways like a crab to get close without disturbing possible tracks. He has an extra pair of hiking socks tied around his knees to lessen the discomfort of crawling on grit.

Eli stands by huddled boulders searching the crevices for a lizard he saw.

The observers are quiet now. They’re wrung-out messes on the floor. A blood-spattered screen shows my heart rate, which is back down to a calm, even pace.

“I got something. Here’s a paw print!”

“A real one?”

“Come and see.”

Eli still stares into the boulders.

I squat by Gavin.

“Look,” he says. “There, there, there…” He glides his finger, zig-zagging where the front and back paws hit the ground. The steps vanish over a stretch of rock, then reappear across a patch of packed dirt and sand, clear enough that he finds the animal’s path up a slanted rock face to some dry grass that, despite the erasing effort of the wind, still looks parted from the animal’s passage. “What do you think? That’s it, isn’t it?”

I grin. “That’s gotta be it. Good eye.”

Eli turns with his hands cupped together. “I caught my guy, here.” He comes and opens his hands just enough for us to see. A lizard’s tiny flat head stares out at us. The rest of its body curls in a black S in the cave of Eli’s hands.

“You gonna name him?”

“Yeah. This is Walter.”

Walter shoots out, turning in the air like a spindly star on his way down, then scuttles across the ground with Eli after him and disappears into a crack.

---

We find a rabbit in the tangled shadow of a black tree. Its throat is open, its body hollowed out. Skin lies deflated over what’s left of its abdomen. Ants drink at its eye open wide in frozen surprise.

“Didn’t leave much for us,” Eli says. “You think rabbit eyes are any good? Like, on a bagel?”

Gavin snaps a charred branch from the tree and uses it to lift the pouch of skin. “Probably happened this morning.”

“We’re on the hunt for a ruthless killer.” I smile.

Gavin says, “Mountain lion’s just doing what it has to do. Can’t go around picking berries.”

“True. No basket.” Eli looks for his own prodding stick.

Gavin pushes the skin back as far as he can, revealing the spine and the cavern of the rib cage. “Mountain lion’s got no fingers for picking. Or weaving a basket.”

“What about a mountain lion with human hands?” I say.

“That’s terrifying,” Gavin says.

“Climbing up trees.”

“Yeesh.”

Eli examines residue on the end of his stick. “They say there are still like five million undiscovered species.” He stares at the horizon. “Something like that could be out there somewhere.”

“How do they know it’s five million if they’re undiscovered?” I ask.

Gavin sits on a rock, pulls out the pipe and weed and packs a bowl. “Undiscovered mammals, though?”

Eli tosses the stick down the hill we climbed. “No, they’re mostly insects. And a bunch of fish and invertebrates. They think there’re only about a dozen mammals left to discover.”

Gavin puffs on the pipe.

I say, “But what if one of those insects happens to be gigantic, and it looks like a mountain lion with human hands?”

Holding smoke, Gavin grunts. “When I wake up screaming tonight because I think one of those things is chasing me, I’m blaming you.” He exhales and gives me the pipe.

I pass it directly to Eli. “Imagine tumbling into a nest of those things, made out of mud and spit and tree fiber. Full of eggs. Some are hatching—little mountain lions pushing open their shells with human hands.”

Eli stares. “Something wrong with you, dude. You’re not even high.”

---

We prepare the fire early, while orange light still splashes the hills over a rising flood of dark in the valley. I walk through the dry grass collecting hunks of wood, and I hear them.

“Thought you could get rid of us?”

I was wondering where you assholes went. Good thing you had backup bodies ready, huh?

“Nah, we were just pretending to get hurt.”

“You can’t do shit to us, man, telekinesis isn’t real. Fuckin’ idiot.”

“Ow, what the fuck?” He wipes a trickle of blood from his ear.

Sounds real to me.

“Shut up, faggot FUCK! God dammit!”

“We’re gonna fuck you up so bad tonight, Alex. When you and your faggot friends are asleep, we’re gonna tie you all up and pull your nails out with pliers!”

Fingers or toes?

“Both. But we’ll let you choose which we do first.”

“Yeah, then we’ll cut a slit in your stomach and shove a hungry rat into it!”

Too cliché.

“How ‘bout we shove a glass rod into your urethra, and then snap it?”

That’s a bit more creative. But didn’t the Nazis do something like that? Unoriginal.

“Then we’ll…”

I make it a game: I have to find and pick up a piece of wood before they finish each violent description. With time, the descriptions become slower and more elaborate.

“And we’ll—we’ll, uh, take your arms and attach them behind your back, and we’ll use a rope to lift them up until they pop out of your shoulders!”

“Yeah, then we’ll cut ‘em off and use ‘em to beat you to death!”

And quieter. Like a radio on somewhere, listing torture techniques in an empty room.

As our fire grows I make each crackle the sound of something happening to their bodies. Bones snap, joints pop out of place, skin stretches. The bigger the sound, the more severe the result. They become fleshy gargoyles of bends, breaks, and bulges.

But I like the small pops best. Little bubbling movements under the skin that scare them more than anything. And I like ignoring their pleas for mercy while we talk around the fire.

I make them sing, and I hum along with them.

“What’s that?” Gavin asks.

I hum louder, drowning out their screams.

Eli says, “That’s that dancing frog song, right?”

I hum more, and we all sing.

By the end of the words we know, we’re alone again.

Next on I Hear You Watching…

Impatient to read the rest?

Or share your referral link and get a free copy of the ebook when three people subscribe!

---

---

Got a question about the book or my experience with hearing voices and psychosis? Don’t be shy! Join the chat and…