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, he rushed to his friend Gavin’s, got some much-needed sleep, and confessed to Gavin some of what’s been happening. Alex returned to his apartment to pack for a camping trip, and overheard one of his observers take the other hostage. He ignored their cries for help and made it back to Gavin’s apartment with his camping gear.
When voices come up the stairs, I run on tiptoe to the bathroom, but the downstairs neighbor hears me anyway.
“Running now,” she says. “It’s like a pack of elephants!”
I listen through the cracked door as keys jingle and ratchet in the lock. They enter laughing about something, and a heavy pack thumps on the floor. Thudding boots.
“Yo, Alex,” Gavin says from the living room.
Boots approach the bathroom. I silently close the door, then flush the toilet and wash my hands.
“Hey,” Eli calls through the door, “I hope that was a one, not a two.”
I dry my hands and open the door.
Eli leans against the doorframe with his arms folded—no weapons.
While Eli is in the bathroom, Gavin asks how things went at my place.
“Fine. Got everything.”
“Good. How are you feeling?”
“I’m good.”
“Good.” He seems to want to ask more, but isn’t sure what or how.
When Eli returns, we open our packs and go over our collective supplies. Gavin adds things from his cupboards.
We finish the pizzas. We all use the microwave, but I wait by it to open the door before it beeps.
Eli lets it beep while he messes with his pack. He also keeps his hiking boots on, and the floor grumbles, “What is it, a three-ring circus up there?”
Gavin and Eli don’t seem to hear her. Or if they do, they ignore it.
Gavin and Eli pass a pipe between them in the car.
I opt for a cigarette instead.
As traffic gathers they blow pot smoke out their windows in billows, and a woman in the next lane says, “You can’t smoke on the freeway! Fucking potheads, I’ll report you!”
I lock eyes on a passing building and pretend to read its sign while my eyes sweep back, but I only catch the front of her car.
“I see you with that cigarette. You’re not fooling anyone, you stoner piece of shit!”
I say, “You should probably put the piece away. Someone over there is freaking out.”
Eli lowers the pipe to his lap. “Who?”
“To the right, a little behind us.”
Eli reaches out his window and pivots the side mirror. “That guy?”
“Sounded like a woman, but I guess it could be a guy.”
“If anything, he’d be complaining he can’t partake with us.”
The other lane gains on ours, and the car creeps into view.
It is a guy. He’s driving a brown El Camino with primer spots on it. He has long hair pulled into a sloppy bun, and his arm has tattoos of screaming skulls on it. The woman must be behind us, or on the other side? Or nowhere?
The guy notices me looking, and I smile, squinting my eyes tight enough that for a second I leave the car, disappear from under his stare. But a smile-at-a-stranger length of time later, my eyes reopen and there he is, still looking at me, so I find a building to look at. I pretend to be interested in the differing qualities of light in the windows. Some clearly incandescent, some fluorescent… Is it enough to pull off seeming like an electrician? Would he believe that’s why I was looking his way?
Now he watches the road. Loose wisps of his hair twist in the breeze like snakes. His lane advances, so I get to see the El Camino’s flatbed where there’s a plastic laundry basket of children’s toys and a large collapsible dog cage.
I drag my cigarette and stew.
Everyone who looks in the back of this guy’s car—if they think anything about what they see—probably assumes he’s just a grungy family man. Or maybe they think he’s dropping off or picking things up at his baby mama’s place.
But when I see a basket of children’s toys plus a dog cage, I think: that guy locks up children.
Forget seeing kids in the grocery store, or passing them on the sidewalk, or being in the same building as them… The mere combination of objects in the back of his car—even in the absence of a child—is sinister.
Actually, with no kid around, the effect is worse. Is he “finished” with these items? Is he driving somewhere to set up his dungeon? Or is he making a contribution to someone else’s basement or warehouse full of whimpering children in cages? They each get one toy from the basket, shoved between the bars.
Now I don’t have to pretend to be an electrician; I’m staring at him as a responsible citizen.
“That guy may be a stoner,” I say, “but check out his other hobby.”
“What do you mean?” Eli asks.
“Look in the back.”
He laughs. “What? Oh wow, that’s a kiddie cage.”
“Right? That’s what I was thinking!”
Gavin looks and laughs too.
A wave of calm surges through my body, and I lean back in the seat. I stare hard at the messy bun on the back of his head, burn laser beams into his arm powerful enough to remove the tattoos. He’s the one you want. Follow him. Put a chip in his head. You could take down a whole pedophile ring. I glare at his license plate, repeat the letters and digits in my mind, mouth them silently, willing the observers to write them down.
Do you see this?
“We do. So?”
Are you gonna do something about it?
“What are we supposed to do? It’s a guy in a car.”
“Alex, he’s still got me taped up! Get your friends to drive to our place. Call the cops! I’m in the back room, when you go in the door it’s—”
Shut up! You see this pedophile, right?
His lane slows and we catch up to him again. I stare my lasers into his cheek. If he looks, I’ll give him a knowing grin and nod toward the cage.
“Pedophile? Takes one to know one?”
I’m fucking serious. Why the fuck would you follow someone like me who’s done nothing wrong, when there are actual criminals to be dealt with?
“Actual criminals? You only think he’s a criminal ‘cause he’s Mexican, you racist piece of shit.”
How is it racist to point out that this guy is transporting children’s toys and a fucking cage?
“I don’t see any kids around. If he was drooling over a kid like you did in the grocery store, then I’d be concerned. But he’s just a family man with a kid and a dog. You’re the creep who paid a website to get someone to fuck you.”
I lean between Gavin and Eli. “Hey, could you put on some music?”
“Sure, what do you want?”
I say, “Anything.” But that sounds desperate and weird, so I add, “Something cool.”
Gavin puts on a CD I don’t know. Upbeat rock.
I let it play for several seconds before saying, “Turn it up.”
He turns it up, but the music’s undertones still buzz with accusations and epithets.
I faintly recognize this stretch of highway, but now it’s evening and there’s nothing reminiscent of a space wormhole. The pavement bathed in sunset light looks earthen. Primeval. Like clay smoothed into a vast plane by thousands of hands.
Next on I Hear You Watching…
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