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. Desperate to escape, Alex fled into the night, miles down the freeway to an empty parking lot, where he used tweezers and a magnet to search his body for a chip. The magnet against Alex’s ears caused the chips to malfunction and screech feedback in the observers’ ears. In the early morning he stopped to see Lili, the woman he’d met on a hookup site, with whom he’d had a rapport, but her reaction to the impromptu visit made him realize he’d gone too far.
Even at 7:30 a.m., my hash brown patty has the outer chew and inner squish of something day-old reheated. I sit on a plastic bench in a small alcove off the main dining room. The phrase “dining room” makes me think the cobalt sky I see through the sticker ads on the window should be a gray-orange sunset, and I should be eating a burger and fries on my way home, where I’d go to sleep like everyone else.
Sleep…
They’d stopped screaming before I ordered my meal, but the tone still hums in my head. I picture them lying on the floor of their room. One monitor shows my sad, hunched form on the bench; another looks through my eyes at the single bite I’ve taken from my McMuffin; another shows the regular peaks of my heartbeat, calm now; and the air in their room is thick with feedback, the computer’s breathless scream.
They may not be human. There may not be a chip. They could have rays that read human thought and bodily functions, and laser-focused megaphones that project their human voice facsimiles into my ears alone.
I remember Flatland, a book narrated by a square who, like his fellow Flatlanders, lives in a world with only two dimensions. When a sphere visits Flatland, the square perceives only a 2D slice of it—a circle.
My point of contact with these beings is in the limited plane of my conscious thought.
One of them was assigned to follow me, and it performs transdimensional acrobatics like a jellyfish forever turning inside-out while its tendrils keep a tight hold on my mind. It speaks to me in voices I recognize and understand. It can move and act in ways I cannot—its opposable thumbs have opposable thumbs. I’m a paper doll in its voluminous clutches.
Maybe we’ve always seen and felt these beings slipping into our dimension, but we’ve mislabeled them. Our trees are their antennae sending and receiving signals. Or the clouds are their thoughts made visible in our atmosphere. Or the cotton of our clothes is their hair, and we pick it, spin it into fabric, and unwittingly drag these things tethered to us like balloons on the wrists of children.
Maybe the mental rumbling I feel as more people enter the restaurant and spill out to the tables around me—more eyes with whom to avoid contact, for whom to act casual, I am tired of pretending, all the world’s a fucking goddamn stage—maybe this rumble comes from the interdimensional being attached to the back of my head.
The thing might feel the rubbery shard of hash brown lodged between my back teeth, and the scrape along my tongue as I try to dislodge it.
It seems to have a deep interest in human shame. Shame is its music or its food.
A woman appears with a tray at the edge of my vision. I think she looks at me briefly before sitting at the window.
I’m hunched over my tray like a ghoul, so I sit up, and my arms rise automatically to conceal my straightening as a stretch. Just in case she’s in on this, and the observers are informing her with an earpiece or hand signals from the parking lot. Or maybe she can read my thoughts because the tentacles of her being are commingling with those of my being.
Because she was dim in my peripheral vision, I initially assumed she was Black, but when I pretend to look at something out the window and see that she isn’t, I feel a chill of relief. For the moment, “racist” is off the observers’ list of possible accusations.
A male voice from around the corner says, “He wishes she was Black, I heard it.”
No, I hoped she wasn’t, so you couldn’t—
“He’s relieved she’s white because he only wants to sit by white people,” says a female voice.
Where are they watching from? Is it that woman with her toddler?
“Oh, so he’s cool with fucking a Black person, but he won’t sit by them?”
“That’s what it sounds like.” The mother doesn’t seem to mind the man’s strong language around her child.
Staring down at the word search printed on my placemat—seeing MILKSHAKE and BIGMAC and FRENCHFRIES glow among the gridded nonsense, finding that the letters around the edges of the grid are anagrams for KILL and RAPE and RACIST, and a cartoon cat points at a letter W, which I follow in a meandering zig-zag through the middle of the grid to spell WE SEE ALL—my hackles tell me that the woman seated near me suspects my casual act. She’s tense.
Of course she is, considering this chatter from the other customers.
She’s possibly my age, maybe a bit younger. I avoided getting a good look. Could be having breakfast before work. She’s in a fitted purple jacket with the sleeves rolled up. Her straight brown hair hangs freshly washed and combed down her back, and her jeans hug her butt in an upside-down heart on the stool. Stop looking.
“He’s thinking about it.”
I’m not looking.
“Those jeans are so tight, Alex,” an observer says, “you know she’s looking to fuck.”
The other adds, “Why’d she come into this tiny corner of the restaurant unless she’s fishin’ for you?”
“Hey!” the first screams. “The guy behind you is staring at your ass!”
I worry that holding my jaw shut will amplify their sound in my teeth for her to hear, but opening my mouth might create a better resonance chamber, so I clamp my lips between my teeth as a damper.
“He’s a deviant! Watch out!”
She’s on her phone. I can hear the little clicks as she types. Reporting to them.
“I don’t know why she’s taking the risk,” the concerned mother says, “she really should move.”
“There’s too many people around for him to try anything sexual, thank god,” says the guy.
“Still, he’s clearly been pushed to the edge.”
Pushed to the edge—is this empathy? Does she know this, or is she reading a wildness in my eyes?
“Alex, reach around and grab her tit.”
“She’s already wet for you, dude, we can tell. She’s got a chip in her too.”
My heart trips on its rhythm. I hadn’t considered that this could be happening to strangers around me. How many do they have going right now, just in Los Angeles?
“Not many for now,” one says, “but a strange side effect is that chips gravitate toward other chips.”
“Yeah, somehow—we still don’t know how—they find each other.”
Are you talking to her right now, too? Are we just a couple of dolls you’re knocking together?
“Nah, she’s got other people working on her. We know them, though. We could talk to them for you, if you want. Put in a good word. But I’m telling you, you don’t need our help.”
“She found you, Alex. Go to her.”
I imagine us escaping together into the woods.
Or atop a mountain with nothing but rocky cliffs on all sides, and we’d use a pulley system to get to our house. While at home, we’d pull up the ropes so no one else could use them. If the house ever caught fire, we’d just sit and watch it burn, knowing that even the fire department couldn’t reach us. That’s the price we’d pay for living as free as we could. Then we’d move on to somewhere equally remote.
We’d visit town maybe once a month for supplies. And knowing our chips were back in reception range, we’d train ourselves to keep our minds on a set list of things—no personal information or anything that could provide them a way back into our lives. We’d add a few jokes to play on the observers, like thoughts of moving to impossible parts of the globe. They’d think they got a hot lead, and scramble for transport to Siberia—but then we’d go nowhere.
I smile down at the word search, where I’ve found a path in the mess of letters that spells EXIT.
“That plan wouldn’t work now, ‘cause you just told us about it. You gotta wait till after you move to the mountaintop to think about that kind o’ shit. Now grab her fucking tits!”
Maybe I’d run errands in town while think-repeating a word or phrase, for old time’s sake. Annoying, annoying, annoying…
After some time together, this woman and I might be intimately close. But I would also train myself to never, ever think of her naked while we were within range of the observers.
“What a fucking gentleman. I guess chivalry isn’t dead. Are you gonna do something about that boner, or what?”
I don’t have a boner. She’s not here for me. Please don’t do anything to this girl. It’s a goddamn miracle she hasn’t already seen me and screamed.
“Yank her off the stool by her hair, then get on top of her and put your dick in her mouth.”
My heart is fast, my palms are hot.
“Alex, her hair looks so soft. Probably smells amazing. What do you guess? Almond? Coconut? I think something fruity, judging by the look of her ass.”
“He’s not listening to us anymore. Our man’s on a mission. Grab her hair, Alex. Pull her head back far enough to bury your face in her tits.”
“Wait, no, see if you can get your dick in her mouth and your face in her tits at the same time.”
“Oh, that would be amazing. Alex, do that!”
The mental images are so strong, I can feel her hair in my fist. Like the zing of lemon juice before it hits your tongue. I close my eyes. But I worry I’ll open them to find the lapels of her jacket against my face, her smell in my nose, her screams in my ears.
“She won’t scream as much with your dick in her mouth.”
“You’ll miss your chance.”
Get the fuck out of my head! I don’t want to do any of these things!
“You popped a boner, dude. That’s intent.”
Intent to do what? She’s attractive. That just happens sometimes.
“No, you popped a boner in a restaurant, you sick fuck. While we were feeding you rapey ideas.”
That’s not why. Fuck you, that’s not why.
“Your body doesn’t lie.”
My muscles hold tight. I want to squeeze myself so small that I fit through a hole into the other dimension. Rip the tendrils from the back of my skull. I’d like to see the truth now, please. I’ve been so patient.
A tapeworm can travel through a person’s bloodstream to the brain and lay its eggs there, where they’re attacked by the person’s immune system and never hatch; they become cysts that cause seizures and lesions. It’s a horrible mistake of the natural world that benefits neither the tapeworm nor the human. Yes, the Lord works in mysterious ways.
All of this could be explained by my mind lacquering parasite eggs in a protective shell, like pearls in an oyster. Maybe this has nothing to do with shame. Maybe my shame and fear are side-effects, like when a lesion or a tumor or a ruptured blood vessel in the brain changes someone’s personality. A tossed pebble creates ripples upon waves upon currents upon tides.
I crumple the greasy paper on the tray and finish my burnt coffee, staring into the cup, watching the dark water disappear into me. I look at the pastel-stripe wallpaper as I stand and go to the trashcan. I ask a cashier for the restroom key while averting my eyes.
As I walk away, she tells a guy at the soda machine, “He’s gonna go jerk it now.”
“Fucking pervert,” the guy says. “Got an eyeful of that girl, and now he can’t help himself.”
“Place your bets!” says the man in the dining room.
Someone laughs.
Another shushes.
“Pull her hair! Grab her tits! Do it now!”
Halfway to the bathroom, I stop and loudly say, “No.”
The woman at the window turns her head to listen. She knows this is our moment. I’ll speak for both of us.
“Can we say the jig is up?” I ask the people at the far tables. “Call a truce?”
They look at me.
“What does the end of this look like?” I walk toward their section.
The employees at the register are watching me too.
“What do I have to do? Shrivel up and disappear? Attack someone? What will satisfy you?”
They look surprised. Some point their phone cameras at me.
“Or are you all just day players? Extras? Do you even know what this is?”
A fryer beeps. Even the employees in the back are watching through the heated shelves of food.
“Sir, do you need something?” says the cashier.
Her calling me “sir” makes my neck go cold. It’s almost more insulting than any of the alternatives.
I turn to her and say, “Stop!” My voice rings in the space. “Just stop everything now! That’s what I need. What do I have to say to get you all to stop? I don’t know what they’re paying you, but it’s blood money!”
Another employee says, “Sir, please leave.”
The cashier tells him quietly, “He’s got the bathroom key.”
I hold up my hands. “I’ve said my piece.” I turn to the customers. “I won’t bother you anymore. I beg you to do the same for me.” I motion to the woman by the window. “And the rest of us.”
She’s got her phone aimed at me too. Maybe she’s just another plant after all. Or she’s recording this for herself, to watch when this is over and shiver with sense-memory adrenaline from our moment of liberation.
When I walk back to our section, she shifts on her stool and holds her phone tighter with both hands.
I smile. “You know I’m not the one you have to worry about.” I continue to the bathroom door. “Good luck.”
I use the sticky key to enter a cream-colored space with a mirror and sink on one wall, a toilet and urinal on the other. The door locks behind me, and for a moment I’m safe. My whole body pounds and vibrates. The light is harshly real. I could stay here forever.
But they’d call the police, bust in, plant a gun or a bomb and lock me up. They’re probably calling the police now. I shouldn’t stay longer than it would take to pee and wash my hands—quick enough that they can’t claim I masturbated.
I look in the mirror, and my face pulls into an expression that I hope inspires empathy in whoever or whatever is watching. I stare into my eyes—into their eyes.
Maybe they’re gone. Maybe they’ve finally pulled the plug.
I try to see into my ear canal until my eyes hurt.
I wonder if this room is the inside of a hollow pearl lodged in the mind of a greater being. And that being is dragging a magnet across its flesh, desperate to remove me, the parasite. When the magnet nears the pearl, the air will turn deafening.
Next on I Hear You Watching…
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ironically, I think shame and fear are real for him, rather than side effects - but his psychotic experience is bringing shame and fear to the fore.
"I remember Flatland". I was unaware of this book. Thanks for including it and making me curious about whether it was a real book or something you'd cooked up for your novel.