How Do You Feel

"Don't try our patience."

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 turned his apartment upside-down looking for surveillance bugs. Talking to the police only hurt his credibility. The observers have gone as far as reading his heart rate and predicting his feelings and actions. Then, inexplicably, they declared their experiment over and said they’d come to Alex’s apartment to debrief.

Pins and needles expand through my mind. Crevices parched from disuse are flooded with fresh blood. The tight rumble of anxiety is gone. I feel an openness, an all-encompassing awareness. I have a band of eyes all around my head, and I can see there’s nothing behind me, nothing hidden anywhere. I’m the only one, motionless. Everything moves around me. I am the center.

Because I’m still on the couch and my head is next to the door, the knock is loud.

The pins and needles descend into my chest. I want to skip the next few minutes. There are obligatory introductions to be made, because these people are strangers. But that unfamiliarity is only one-way—they know me intimately.

Though I’d argue they don’t know me personally.

I’m relieved to have cleaned up and showered, so we can meet each other as close to equals as I can manage.

They’ve seen me at my worst, watched it all happen through their omnipresent eyes. The whole big mess. They understand that everything was their fault.

I drag the couch from the entryway into its normal position. Then I stand at the door.

What’s the point of my hesitation? If they haven’t turned off the cameras, they can see me waiting. But I have to savor opening the door to the beginning of my post-observation life, whatever that means. Will I need therapy? I don’t feel like it, but maybe just because I’m buzzing with adrenaline. Mentally, I’m on top of my game. I had to be to keep in stride with their shenanigans. They pushed my logic to limits I didn’t think possible. They said they were surprised by my resilience. How many other people have they put through this? Apparently those other poor souls broke. I didn’t.

Another knock, harder. Afraid of blowing their cover? Maybe all their time spent hunched over a computer in a dark room engendered some agoraphobia in them, too.

Give me a second, god dammit. I need a moment. I don’t say this out loud because I’m not ready to hear their voices yet, unadulterated by tinny microphones.

When the other subjects opened the door, were they just a blubbering mess? Did this sort of meeting even occur, or did the observers have to rush in for damage control? The others might’ve been permanently changed, involuntary patients, rendered forever incapable of coping with normal life.

But what’s so special about me? Maybe that’s something we’ll talk about. I wonder what the first question will be. Something like, How do you feel?

I’d laugh. Well, I feel like dancing and scooping your eyes out with a spoon.

How could I ever answer that? How do you feel. I’d probably ask, How am I supposed to feel? And what would they say to that?

Another more urgent knock.

I wipe my hands on my shirt and unlock the door. But when I open it there’s only one person, and his first question is: “Dude. Can I use your bathroom?” It’s Gavin. He’s in his running clothes, sweaty and out of breath. “I’m sorry, it’s an emergency.”

No one else is with him. Or behind him. Or anywhere; it’s just the two of us. The look in his eyes pushes me back, and I step behind the door. He moves past me, around the corner, and into the bathroom.

A breeze enters after him.

“Can you still hear me?” I ask quietly.

“Yes, we’re listening.”

I close the door. “Did you see what just happened?”

“Yes.”

“What do I do?”

“We wait for him to leave. Only a slight hiccup.”

“He might notice the hole in the ceiling. I assume I shouldn’t say anything.”

“You assume correctly. This is to remain between us.”

“Even though I told the police?”

No response.

“What, you’re gonna tell me those weren’t real cops? They were agents of yours?”

“We won’t confirm anything until we can speak in person. We must be very careful, you understand.”

“I didn’t tell him anything, but he knows something’s up.”

“We know.”

“And you know I told Matt.”

“Yes.”

I lock the front door. I want to close the blinds again. “He might notice the power’s off.”

“You mustn’t tell him anything.”

“What does that mean? If I say something, you’ll have to kill him?”

“Don’t try our patience.”

The toilet flushes.

“You said this was over.” I take the smoke detector from the coffee table and put it in a cupboard.

“This unforeseen interference arrived before we could end things to our satisfaction. Now we must wait, and you must avoid complicating things for yourself and your friend.”

The sink gurgles and splashes.

“Your accelerated heart rate shows that you understand the gravity of the situation.”

I sit on the couch and light a cigarette.

Gavin comes out of the bathroom. “I’m really sorry, man. Were you jerkin’ it or something?”

I try to smile. “Funny. No.”

He points at the hammer on the coffee table. “Doing some handiwork here in the dark?”

“No, that’s from—I was gonna take a nap. The hammer’s from another thing.”

The splash pattern on his shirt shows that he rinsed his face. “Ah, sorry, I should let you sleep.” He takes a step. “Oh, how’d the recorder work for you?”

“Good, yeah. It’s cool.”

He waits.

“What?”

“You can’t tell me what it’s for yet?”

A large hand grips the back of my brain. Between my blinds I see enough of their window to know it’s open, just a crack. Their screen blocks any visibility beyond it, but they have a clean line of sight to Gavin.

“Not yet,” I say. “But soon. And thank you, it was a big help.”

“Sure.” He waits.

He probably sees the way I’m sitting, unwilling to move at all, breathing slow but shallow breaths. I keep my eyes on his face, because as soon as I look away their red dot will appear on his temple.

We’re in another triangle constellation, like when he showed me the map. But now the third point is an unseen intruder. My point is fear. Gavin’s point is care, confusion, and fragile human meat that could spray across my kitchen at any second.

“Do you have to go?” I ask.

“Sure. I can. If you’re good.”

After this cagey performance of mine they might decide Gavin is too suspicious. I can’t send him back out there.

“No, that’s cool. Stick around.” I stand. “Want a glass of water?”

“Oh, that’d actually be amazing.” He sits on the couch.

I go to the window and give a serious glare in their direction as I pull the plastic chain, rotating the blades to block their view of Gavin on the couch.

“Dark in here.”

“Yeah, I’ll try to sleep in a bit.”

“I can go, I don’t wanna keep you up.”

“No, I’m up now anyway. Stay.” In the few steps to the kitchen, I realize that if they’re using infrared, they could line up a clean shot through the blinds. At least putting the smoke detector in the cupboard might keep them from triggering its self-destruct or gassing mechanism.

“Smoke a bowl?” he asks.

“Nah, thanks.” I need to stay clear-headed for my interview. “But you can.” I hand him the water. “So, there’s a story? You were running and suddenly had to pee?”

“No, man, I had to take a shit.” He drinks and gives a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”

I laugh. “No worries.” I get my pipe and weed from the desk drawer and blow out the ash.

“So, okay, you remember that girl Tiff from the dorm? Remember when she was talking about running marathons and how she said sometimes she’d ‘poop a little bit’?”

“Oh, no.”

He laughs, and slips into Tiff’s Jersey accent, “Yeah, sometimes when you’re runnin’, you know, you just kinda poop a li’l bit.”

“I think she realized she sounded crazy.” I join him on the couch with the weed.

“She did sound crazy… until today. But dude, she was right. Something about the movement, I don’t know, of your legs or your guts or both, it just shakes loose. Never happened before. I almost lost it and had to duck into someone’s yard. I was literally targeting every large bush to figure out if I could hide behind it or not. Problem is, in most peoples’ front yard, if you’re behind a bush it means you’re in front of a window.”

I pass him the loaded pipe and the lighter, and he takes a long pull that cuts short into coughing.

I revel in the fear and courage of that moment. Sure, I’ve had similar thoughts for years. But here he’s telling me his body was about to force itself to evacuate in public. All the awkwardness of squatting in the woods, but with cars and windows and other people all around.

I think of the man I saw at the bus stop. I was one such onlooker, watching him go into his own hand. I don’t think anything happened to him as a result. He probably left it there on the ground and moved on.

Maybe the trick is not to care.

I’d care. And Gavin cares, which is why he panicked.

“You were lucky it happened nearby, so you could just come here.”

“It wasn’t nearby! It started over on Moorpark! But I didn’t have the balls to do it in a yard, so I went to the river thinking I could find a patch of trees. But everybody’s walking their goddamn dog there. They probably knew what was up, too, I was probably walking funny.”

What a story for the observers to overhear after piling such judgment onto me. None of us are immune. Everybody walks funny sometimes. Everybody poops.

They probably watched Gavin use the toilet here.

“So you walked all the way from Moorpark to my place on the verge of shitting yourself?”

“Yes. I waddled all the way here.” In the dim light his eyes are comically serious. “That’s like a quarter-mile.”

“Well, I’m glad you made it.”

“Me too. Jesus.” He takes the pipe again.

Then I hear it. Quieter than normal, so maybe from the smoke detector or somewhere else further away. An observer says, “We couldn’t stop him.”

I look at Gavin to see his reaction. He holds a hit with his eyes closed.

What do they mean, “we couldn’t stop him”? Do they mean me? They couldn’t stop me from letting Gavin in? Or do they mean they couldn’t stop Gavin from coming here? How controlled is the area around my apartment? After I borrowed the recorder, did they start watching him too?

“Yeah,” the observer says, muffled, “he’s still there.”

“Do…” I begin.

Gavin looks.

“Do you hear that?”

He exhales and listens. “Hear what?”

“Like a small, tinny voice.” I wait to hear it again myself.

“No. Like someone outside?” He listens. “What did they say?”

The fist tightens in my skull. “It said, ‘We couldn’t stop him,’ and then it said, ‘He’s still there.’”

“Rate’s up,” the muffled voice says.

“No.” Now a question on his face. “I didn’t hear it.”

“Okay.”

His eyes burn my cheek. “Alex, what’s up?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what’s going on? Are you in trouble? Does this have to do with the recorder?”

“No, I’m just tired, I think.” I watch him chew on that.

“Work?”

“Yeah, I guess. Catches up with me sometimes.” My throat tightens. “I’m fine.”

“He’s in the orange. Alex, keep breathing, and get your friend out of there for your own safety.”

The chip must be in my ear. That explains the heart monitor and the fact that only I can hear them. And the eerie quality of hearing their voices at the same volume wherever I go—whichever room of the apartment, with the shower on, the neighbor’s AC unit humming, out on the street…

Maybe it’s somewhere under my skin, against a bone. In science class, I clamped my teeth onto a metal wire with sound played through it, and I could hear the sound faint but clear as it vibrated in my jaw. When other students tried it, I couldn’t hear a thing.

The voices are only for me.

I start a breath pattern I learned in a yoga class. The instructor said inhaling through the nose and exhaling out the mouth is a way to ensure regular oxygen absorption without hyperventilating. I do this as subtly as I can to keep Gavin from noticing.

The world past the blinds rises and falls like the horizon on a ship.

In the nose and out the mouth, it’s a bit like circular breathing. But then thinking the phrase “circular breathing” is a mistake, because it makes me feel like the ship isn’t rocking but rotating, like a slow-motion bullet over the sea. The water rises to fill the window completely, all swells and chop, and eventually the sky reappears as the ship keeps turning, righting itself, only clouds for a weightless moment, and water rises again from the bottom. Spiraling between sea and sky.

“What’s that?”

I look where Gavin is pointing, feel my gyroscopic inertia shift as I turn my head toward the hole in the ceiling.

“Ah, my smoke detector. Had to disconnect it.”

“It was bugging out, or what?”

“We’re at high orange, imminent panic attack.”

“No, just beeping at me. I’ve gotta talk to the landlord about it.”

“Huh. I’ve never seen a wired one before. I guess it makes sense, though.”

I had never seen one before either. What if wired smoke detectors aren’t a thing?

“I’ll be right back.” I rise from the couch, leading with the lower half of my body. My legs guide me around the coffee table into the bathroom, turn me so my hands can close the door, then take two steps and kneel me at the toilet.

The first pushes are empty, but the third brings a mouthful of sour, syrupy bile and gummy gobs of egg. I convulse two more times, tears squeeze from my eyes. The giant imaginary hand holds the scruff of my neck, and now its partner wrings my torso.

When the clenching subsides, I try to breathe out through my mouth and in through my nose. I inhale sour breath from the toilet bowl.

“He’s breathing. Rhythms are leveling out.”

“Are you okay?” comes muffled from the living room.

“Yeah.” My voice is loud and close in the bowl. My breath ripples the sludge.

“Alex,” they say in my ear, or bones, or wherever, “your uninvited guest has to leave.”

I whisper, “Between you and him, you’re the uninvited guests.”

“This is not a game. We will use the necessary force.”

“Empty threat, like everything else you’ve said.” I listen to make sure I don’t hear Gavin struggling and trying to scream through a gag in the living room.

“Have you ever had a panic attack before now, Alex?”

Never.

“Where do you think this one came from?” They wait, to let it sink in. “Our finger is on the button. Do not test us.”

“Rate’s rising,” another says.

The cloud of bile slows its swirl in the water. I wipe my mouth with toilet paper, flush, wash my hands and brush my teeth, dab my eyes on my sleeve, and return to the living room.

“Are you okay?”

“I think I ate something bad. I’m good now, though.” I fill my glass at the sink and drink. “I’m sorry, man, I think I do need to sleep.”

Gavin puts the pipe on the coffee table and blows a cone of smoke. “Sure. You should do that. I’ll see you later.” He gets up and stretches, all meat and bone.

Their finger is on the button.

“Actually,” I say, “I could use a walk first. Some sunlight. I’ll walk you back, then sleep.”

---

One person jogs on the opposite sidewalk, their head bobs above parked cars. An attack could come from anywhere. Maybe behind us. I pretend to stretch my neck to look back. I laugh, too—carefully timed with things Gavin or I say when it might make sense to laugh.

On Ventura I realize Gavin is the one walking street-side. I hang back, pretend to get a better look at a billboard, then run up around a palm tree to his other side, to ensure I’m near the street. He veers to make room, oblivious to my trick. I can breathe a little easier, confident that if they send a car to jump the curb, it’ll probably hit me first.

No one on the sidewalks or in cars seems to look at us, which is concerning. I assume when I look away from each person, their glare snaps back onto us. But they hide their glares from Gavin so he doesn’t catch on.

I turn and walk backwards for a moment, knowing that between his field of view and mine, we have 360 degrees covered.

“Fancy walking,” he says.

“Don’t wanna poop a little bit when you’re going backwards,” I joke, “you might step in it.”

“That’s true,” he says.

I turn back around.

He says that he and Eli decided on Los Padres, if it’s okay with me. Of course it’s okay with me. He describes what he’s seen in photos of the campsites and surrounding area.

And I think, How is this of interest to anyone but us? Who the fuck cares what I’m doing right now? Nobody should. Not even them. They can’t murder us in plain sight. Maybe kidnap us, but someone would see it happen. Unless the entire city is in on it, but that’s a massive operation. And for what?

The sun is high, the light is warm, our shadows are short. I resume my breathing pattern and feel the ground harden beneath me and stay beneath me. On the horizon buildings sit, cars come and go, lights change—all of it passes beneath me, around me, as I walk fixed in place. Gavin, too. We’re two small gears turning the giant roller of the earth.

I imagine walking through Los Padres, over hills of scrub brush, my booted gear teeth digging into the ground to move the earth beneath me. With Gavin and Eli contributing, the three of us could get it turning pretty well. Roll on into forever.

---

We reach Gavin’s apartment and hug good-bye. I reassure him that I’m fine, that the walk and visit have done me good, my stomach has settled, and now I’ll go home to sleep.

When he opens his door, I sweep my eyes through his apartment and see no one there. He turns and smiles, “Later, dude,” and shuts the door.

I wait, listening for sounds of a struggle.

After I pass back through his building’s creaky front door, it feels much harder to turn the earth by myself. Going downhill from his cul-de-sac it’s like a big hand cranks the earth beneath me, forcing my pace. And when the sidewalk flattens out I have to push off with each step, pull with my knees and lift my feet so I don’t catch and fall.

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