In the Soup

A breeze passes through me as if the walls disappeared.

May 13, 2025

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 following and mocking him wherever he goes. When recording them and confronting his neighbors didn’t work, he turned his apartment upside-down looking for surveillance bugs and blew a fuse disconnecting his smoke detector. Interrogating the smoke detector only inspired annoyance in both parties, so he used the last of his phone’s battery to call the police.

A black line drawing of Alex, the protagonist of "I Hear You Watching." He is white, short messy parted hair, glasses. He stares straight at you, unsmiling. The background is a close-up photo of clenched teeth.

“Do you feel you’re in danger now?”

“To be honest, no. But this has gone on for a while already, and they know that I know.”

“What is the nature of their stalking?”

“They hacked into my computer and phone, and—”

“The phone we’re speaking on right now?”

“Yes. They’re listening to this call, which could provoke a dangerous situation, but so far they haven’t made good on any threats of violence. They did follow and harass me, though. And I believe they bugged my apartment.”

“You located a bug in your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. All of my units are busy at the moment, but I’m going to send a couple of officers over. Again, do you feel you are in immediate danger?”

“No, I don’t for now. Door’s locked.”

“Okay, I’ll put this request out, and the officers will be there when they can. I’d estimate sometime within the next two hours. Is that all right?”

“Sure, okay. Thank you.”

She takes my name and address, and we hang up. Now my phone shows 5% battery. Fucking parasites. I turn it off.

“God fucking dammit! We’re gonna murder you!”

“I’d like to see you try.” I push the hammer headfirst into my back pocket and check the door locks. I lean my forehead on the door and let out a breath. It stinks against the glossy paint, the sour acid of a long-empty stomach.

Looking sideways at the window, I see a sliver of glass at the edge of the blinds. Just enough to shine a red dot onto my temple? Take the shot quick. Maybe lead on me a little, knowing I’ll jerk back from the door, so I still get it behind the eyes.

I flatten and slide against the wall into the living room and close the blinds.

Perimeter secured, I put a pot of water on the stove and use my lighter to ignite the gas and light a cigarette.

Even without electricity, I’ll have ramen noodles in no time.

And the hot water will serve in case they surprise me before then. In fact, I hope they arrive before the police so I can let them have it with the hammer—face and claw—and the pot of boiling water. I’ll stub out my cigarettes in their nostrils.

I imagine the cops arriving at my dark apartment, and me showing them the two culprits, weapons in their limp hands, blood in their hair, ashy filters in their noses, bloated burnt faces obscured by soft stringy noodles.

Please do come. I’m waiting.

Salty broth vapor rises from the bowl as my fork squishes in the mush.

The sound is repulsive.

When I stayed at my grandma’s as a kid, she always ate an English muffin for breakfast with the crossword puzzle. The only other sound was the ticking clock in the living room, so quiet that my brain amplified it, which amplified all other sounds—including the crackle and squish of grandma biting into her English muffin, the cavernous mush and churn of saliva. Muffled teeth clopping. Her tongue dislodging glop from her bridge. It sounded like hunks of raw meat in a hot water bottle. I could practically see the X-ray view of her oral cavity expanding and contracting, thick tongue writhing and contorting the pap until it was soft enough to swallow.

I had to actively remind myself that I loved my grandma, holding my cereal spoon tight enough to hurt my hand, struggling to eclipse her with the sound of my own chewing.

I tried excusing myself early, but I only made it a few steps before she asked why I didn’t finish my cereal. Then she took another bite of English muffin and chewed while awaiting my response.

“I’m just not hungry, I guess.”

She packed the lump into her cheek and pointed. “That’s a whole bowl of cereal you’re leaving there.”

“I’ll finish it later.”

“It’ll be mush later.”

That was only true because she insisted on putting milk in it. She said it was for my bones. I preferred dry cereal because it crunched until it was ready to be swallowed. As far as I was concerned, the best thing “for my bones” was to send hard vibrations through them, not the spine-melting, fist-clenching sounds of milky salivary pulp.

“I just don’t want it anymore.”

She relented.

Later, when she’d finished her own breakfast and I jumped at the chance to eat mine, she trapped me in another conversation about how I’d wasted a perfectly good bowl of cereal just an hour before.

Then she poured another bowl for me—with milk—and sat at the table to watch me eat it. To pass the time, she took an overripe pear from the fruit bowl.

So I ate in a race, but she was always too fast with her knife, as if she knew what she was doing. My only recourse was to gulp the cereal whole, rough pieces grating all the way down, and I concentrated on the whoosh of my breath. I choked on the milk and coughed.

“Slow down!” she said.

I wasn’t listening, I stared at the floor wishing I could burrow through the floral-pattern tile, the foundation, deep into the earth, and finish my bowl of cereal in peace.

I ate apples all the time as a kid but avoided most other fruits when I could. I ate peaches before they were ripe. Mom would say, “Who the heck likes a crunchy peach?”

“I do,” I’d say.

They gave me stomachaches.

Eventually I did learn the pleasure of an appropriately ripe peach. With the right music at the right volume, it’s a heavenly experience.

Now, leaning against the kitchen sink in the dark, I wince at the squish of ramen noodles in my skull. But that anger funnels into the hammer in my pocket. I hold my fork as tight as I’d hold the hammer.

When the ramen is gone I light a cigarette. “So? Where are you guys? Too scared to come over?”

“No, the cops came.”

A breeze passes through me as if the walls disappeared. “When?”

“Just a few minutes ago. We said it was a false alarm.”

“Yeah, he pretended to be you, and I said I was your roommate and you hadn’t taken your pills.”

“The cops think you’re crazy now, Alex.”

“They won’t take you seriously anymore.”

I consider that. “But if I talk to those same cops, they’ll see that you and I are different people. And I have ID to prove who I am.”

“Actually, funny story—when we put the bugs in your place, we found your expired driver’s license. That’s what I showed ‘em. And are you ready for the best part? You and me kind of look alike, Alex!”

I wonder where that old driver’s license was. In the desk drawer? And they took it?

“Yeah, Alex, he and you don’t look exactly the same, but close enough. It’s uncanny. I’ll admit, sometimes I see him standing there, and I think he’s you, Alex, coming to get us! Freaks me the fuck out!”

“Isn’t that fucking crazy? What are the fucking chances?!”