The End
This feels like dread, but is it freedom?
This is the last chapter of I Hear You Watching, my novel based on my experience with hearing voices and paranoia.
If you’re new to this story, I suggest you start with any chapter but this one. Look at the complete list of chapters and find one that speaks to you…
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. He made many failed attempts to obtain concrete proof, and finally discovered he could use telekinesis to manipulate the observers. He consulted a psychiatrist, whose advice proved to be helpful. He’s moved into a tiny micro-studio apartment, which provides a change of scenery and a strange feeling of security.
On my way to buy groceries I see a sign in the window of a pet food store, and just like in a movie, I walk in, apply, and get the job. The pay will be less than what I’ve been making, but I prefer this job.
The day I give my resignation at the closed-captioning office also happens to be the day I decide to start easing off the risperidone. In the office bathroom I take a quiet moment to stare into the mirror—through the mirror—to bid farewell to the gargoyles hunched on the other side.
It takes them about a week to follow me to the new job, but by that time I’ve settled in.
The owner of the pet food store is a Korean man named Peter. He pays no attention to how he puts on his socks—I often see the gray or yellow heel patches bunched up under the tongues of his sneakers.
I answer directly to Paul, also Korean, who is the warehouse manager. Our “warehouse” is twice the size of my micro-studio, piled with forty-pound bags of dog and cat kibble and stacked with shelves of smaller bags and flats of cans.
Answering to Paul alongside me is a Mexican guy a little younger than me named Fernie, which is short for Fernando. Through Paul’s accent, his name is “Funnie.”
When deliveries arrive, Paul smokes Marlboros on the loading ramp and watches us unpack the pallet. Fernie always hands me the invoice because his favorite part is running in circles to remove the plastic wrap. He says things like, “I’m going as fast as I can, Alex, jeez! Such a taskmaster! Paul, you see the way this guy treats me?”
Paul laughs smoke and says, “Funnie, you treat youself.”
When bags arrive damaged, Fernie samples the food. I’ve heard him give customers recommendations based on his personal taste for one food over another. Peter told him to stop doing that, in case secret shoppers come through and hear him brag about eating dog food.
Fernie keeps asking how much I’d pay him to eat a bully stick, but I refuse to answer. Bully sticks are dried bull penises, also known as “pizzles.” Dogs love them.
During a lunch break on the loading ramp, Fernie tells me he used to smoke meth. Before the pet food store he worked at a pizza parlor owned by his cousin, but he got fired when they caught him stealing bags of pizza dough. On another lunch break he tells me his girlfriend is pregnant and he’s looking for a second job. He thinks he might beg his cousin to give him back the pizza job.
Sometimes customers bring their dogs, and they pee or poop in the aisles. It makes Peter mad, but I don’t mind cleaning it up. I find it funny that someone’s allowed to get away with doing that in a store, even if they aren’t human.
When it’s busy, I work a register. It’s a series of forced eye-contact interactions for which I’ve found a comfortable script. I smile, and most people smile back. A lot of our regulars stop on their way home from work just to buy a bully stick for their dog. I ask if they’d like a bag, and they all make the same joke: “No, thanks, I’ll eat it on the way home!”
I wonder how many of them know what a bully stick is.
The voices say they’ve planted bombs among the cans of cat food I’m stacking, or that they’ll meet me out back when I close. They’re still anticipating the perfect opportunity to throw me into the trunk of a car. I’m often told my lunch is poisoned.
The store’s speakers play an adult contemporary radio station that shuffles through the same hundred songs. I appreciate the constant music. If I focus, I can make the voices sing backup to whatever’s playing.
After repeated listens, the lyrics of songs like “In the Air Tonight,” “Rocketman,” and “Margaritaville” shed humorous light on my experience with the voices. For the most part, the radio is on my side.
Fernie got his job back at his cousin’s pizzeria part-time, alternating days with the pet food store. He uses me for one-sided conversations about how he’s never doing meth again now that he’s got everything figured out, and how ridiculous it was to steal from his cousin. He says he’s a different person now. Family is everything now. He’s got dark bags under his eyes and he moves slower than before, but he keeps up the high-energy act, like a birthday clown desperate for tips. His baby is due soon.
His tenacity inspires me.
On the street I try to smile at people, but I rarely get smiles in return. I think people in Los Angeles don’t like being looked at when it’s not on their terms. After a while of not getting smiles back, the voices start suggesting reasons why, and I take a break from direct eye contact.
I’ve made a weird compromise where I still smile at strangers but my eyes scrunch closed to avoid seeing their reactions. I tell myself that their reaction is their business. Giving them a smile is like free money—if they decide to snarl in response, it’s got nothing to do with me.
But I don’t like my squinty smile. It feels like curling into the fetal position. From the outside it probably looks like I’m saying, “Please don’t hurt me,” which, if I’m honest, is exactly what I’m saying, but projecting that message could invite trouble.
When the voices get too distracting, I murder them. Rarely as creatively as before, now it’s simple maintenance, and they only take about fifteen minutes to reconstitute. I’m meditating every day to try to increase that time. They find that hilarious.
I see Gavin about once a week, either at his place or mine. He smokes weed, and I stick to cigarettes.
Some people moved into the apartment below his. He says I should’ve moved in there, but I couldn’t even afford that place when I was captioning.
I’m self-conscious talking about my meditation with him, but only because I’m convinced I’ll slip and say “masturbation” instead. Talking to Gavin is good for reality checks. Things I believed in silence sound ridiculous when spoken aloud to a friend.
On one of his visits, he hands his phone to me with a YouTube video open.
“I hesitated to tell you about this, but you should probably see it.”
The paused image is of me shouting. The video is titled: VEGAN FREAKOUT IN MCDONALD’S.
“Oh, shit,” I say. “But why ‘vegan’?”
Gavin chews his lip.
“You watched it already?”
“Yeah, sorry. I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you.”
The video has almost two million views.
My skin vibrates like it did that day.
I play the video. The framing is vertical, shot from the corner of the dining room, and starts zoomed out. I see the other customers—the woman with her kid, the man, others. Beyond them I see myself standing by the registers.
“What does the end of this look like?” I hear myself ask.
The shot zooms onto me from the torso up. My stance curls forward, and my shoulders are raised almost to my ears—not shrugging, it’s more like I’m trying to pull my head into myself like a turtle. My eyes are white glints inside dark purple sockets. My fingers are dyed a similar purple.
“What do I have to do? Shrivel up and disappear? Attack someone? What will satisfy you? Or are you all just day players? Extras? Do you even know what this is?”
The fryer beeps.
“Sir, do you need something?”
Gavin says, “Wait for it…”
I scream at the cashier, “Stop! 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!”
“There it is,” Gavin says.
“Oh, my god.”
“I didn’t know you were vegan.”
“Sir, please leave.”
I should be having a panic attack right now.
I start the video again. It’s like performance art. None of the people in the video—nor any of the two million others who’ve watched and shared it online—have any idea what they’re actually seeing.
I play it again, and I can’t breathe. I’m laughing too hard.
Gavin laughs too. “The comments mostly point out that their ‘blood money’ is minimum wage and you should give them a break. But the vegans are rooting for you.”
The laughter in my gut swirls around a pinprick black hole, the ultimate confirmation that I can’t control how I’m perceived. This feels like dread, but is it freedom?
On another visit I let him listen to the recordings I made with his microphone. Part of me still hopes he’ll hear them and I’ll finally have my proof. But he only hears me. Both of us only hear me. He says it’s like listening to a recording of a ghost.
I called my parents soon after I moved, and sent pictures of my new place. Mom called it a “storage unit.” I told her it’s temporary. I make just enough money at the pet food store to stay afloat in my little lifeboat.
I also called Matt—from Gavin’s place—and confirmed all the settings on the router he sent. Finally plugging it in at home felt like injecting snot into my arm, but if I can’t bring myself to trust it I don’t know what else to do.
I could still be walking, weeks after the night ethereal henchmen first followed me through the streets. By now I’d be halfway across the country, turning the great gear of the earth with disintegrating shoes and raw feet, always looking over my shoulder, a stranger to the kindness of strangers.
But I choose to live as if the observers never existed. I can’t reach beyond my own perception, so I put the burden of proof on them. I’m tired of pulling curtains aside only to find more curtains.
I still aspire to look my fellow humans in the eye, and to not be ashamed of looking. Because they see me too. Standing before each other, like it or not, we are unabashedly tangible.
I can masturbate in the shower. Having the toilet to sit on is convenient, but I have to be quick or the neighbors will get wise.
At night I can close the curtain and masturbate in bed, in the dark, to the movies in my mind. In these moments I can take my time.
Then, drowsy, I open the curtain and let the streetlight in. It ripples through leaves, and I imagine I’m below deck in a boat, watching orange moonlight splash through a porthole onto my wall, reflected off the choppy waters of a vast, black sea.
Thank you for taking a chance on my book.
This is as indie as it gets.
I had wonderful beta readers (my incredible wife top among them), a fantastic cover artist—and everything else was my work. Four years of writing and editing, followed by formatting, design, publishing, and then marketing since its release in 2023. For its Substack incarnation, I wrote all the extra blurbs and made every chapter image myself—zero AI—sometimes using personal photos from my time living in Los Angeles.
I’ve maintained this focused effort because I believe this book deserves to be read. I’ll admit I’m biased, but almost every single reader has echoed that sentiment.
I Hear You Watching speaks to everyone.1
If you’d like to share a thought or feeling about the book, you can post it in the Ask Me Anything chat for this publication or feel free to send me a message.
Indie books live or die by word of mouth. If you’ve gotten something of value from reading I Hear You Watching, please give it a boost of some kind. This is the part I can’t do alone, and every little bit helps!
Thank you again for reading.
-Zac
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Pardon the expression.
I loved this ending. Clearly, he's not getting better overnight but it's a relief that he's made so much progress on recognising that the 'voices' aren't external physical realities, though the more I think about it, the more I realise they are 'real' - not real people, but really experienced. The scene with the viral video made me laugh till I cried. I wasn't expecting that. Of course they thought he was vegan. lol. Love it!
The beautiful thing about a book like this one is you can be evangelical about encouraging people to read it and your promotions go in the category of selfless public service! What made your book a draw for me was your openness that it was auto-fiction. I wanted to know what the experience was like, and it was reassuring to know you weren't imagining what you thought it might be like, but rather sharing what you knew it had been like. Thank you for your willingness to be vulnerable in the public space about something intensely personal, and precisely the sort of thing people aren't usually comfortable sharing.
Check out I Hear You Watching, folks!