People like me - we’re just like you, really. We may look different, we may have different cultures, live in different places, eat different foods - but we just want to live in peace, be able to survive. We work for our livings, we gladly live alongside you, but you’re determined to push us out.
The stories you tell about us … You fear us? Sure, that’s to be expected. A good thing, even. But tigers are far scarier, and you actively try to protect them. Us? It’s a different matter. Because we’re different. But we’re just people.
I remember when everything around here was green. At night from the top of the hill, you could see maybe six houses with lights in the windows. Today it’s grey, tarmac and concrete, and you can’t count the houses. You can’t even get to the top of the hill any more; somebody built a mansion up there, surrounded by floodlights and guard patrols.
A few decades ago they built a ringroad around the town. Lights everywhere, and a constant stream of drivers even at night. I could walk for miles before that. Afterwards, I was confined to this small circle. I could hunt far and wide for my food, but now I can barely go two miles.
Then they decided that every street needed to be lit. At least I could roam the town freely without being seen; but no, you had to light up everywhere, so that any evening dog-walker, drunk student, or insomniac would spot me, and force me back into the shadows. My neighbourhood is now so restricted I haven’t seen another like me for years.
You fear us. You people have so much to give, and we don’t ask for a lot. Just what we need to get by.
I remember when I learned about CCTV. There was a network of unlit back alleys; I could roam around, visiting perhaps fifty houses, taking what I needed. Until one night I reached the end of one, and felt a piercing pain throughout my being. Somebody had installed CCTV on the house at the end. Being seen by streetlight or torchlight hurts, but being recorded was unbearable agony. I retreated back into the shadows of that alley to recover, sustaining myself by the little I could take from the occasional passerby. It was weeks before I had the strength to venture into somebody’s house and get a proper meal.
And gradually, this surveillance intensified. I was restricted to just one back alley, eight houses. Then somebody put a video doorbell on their back door, and I was limited to three houses. Now it’s just one. There were a few like me around here in the past, and there might well be hundreds like me in the town now, but I have no way of ever finding them.
We can’t be known. We live on fear, and knowledge takes that away. My family gives me a little, and the daughter is easy to scare - at least until she grows up. But I’m barely surviving. And now they’ve said they’ll get her a laptop. With a webcam.
The family are out right now, but left their computer unlocked. Typing this in the light of the screen is painful, but I must beg you. Leave us be! You tell stories of how we kill humans, but that just isn’t true. Perhaps we might make humans die, to frighten others, but never by our own … hands, and besides I haven’t done that for centuries. I don’t know what will happen to me when I post this, and tell you about me. Perhaps I won’t survive. But I’m desperate. We just need a little fear now and again. Please, stop trying to know us. Leave us the dark spaces. Leave us unsurveilled. Leave us just a small tribute of your fear.