I’d be the first to call myself a paranoid person. Not so much as to be incapacitating or dangerous, but compared to most people’s average levels of it, mine was bumped up about a standard deviation of whatever unit you measure that sort of thing in. It hadn’t ever caused me major problems in life—no relationship problems, no issues fitting in during school. Sure, sometimes I took a few wrong turns on my drive home on purpose, but it never stopped me from doing what I wanted to. It also never stopped me from leaving my window open at night.
My single apartment was on the fifth floor, and although it was rather small, I thought it was quite fitting. Just enough room for a bed and a desk, and a nice big window facing out and down over the street. I often find myself sitting at that desk, closer to sunrise than sundown, just looking out over the street, letting the cool air wash over me. On the other side of the road was a solid wooden fence that ran the whole block, with the backyards of suburban homes on the other side of it. That image of the tanned-looking fence, bathed by the single streetlamp and the orange concrete siding on the street, is forever burned into my mind because it was so often the background through which I saw the world. It was a quiet street, and after midnight, you could expect not to see another car until the early birds got up at four. Which is the main reason I did a double take tonight, because the usual image was wrong. Out on the sidewalk, across the street, a dark human figure stood near the streetlamp. My brain froze momentarily in shock and terror. For a nanosecond, I was totally immobilized. And then the questions started kicking in.
“What is that?”
“Who is that?”
“What are they doing?”
“How long have they been there?”
My last question was what stopped me. The human eye is designed primarily to detect motion, meaning I should have seen whoever was there moving to the streetlamp. Racking my brain, I found nothing, and worse, I found I had no unique recollection of the scene from outside the window from tonight at all. Yes, I knew what it normally looked like, but that was just an amalgam of every other time over the past two years I’ve looked out the window. All those hundreds of images combined into one singular scene, and it didn’t help me at all. Because it was wrong. There was a new entity on the scene now. The second thing about that question was the realization that it could have been standing there for a while. More than a while. Minutes maybe. Fifteen, twenty? It was close to three in the morning; god, he could’ve been standing there for over an hour by now. And doing what? By the looks of it, nothing. It had been maybe ten seconds since I first laid eyes on it and ran through all the questions and thoughts. He was still standing there, in the exact spot, motionless. But so was I.
I sat at my desk, realizing that I also hadn’t moved yet. That gave me a sense of relief and a punch to the gut. Relief being that I hadn’t drawn any attention to myself, by standing up quickly and making a noise or disturbance loud enough he could have noticed from down on the quiet street. Gut punch being something I had just told myself. The human eye is designed to detect motion. It’s much easier to see something moving than something standing still, and it’s not even close. Thank evolution for that one. In fact, the brain will subconsciously register anything and everything that moves, making it faster than any conscious choice of observation. And given the still nature of the night, my guess is that his subconscious is all out of options. Just sitting there locked and loaded, waiting for something to grab onto. Another ten seconds or so had passed, and both of us were still motionless, him under the streetlamp and me sitting at my desk, looking out the window, five stories up.
All of my problems at that moment came down to the human eye. I saw him, and now if I moved, he would see me. But the eye would also save me. Not my eye, but his. It all came down to something so shiningly apparent that I was a fool for even forgetting it in the first place. Light. A quick mental survey of my room told me that my room was completely dark. The lights were off, my laptop was closed, and the lamp was off. That was good for me. The streetlamp was also good for me, but only so far as it was bad for him. He was standing directly under it, meaning his eyes were receiving a lot more light than mine. He had been standing there for at least a minute, and given how still the night had been before, I’d wager a couple minutes before I saw him at least. That was all good news for me. Great news. The best news I had gotten in weeks. Because that means his eyes were significantly less adjusted to the darkness than mine were. It’s like walking out of a movie theater. Normally, when you leave one, everything looks extremely bright, and it’s hard to see anything because your eyes are so used to seeing things in near darkness. In this case, the same effect was helping me, but in reverse. Because of that streetlamp and the light coming from it, his eyes were effectively those of an eighty-year-old with cataracts. He’s been standing under there for minutes, and he probably could barely even see his shoes if he looked down. There was no possible way he would see me. So I decided to move.
Slow. The human eye is still one of the best in the world at noticing movement, so in this case, slow was the way to go. Slow is smooth; smooth is natural. You’re more likely to detect something moving unnaturally than at a constant rate. I guess the goal was to be able to make you focus on the tiger jumping out at you rather than the river. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
A minute later, I had backed up out of my chair and was now standing at the back of my room, pressed up against the wall. It was well enough back that even if he was looking, he wouldn’t have been able to see me through the window. I breathed out for what felt like the first time in an hour, and I could almost feel my heart slowing down now. I chuckled to myself about how stupid the whole thing was. But I still didn’t know what they were doing. Waiting for the bus? No, there wasn’t a bus stop on this street. Uber? Friend pickup? Maybe. Plausible. I laughed to myself again. Surely they were waiting for someone to pick them up. If I had just answered that question first, I wouldn’t have had to go through all the trouble of the last few minutes. I decided I should look again. I quickly regretted it.
Moving slowly up to the desk again, I peered over and saw the familiar dark outline of a man standing under the streetlamp. Same spot, same position. This time, there were no questions on my mind. I just started at him, for what felt like a long time. Finally, I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again, I saw something else too. A little glint, probably the whites of his eyes. It was the first time I had seen them, and for someone who had just run through a lot of problem-solving about his eyes, it was curious that I hadn’t realized that his eyes were never visible. The fact that they were now was not the problem. It was the fact that they pointed at me. I dropped. Hit the deck. Instantly. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast bullshit all out the window. I practically slammed myself onto the ground with no subtlety. Now I was very afraid. I am getting that sinking feeling in my stomach now, and it’s holding me to the ground. Stopping me from getting up and looking back. That’s when I started to type this all out. On my phone, I wrote down everything that just happened. And I am glad I did. Very glad.
Because I just heard a knock at the door.