First of all I need to apologize if some parts are confusing or make no sense, I’m still getting used to the voice typing program.
We know when we’re being watched. It’s something instinctive, a tingle on the back of your neck that comes with the sudden realization that someone is looking at you – perhaps something inherited from our times as prey, not the predators humanity has learned to be.
However, some things remain marked in our genetics. As a child, I was always afraid to wash my hair with my eyes closed, imagining that when I opened them, a monster would be standing in front of me. Even as an adult, the pile of clothes I leave on the chair next to my bed sometimes looked eerily like someone sitting there watching me sleep when the lights went out.
That’s how it started. Fears that seemed really funny when I thought about them – I know no monsters will show up while I’m in the shower and I know the pile of clothes is just that, a pile of clothes. There’s no one watching me through the window when I’m cooking and certainly the tape I leave on my computer’s camera does its job of preventing some hacker from seeing me changing.
Still, the shiver on the back of my neck never went away. It was more common on the street, with a subway passenger who got lost in his thoughts and didn’t realize he was looking at me or a kid in the park next to my house who didn’t seem shy to stare, eyes glued to mine. I need you to understand that I am a normal man, with a normal job and a normal appearance, maybe not at my peak physical shape now that my 30s are getting heavier and heavier, but nothing that makes me stand out from the rest of the population. Although uncomfortable, it’s not like this situation is unique to me, and so I forced myself to ignore it.
Until I started to feel the chill in my house.
I live alone, don’t have a girlfriend, although I take a chance on dating apps from time to time, and my friends are reduced to my co-workers, busy with their own lives and families to spend their nights with me. So it was really weird when I was watching television and I suddenly had the feeling that someone was watching me from the hallway, only to turn my neck as fast as I could and find nothing. I went to bed early that day.
It’s amazing how much the human mind can get used to. This wasn’t the first time I’d had that feeling in my house, but like anyone else, I blamed it on fatigue and adapted to my new reality. People on the street aren’t looking at me, there’s nothing in the hallway, there’s no one behind me as I clean my room, today was just an exhausting day.
Even when I was sure there was an eye peeking at me through the crack in my closet I tried to ignore it. It’s just the light of a car hitting some stuff I keep inside of it, and when exhaustion wasn’t enough to put me to sleep, the meds did the job. Until I see him blink. The meds didn’t work anymore, especially after I found out that there was nothing there that could reflect.
Reflections are also interesting things. Have you ever stopped to think about how many things reflect? Your cell phone screen, a store window, your car window. Everywhere I looked, there was a flawless version of me staring back – fixedly, always attentive to the smallest details, almost as if mocking me. And I knew, in the back of my mind, that those weren’t my eyes. They were identical, a perfect copy, and they could fool anyone. But not me. I knew, along with the shiver on the back of my neck, that those eyes weren’t mine.
Over time, I also came to realize how many things kept me under constant surveillance. Pictures in magazines, advertisements, paintings, all looking at me, peeking through dead eyes, observing, watching, lurking. Even alone, the notion of privacy seemed alien to me, and the friendly face on the “smile, you’re on camera” sign suddenly didn’t bring me as much peace as it used to. You don’t realize how many cameras there are in your city until you feel their gaze upon you.
I smashed the mirrors in my house, making some excuse about how appearance was overrated in our current society, and hid the electronics I owned, again telling myself and anyone willing to hear that I was going through a phase of self-discovery and decided to abstain from technology for that. I didn’t buy newspapers and magazines anymore, and on one particularly bad day I decided to burn all the books I had that had eyes on their covers. Without realizing, I started washing my hair with my eyes open.
However, the shiver on the back of my neck didn’t stop.
On the contrary, he seemed to get worse and worse. I quit my job, decided I wouldn’t leave the house anymore, and yet, even in my dreams, when my exhausted body didn’t have the strength to stay awake, I still felt it – I was alone, but never really by myself. The feeling didn’t go away when I woke up.
So I decided to deal with it the only plausible way an adult would. I called my old coworkers, justifiably worried about me, and convinced them to take a night out for a drink in a reckless, worry-free way. I confess I got a little lost that day, drinking more than my body could possibly metabolize, mixing it with drugs and whatever they put in front of me. I don’t usually do this. I’m responsible, with bills to pay and very little time to pretend I’m still a teenager with no time to go home. But you have to understand me, I was going crazy. I needed to anesthetize that sensation, numb my body and my mind enough to not notice the constant goosebumps on my skin.
I wasn’t in my right mind when I returned home, with the sun already rising on the horizon to tell me that the night was over. Had I been conscious, I would never have taken the elevator – when I needed to go out, which was only to get food to survive, I used the stairs. But I was in no condition to walk, nor was I able to think about what I was doing.
The elevator has a mirror. A full-length mirror, cleaned daily so that the reflection was as clean as possible. Those weren’t my eyes. As much as I tried to look away, they were still on me. Those weren’t my eyes. Perfect, identical, but not my eyes. And they watched and they gazed and they peeked and they lurked and they waited and they prayed. And they were not my eyes.
I’m not sure how it happened. The cuts on my hand when I woke up days later in the hospital were a good clue, but I don’t really remember. The eyes that weren’t mine were suddenly staring at me from different angles at shards that were scattered throughout the suffocating metal box, the shiver on the back of my neck was too much for anyone to bear, and I knew what I had to do. It was the only thing that I could do.
I don’t regret what I did. The darkness embraced me like an old friend, and despite having a lot of explaining to do, I managed to get my career back on track and return to living a normal life despite my blindness.
But the shiver on the back of my neck returned stronger than ever, and I don’t know what to do.
Sometimes, if I’m not paying attention, it feels like someone breathing.