Watching. Always Watching

I could feel their eyes – so many eyes – just staring at me. Watching. Judging. I pulled my cap a bit lower over my eyes and shoved my hands deep into my pockets, hoping that it would somehow make me blend into the bricked store walls while knowing that it only made me stand out more. These people were not like me and they did not like me; two verbs not mutually exclusive. While I tried to shrink away, shoulders curled, muscles tight, they walked and strutted and paraded with their heads high, their muscles loose and relaxed. We were two opposites sides of the autonomic nervous system – me sympathetic, them parasympathetic. I’m sure some sociologist would compare their relations with me to that of a predator and prey.

I knew that this is what I would face; I had been told countless times that these people were no friends to strangers. I was told to watch my back because I could not trust them for as long as they did not trust me. With a shrug, those worries had rolled off my back and I had packed my bags regardless. I moved here purposefully though to what purpose I don’t know. Realistically, this was a half-cocked plan to escape the overbearing authority of parents, schools, expectations…reality.

This town – small, decrepit, in the middle of apparently nowhere – had seemed like paradise at first. No one knew my name, no one knew me. Even with the townsmen’s distrust, this had seemed like the perfect hideaway. My own refuge, hidden and unknown. Like how I thought I wanted to be.

I picked a bag of chips from the convenience store’s shelves and reached past glass doors for a carbonated drink. I paused before I let the door shut, breathed, and let it close slowly and quietly. His breath brushed past my ear as he moved on. I swallowed thickly and kept my own gaze focused squarely on the counter. The woman there eyed me up and down, a distinctively upset curl to her lips as she snatched my items and scanned them. The price was settled and the money grabbed in much of a possessive way. As I walked away, towards the front, I knew her eyes were watching me. Watching. Always watching.

If there was someone – anyone – who was willing to talk to me, I’d ask why they all looked at me. Why they all stared. Why some spat at me while walking by, why some flicked cigarette butts, why mothers would pull their children away, why children would pull each other away. What was the stigma, what was the fear?

I sat in my car, blowing on my fingers to keep them warmed, and popped open the canned drink. I used to only take small sips to savor every ounce; now I guzzled it quickly. The parking lot was too exposed, too many eyes. Watching. If I looked outside my window now, I know I’d find someone just staring. I downed the can in second and placed it in the cupholder, hoping the energy would be enough for me to get home. The chips remained unopened – I didn’t dare linger any longer and drove quickly to my apartment. The receptionist and the other residents in the lobby ceased all conversation when I went in. My feet reached the elevator soon enough and my key was latched into its lock without any delay. The door slammed shut and I did the series of the locks. I didn’t install them – they were from the last person who came into the town.

My apartment was perhaps the only place I didn’t feel them watching me. With the locks on the doors, blackout blinds covering all the windows, and furniture lining all the walls that bordered the neighboring apartments, I was reasonably certain there was no one spying on me. It was the only time that I, too, could act predator and parasympathetic. In my apartment, in my mind, I could imagine a reverse town where I was the one watching them. Staring unendingly. Each day, when the work I had was done and when my mind was sore, I would sit at my desk and write the interactions. If I ever returned to civilization, to the city, I would show them this book and truly warn them about this town. In the privacy of my apartment, I imagined why they hated me too.

A murder? A rape? A robbery? A conniving businessman? Why, why, and why?

I had moved three months ago almost; tomorrow would be the last day of that quarter year. It would be a momentous day and I had already set out five pages to implant my interactions onto. Three months was a benchmark for me; three months out of the city, three months without my parents, three months here. Three months here…I will have officially been the longest outsider to live in this town for longer than three months. Call it my pride or my curiosity or an obsession, but I was determined to outlast everyone – the previous occupants of this apartment (every single outsider had stayed here) and the residents of this town. They wouldn’t scare me off with scathing looks and constantly, ever watching stares and glares. I came from the city, I was used to hateful gestures and the cold shoulder. I wasn’t accustomed to the dead silence or the weird townsmen that sometimes wandered too close for comfort without doing anything. Like the man in the store, even when they came too close, they just stood there and watched. But I was strong, stronger than them.

I closed my journey, my wrist aching and the side of my hand smeared with pen. I would have washed it off but my water bill and wallet strongly urged me to reconsider (the landlady charged me extra – for good faith as an outsider, she had said). With the ink still imprinted and seeping deeper into my skin, I settled into the bed and watched the shadows swarm and engulf and ravage each other. Just when I thought one shadow would win, another would consume it entirely. Black surrounding and choking out black.

And I fell asleep.

I didn’t know that when I woke up, I’d see eyes. Tens of pairs of eyes peering from the darkness. I never even had the chance to scream.

I didn’t know that my book would be burned and that, not two weeks after I disappeared, they’d rent out my room to another unsuspecting outsider. And they’d watch him from a distance too. Until his third month mark arrived and he'd join us. Me and all the others. And we'd watch with the townsmen, unable to do anything else. Just watching and watching.