Shady

“I’m telling you!” Paul slammed his fist onto the mirror hanging on the wall to emphasize his point. The mirror shattered. “I’m not paranoid!” He ran his cut fingers through his unruly, dark hair. “Scratch that. I don’t think I’m being watched; I know I’m being watched. I can feel it.” He shuddered. “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep.” In frustration, he threw his arms up in the air. “I’m going crazy!”

He dropped to the faded black leather couch with a long exhale. “I can’t even shit in private! They’re… always …watching…” His heart pounded in his chest. “I told so many people and no one will help.” He clutched his face in his hands and slowly rocked back and forth. “Why won’t they go away…” he trailed off. Jerking his hands from his face, he looked around, scanning for his nemeses. “Why are you doing this to me? I didn’t do anything!” His eyes grew large and wild. Jumping up, he approached the window. Breathing heavily, his breath showed in the chilly air.

The snow sparkled in the blaring sun. It was bright, but it was below freezing with long icicles hanging from the house next door. The houses were so close together that he could see inside of the neighbor’s living room when the light was on. It wasn’t. He rubbed his eyes, and then peered out of the window again, snow blinded. He knew the neighbors weren’t watching him. They had left for vacation a few days before.

He pressed his face against the cool glass, creating a foggy impression of his forehead. He strained to see the ground beneath his window. Were those footprints in the snow, frozen to reveal that his suspicions were correct? It certainly looked like that!

Panting, he whirled away and stumbled to the door. Wearing only a thin, sweat stained T-shirt and lounge pants, he rushed outside. His feet slipped on the ice. He attempted to right himself but failed. He fell, slamming his knees and elbows on the hard earth. Not registering the pain, he forced himself up. He was certain that they were footprints! Not that he needed evidence, but it would help to alleviate the prying accusations of insanity within his own brain.

Oblivious to the bitter cold, he trudged onward, slipping and sliding all the way to the side of the lengthy apartment building. He stood still in the frigid wind, studying the frozen indentations. Sure enough, they were footprints! They were a set of human footprints that led to the window from the sliver of land between the two houses. Large feet, like a man’s feet. Like a large man’s bare feet. He could clearly see the outline of five toes. This person had not been wearing shoes. His breathing increased. What kind of weirdo was stalking him? He frantically looked around. He didn’t see anyone, just a quiet, serene day in the city. But he knew they were watching. Of course, they were watching! They were always watching! Cursing softly, his eyes darted around.

He shook his head, a worried expression on his gaunt face. “Who would do this?” he muttered, his breath showing. He looked around again, searching for prying eyes. “I haven’t done anything wrong!” he yelled, hoping that was heard. He had made sure he had done everything he could to be a law-abiding citizen. He had recently served a six-month prison sentence for assault. It had been the worse experience of his life, having been forced to take weekly injections of an unknown substance. They claimed it was an anti-psychotic medication, but how was he to know what it truly was? Just take their word for it? Maybe it was poison! Maybe it was making him nuts and slowly causing his brain to erode until he died! And why had they suddenly stopped administering the substance a week prior to his release? They had answered his questions with a simple explanation; the doctor had ordered a specific number of injections, and they had all been administered. The treatment had run its course. However, in his vast experience of taking anti-psychotics for much of his life, this was not how it worked. He hadn’t even been prescribed medication for when he was freed. It didn’t make sense.

Initially he had suspected that his probation officer and his flunkies had been spying on him, but now he doubted it. His probation officer was a jerk, but he would not sneak up to his window, barefooted in the snow, to try and catch him breaking the rules of his probation. He frowned, uncertain. Would he?

His attention returned to the footprints. His gaze followed them. They led back around the house. His eyebrows rose, a horrifying thought entering his mind. Is the barefooted man in his home?

He warily made his way around the house, careful not to fall, following the prints. He had left the door open when he had investigated outside. He eyed the room from where he stood on the stoop. Nothing unusual was noted. Holding his breath, he stepped into his apartment and quietly closed the door behind him.

He rubbed his arms vigorously, suddenly acknowledging the cold. He tentatively stepped toward the couch. Slowly easing himself to a sitting position, his eyes scanned over the room, searching for an intruder. Nothing seemed out of place. He lived in a small studio apartment, and he could see in the bathroom from where he sat. The shower stall stood empty; the shower curtain crumbled in a ball beside the toilet. There wasn’t any place to hide.

He was aware that the room was not a place to be trusted. His probation officer had made the arrangements for him to live here, a home for a convict, a half-way house. It must be under supervision. It had to be! There was no such thing as privacy after being incarcerated. They wanted you to mess up so they could haul you away again. But where were the cameras? Where did they hide the microphones? He had torn the place apart looking for surveillance equipment. He had even ripped down the ceiling. Not one tile of the drop ceiling remained intact. They had been thrown in a heap on the floor beside the piles of pink insulation. He had smashed his television set, and then had promptly discarded it in the dumpster in the back yard. He had used a hammer on his cell phone, destroying it. That went in the dumpster as well.

He began rocking back and forth, his eyes continuing to scrutinize the area. His heart began pounding again. His body trembled and his perspiration increased. His breathing became choppy as anxiety rushed over him. He had removed all of the outlet covers and light switch plates. The two light fixtures had been disconnected, leaving bare bulbs hanging in their places. No monitoring devices had been found.

He jumped up, his arms raised to the wooden joists of the ceiling. “Please,” he implored. “I can’t take this!” He yelled something unintelligibly, tears streaming down his face. “I can’t do this anymore!” Feeling the sudden need to flee, he wrenched the door open and ran outside, forgetting it was slippery.

Delete Created with Sketch.

The heavy-set, balding man lowered the binoculars, and then removed the headphones he had been wearing. He slowly took a sip of his hot coffee, undisturbed about the unconscious man sprawled out in the yard. He casually glanced at the thin man who sat beside him. “Looks like this investigation is over.” He glanced at his watch. “Time is 1430.”

The thin man looked at the scene before him with obvious concern. He had seen the man slip and hit his head. He doubted that anyone would find the injured man any time soon as his location was somewhat isolated. “Should we call an ambulance, John? Anonymously, of course.” He could see blood forming in a pool around the fallen man’s head, staining the snow red.

“Let him freeze to death,” was John’s callous response. If the weather didn’t kill him, the toxins he had been injected with surely would. He gathered the stack of paperwork on the table before him and pushed his chair back. He looked grimly at his intern who was still staring at the incapacitated man lying motionless next door.

They had relocated from a van parked down the road, to this apartment two days ago when the occupants left for a vacation. Although the family was confused that they unexpectedly won an all-expense paid trip to Florida from a lottery that they had never even entered, they didn’t hesitate to escape the bleak New England winter.

“Paul, I realize this is your first time in the field, but this is the protocol. I’ve been doing this for a long time. The subjects are to be studied. They’re all degenerates who nobody cares about. We collect the data, and then we leave. That’s it.” He stood and added, “If you don’t think you can handle the job, maybe you should stick to working in the office.”

Paul had just witnessed first-hand what the experimental serum’s effect had been to the man. He had observed the subject, Mr. Pellater, rapidly transform from a confident young man who had been working hard to turn his life around, to a pathetic shell of a human being riddled with panic and anxiety.

It appeared that the paranoia had averted his attention from his basic needs. He hadn’t consumed anything in three days. Showering had been nonexistent. He had rapidly spiraled downward, losing his grip on reality. Paul had seen him tear his assigned room apart in an uncontrollable frenzy, searching for hidden taps and cameras. In fact, he had been unwittingly close to discovering one of them when he had smashed the mirror. He had, however, managed to destroy the expensive spying apparatuses that were located in the television set and cell phone.

It had been painful to watch, gut-wrenching actually. Last night he had seen him sneak around the house, carefully ambling through the freshly fallen snow outside of his room’s window. Cupping his hands around his eyes, he had peered inside. He stood there for quite a while in the brutal elements. He had been wearing the same sweat-stained T-shirt and lounge pants that he currently wore. And he was barefooted.

From where he had sat, Paul had easily noted how red the man’s feet had become. Eventually the subject had turned to leave the window. His feet had changed in color to white with a bluish tinge. The man didn’t seem to notice though as he cautiously made his way back inside. Paul had put the binoculars down and briefly turned away with an involuntary shudder. This was torturous. This poor man was a victim of a cruel, government-funded experiment.

The bald man scrutinized Paul, wondering if the thin man’s conscience would earn him a death sentence. “You good?”

Paul swallowed hard but didn’t say anything further. He knew they were listening. They were always there, watching and listening. And he didn’t want to end up being a statistic. He was aware of what happened to whistle blowers. Ironically, they had all committed suicide. He looked away from Mr. Pellater and picked up his neatly stacked paperwork. It was time to leave and report their findings. The clean-up crew was already on their way to conceal any evidence that the men had ever been there.