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There’s a man in the pub.
But he- he’s not normal.
I have to make sure you understand: he isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination.
To begin with, he’s always here. He never enters and never leaves. It’s not as if he simply does so earlier and later than me, I can tell. Plus, he’s always wearing the same clothes.
Blue jeans. White t-shirt.
If he does have a wardrobe, it’s made up entirely of those two apparels.
He doesn’t look homeless; he’s well-kept and clean, even though I’ve never seen him close-up. I can sort of sense- no, that sounds odd. I can pretty accurately guess what he looks like.
Short, cropped black hair and blue eyes. Skin the colour of a beige wallpaper and a lean stature of moderate height.
I can’t tell you when he started being here. I just—realised he was, a few days ago. He hasn’t left since.
I want- I need to talk to him. I’ve put it off too long.
I need answers.
Why are you always here? Why can’t anyone seem to notice you? And why do I always have the sense you’re watching me?
A roar bursts through the pub, and my attention flashes to the TV.
I glance back to my glass. It’s empty.
Why am I still here if I’ve finished?
I get up and pay the tab.
The pub is never this empty.
There have been times, closer to morning than evening, when it’s been sparse.
But never empty.
Never empty, except for one.
One man, in blue jeans and a white t-shirt with black hair and blue eyes.
It’s seven thirty. Everyone and their dog’s uncles should be crammed into this tiny pub. But not today—not after yesterday.
What’s changed?
It’s got to have something to do with him. I know it does. It’s his fault, but I can’t possibly fathom how it is.
Did everyone else just decide not to come? Yeah, right. He’s gonna answer my questions or he’ll find himself with a black eye when he wakes up tomorrow.
Does he even sleep?
That’s a ridiculous question. Of course he sleeps.
I stand up, gathering up courage that isn’t really there and setting my eyes on him. He’s just sitting there, like he’s oblivious to the only other person in the room. He’s just sitting there, with his hands calmly interlocked on the wooden table, eyes set on the empty air before him, chest rising and falling but not really breathing.
My lips twist into a grimace.
And I throw myself into a stride.
“Hey!” I shout as I near his position. “Who the hell are you?”
He looks up, an infinitesimal smile spreading across his face. He doesn’t reply. Instead, he seems to inspect me, gaze raking up my body from my shoes to my hair. It makes me shiver.
“You mute?” I snarl, taking a threatening step closer.
He isn’t affected.
The man rises, walking towards the bathroom with a gait that spoke very little of any kind of concern.
I rush after him, but he rounds the corner and when I follow him a moment later there’s no one there.
A curse is on the tip of my tongue, and then it dissolves.
What?
I walk back towards my table in a daze. The noise of the crowd scratches against my consciousness, although I can’t tell why.
Nothing makes sense, but everything’s as it should be.
I came home early last night. I simply hadn’t felt up to a pint.
I stare at the monitor, unseeing. It’s bothering me that I’m bothered, since I don’t know why I’m bothered. My desk is a cluttered mess in which a notepad, a box of pens, a lamp, a keyboard, a screen, a cup of cold coffee, and a handful of post-it-notes vie for my attention. Of course, none of them have my focus, because it’s too busy being occupied by the nagging sense of something being off, because there are just gaps in my memory that for all intents and purposes should not be there-
He’s here.
My head snaps to the side, eyes wide as what my peripheral vision had seen came into focus. He’s here.
He’s the gaps in my memory.
I scramble for a pen, pushing the keyboard off my desk and scribbling a line onto my notebook.
And I blink.
And he’s gone.
I glance at where my pen rests against the paper. On it is written something in crude, sloppy handwriting that takes me a moment to decode.
‘He's watching me’.
My browsing history recounts a tale of deepening panic.
‘There’s a man in my periphery who disappears when I lose sight of him’
‘Pareidolia’
‘schizophrenia’
‘visual hallucinations’
‘complex visual hallucinations’
Nothing's making sense. Schizophrenia is primarily passed through genes, and my family was never afflicted. It definitely isn’t pareidolia; I’ve had a one-sided conversation with him—and although my sleep schedule has decidedly deteriorated in the past three days, it was fine when this’d all started.
So why?
I sigh, deciding that a restful night would be far more useful than one of sleep-deprived theorising. I turn off the computer, then the monitor, then in the corner of my eye I see him.
Watching me, from my neighbour’s window.
Then he’s gone.
I hadn’t blinked.
I rush over to my blinds, yanking them down without bothering with the chain.
I don’t get a restful night.
My neighbour is visibly concerned about my physical appearance. The days without rest are building up, and the dark bags under my eyes can attest to that. I’d felt safer sleeping fully clothed, and I hadn’t bothered changing before I came over. From my shoes to my hair, I probably look every part the mess I am. I don’t particularly care.
“Yes? Can I help you?” she asks. Behind her shoulder, there’s a window that looks into my bedroom.
“Do you live alone?”
She stares. “Yes.”
“Did you have any visitors last night?”
“No?” She begins to fidget. “Should I call the police?”
I think on it for a moment. “No,” I decide, voice bitter. “It’s not you he’s after.”
“I… I see.” She follows my gaze behind her, glancing at the living room. “Was there anything else…?”
“No,” I choke out, voice shaky. “That was all.”
I bolt, sprinting down the corridor and taking the two lefts. I fumble with my keys, throw open my door, and rush to my bedroom.
It’s empty.
Of course it is.
Why wouldn’t it be.
I shudder, glancing around once more to make sure he isn’t here. Opposite my window, my neighbour makes herself a pot of coffee, but she’s alone in the room.
Of course she is.
Why wouldn’t she be.
Daily life becomes unrecognisable.
I can’t tell anymore, where one day ends and the other begins. It’s the motion blur of a camera moving too quickly, copy and pasted into each new day.
My eyelids droop, but my eyes dart across my surroundings, scanning them again and again and again for that man, wondering why I do it when seeing him is the very last thing I want.
Because each time I do, he’s just slightly closer.
It’s unnoticeable at first. But it’s a pattern I’ve begun to recognise. At first, he was far away; on the other end of the room, or on the opposite side of the street.
At first.
My life is breaking down. I can’t focus on anything, and it’s becoming harder and harder to conceal it. The feeling of being watched just won’t go away.
He’s in the corridor.
I jolt, and my heart pumps ice through my veins.
He’s gone.
“Hey,” James says. “We’re friends. You can tell me.”
“Tell you what?" I ask. "There’s nothing to tell. And even if there was, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“You just contradicted yourself.”
I stop myself from lashing out. Already I'm shaking with anxious energy—not that it’s become a rare sight, now—and this conversation isn't helping.
“And when I tell you something you’ll brush off, how will that help either of us?”
“I won’t brush you off.” He lies.
Lies.
“…Someone’s following me,” I acquiesce, finally. “I don’t know why.”
James pales. “What? Jesus, call the police, don’t-“
“I’m not sure if they’ll be any help.”
“What?”
“He isn’t real.”
“What?” He repeats.
“He can’t be.”
James bites off the beginning of a question. “I— you’re not making any sense.”
“I’m not?” I smile mirthlessly.
“Not in the slightest.”
“What if I tell you that he’s getting closer?”
James is silent.
“What if I tell you that I only see him in the corner of my vision? That he’s never far enough away for me to be safe—that hell, sometimes, he’s in the same room? But he never approaches me by foot, no. It’s always when I can’t see him. Which is ironic, since he’s always watching me.”
“Are you… okay?” He hazards.
“Not particularly. I’m not sure if any of this is real. If he isn't, then what about you? Are you real?”
“What are you- what do you mean? Of course I’m real.”
“Are you? How can you prove that? What is it that old Greek guy said? ‘I think, therefor I am’? How can I know, beyond a doubt, that you think, huh? I can't. That's his entire point.”
James looks lost. “I never expected to have to prove my corporeality.”
“I never expected to have to question my sanity.”
James doesn’t reply.
I feel the prickle of eyes watching me, but James has yet to look up from the ground.
I try to force my eyes not to look. I try to twist my neck away from where I know he is.
I can’t.
And he’s not there, not anymore.
My palms are tight around the camera’s grips, index resting on the shutter button.
No one believes me. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t believe me.
I don’t believe me.
And that’s why I have this camera. It’ll prove to me that I’m not hallucinating. That I’m not going insane, despite every sign to the contrary.
I’ve only got one photo on it—a car had honked at me when I’d frozen in the middle of a crossing. My index had tensed, and now the smudge of a red Volkswagen is alone in my gallery.
I’ve already seen him once today, but I was too late. I’d lined up the shot- and as he’s wont to do, he disappeared.
The thought of seeing him again? It terrifies me.
Because he was watching me, from the other queue in the supermarket.
Three metres away.
It’s too far for him to reach me. It’s too far. He can’t reach over a three metre gap. He can’t raise his arm, always limp at his side, and stretch it out, out, to my shoulder.
And he can’t touch me.
But it won’t be long until he can.
I take a sip of my coffee. It chills me to my bones.
My co-workers had staged an intervention of sorts, next to the coffee machine. It was all concerned frowns and ‘are you okay’s, and none of it helped.
I’m still scared. I’m still so, so scared.
I brushed them off, and none of them had the will to try and stop me as I walked back to my desk. Who do they think I’ve become, now? A drug addict?
A crazy person?
It’s not true.
I wish it was. That’d be so much simpler. I could go to therapy, and then I could finally be certain that what I'm seeing is reality.
He’s in my neighbouring coworker's seat.
It takes more willpower than I can afford to keep my sight focussed on the meaningless words on my monitor. My hands shake as I rotate the camera left, and squeeze the grip.
The shutter noise almost makes me drop it.
And the man isn’t there.
My knuckles are white as I bring the screen up for inspection. It displays the second photo in my gallery.
There’s an empty chair.
I can’t focus.
I’m in my room. The lights are on. It’s hot; sweat runs down my brow—but it’s freezing cold, too, and I can’t stop shivering.
My computer shows me search results of medication that I can’t afford, curing symptoms that I don’t have, with delays I don’t have the time left for.
Words blur together. Vowels become consonants and diphthongs form sentences. I can’t tell apart most letters in the Latin alphabet, and the words they form make no sense.
The bags under my eyes have grown. The voids are a deeper darkness than vantablack, a cosmic mascara of ridiculously unflattering proportions.
I need to sleep.
I’m tired.
I’m so tired.
I’m so scared.
I turn off my monitor, and it turns black, reflecting the light from the bulb hanging from the ceiling.
Reflecting a silhouette.
I scramble away from my desk, my back colliding with the wall then sliding down it.
My room is empty.
It’s empty.
He’s gone.
He’ll be back.
He’ll be back.
He was too close.
He’ll be back.
And when he returns, I won’t be safe.
Tears—of exhaustion, of terror, of finality—prick at my eyes and spill over without a noise.
I push myself up, stumbling to the door.
My hand rests on the handle.
There’s nowhere I can run.
One hand still on the door, the other reaches out for the light switch.
And my room plunges into darkness.
If I can’t see him, he can’t affect me.
I’m safe.
I’m safe.
I’m okay.
I’m not alone in this room.
“Please,” I whisper, breaths heaving in and out of my chest, bursting my lungs and sending cracks through my wildly beating heart. “Stop.
“What do you want? What do you want!? Do you just want me to die? Do you even have the capacity for higher thought, or are you just—what- what are you? And why won’t you stop watching me?”
Silence.
I crumple to the floor, shutting my eyes against the world as I hug my knees against my chest.
“Stop. Don’t touch me.”
No response.
“Why me? Why me, of all people? Why can I see you, when no one else can? Why do you want me to seem crazy? Or is it that simple? Am I ranting to an empty room in a mental hospital, raving at the wall as people watch in pity? Are you just—just me? Some part of my mind that couldn’t handle it all, and one day suddenly changed? Is that why I’m the one you want?”
If death is a noise, it’s deafening me.
“I’m sorry.” I whimper.
“I’m sorry, to all the people who hate me, to all the people who love me. I don’t want to die.
“I don’t-“
I choke.
In my peripheral vision, a hand reaches for my shoulder. It doesn’t disappear as I focus on it.
I can’t breathe.
I shut my eyes.
Nothing flashes before them. There’s only darkness. There’s only silence. There’s only bitter, terrible cold.
And then there’s the ironic warmth of a palm on my shoulder, and my eyes fly open.
And then there’s a voice, and it says: