Spooky Tales

I Know I'm Being Followed

My walk home is quick as a strange anxiety and dread fills every part of me spurring me to just get home.

The hall clock tells me it's 6.07am. The last time I had looked at my watch was just after 3.21am as I sat on the felled tree. One of my housemates walks out of their bedroom and frowns at me then looks at the time but says nothing, heading to the kitchen to start their day. I make it to my bedroom before my legs become jelly and the reality of what I had just witnessed hits me with full force. I crawl to my bed and manage to plug in my phone before I pass out on the floor.

~*~*~*~

Work was quiet, my social life was quieter but I tried to get on with life. I told nobody about what I had seen; mainly because I didn't think anyone would believe me in any capacity but also because it didn't take me long to realise I was being followed.

I thought I was being paranoid at first or was dealing with deja vu but it's hard to maintain either thought process when it becomes abundantly clear that neither is the case.

It started on my drive to work two days after the lights above the church. A matte black SUV with dark windows and strange plates followed me on my daily routine. When I wasn't driving, a tall man in a black suit and sunglasses was always in my peripheral vision. He carried a briefcase and was often reading a book or a newspaper - or looked to be reading at any rate; I couldn't see his eyes behind those glasses. I continued with my days and didn't let on that I knew he was there but I took notes on plate numbers, dates and times. Within a fortnight I had a full notebook. Within that same fortnight I noticed my health beginning to deteriorate; I wasn't exactly the healthiest to begin with but now it was painfully obvious not only to myself but to my housemates and few friends. I played it off as work stress and eczema but I could tell by the looks on their faces they didn't believe it. I think I was trying to convince myself more than anyone.

I finally broke down and talked to the housemate I trusted most only to get told I was paranoid, crazy and needed to see a doctor about my "eczema"; they even used their fingers to make air quotes. I remember just walking away and shaking my head; resigned to dealing with this alone.

The other housemates started to act weirdly around me after that so I kept to myself, stopped going on late night walks of any sort and eventually stopped leaving the house when the matte black SUV appeared on my street and didn't move.

I called in sick to work after the weekend and played my best flu-voice but my boss told me instead that I was fired. When I asked him why he told me he was not at liberty to give full details however it was linked to my out-of-work hobbies and interests and that off the record it was a "bad look for such a high profile company to have a 'kook' on the payroll." I was wished luck and told to expect my final paycheck within the next two days.

I confronted all my housemates; I didn't give full details to them but I asked politely then demanded to know who had talked to my boss. They all denied talking to him or anyone to do with my workplace before suggesting I should see a doctor and get some sleep.

I couldn't sleep. It's not that I didn't want to and hadn't tried; it didn't matter how tired I was I had only managed a couple of hours maximum per night since the lights. No shower or bath made me feel clean, no amount of music or tv could drown out the constant white noise in my head and no amount of supplements was helping my greying skin. I had long since stopped using any kind of creams on the growing red marks.

I fell onto my bed and stared at the ceiling until my eyes became dry and itchy. I rubbed them and reached up to turn off my bedside light; my hand hovered and stopped when I noticed something that shouldn't have been there. Sitting up and removing the shade I see a small round pea-sized thing with a couple of wires poking out. I don't know how I hadn't noticed it before. I smashed it under a glass and spent the next three hours going through my room looking for anything else. I found nothing else but that one bug; a listening device maybe, was enough to put me on edge.