Watched

The picture on the right is Pandora

That feeling when  you realize someone, or something is watching you, that dread. I knew that someone, me, who was currently being watched. And now, with times like the present, this claim is serious. Girls, from eighteen to twenty were being taken, me being nineteen. I’m freaked, but my friends, so light spirited they are, say pepper spray protects them, I say no.

I know it sounds silly, but it’s like a presence. When the air shifts, or the floorboards creak. It wasn’t like me to be this paranoid, but there had been ninety-six known disappearances lately, all in that age group. I live alone with my pet cat Socks, who keeps me company despite that fact that he can’t speak back. Not much company if you ask me. I feel unsafe, so I entered the Be Safe Project for young women who want to be able to defend themselves. The B.S.P. gave me some piece of mind, however the coming home alone scared me the most. I expressed my concerns with my instructor, who told me that in these times, it wouldn’t be wise to live alone. Good advice, for someone who actually had somewhere to stay other than my own place. I guess my friends would do, if she didn’t have a boyfriend who didn’t freak me out. Maybe I’ll just buy an alarm system, which I did, later.

The feelings I got from being watched were still there, so I visited my instructor, who told me this was normal. And that I was just scared of all the disappearances happening recently. Unfortunately, this did little to calm my nerves, so I found myself constantly escaping into the world of make-believe, the world of books. Constantly in the books about science, most had so many complex words in them my mind would find itself temporarily distracted. Only just though, then the world of nightmarish dreams would seep into my thoughts, jerking me from my doze. The thoughts seemed only to occur when I thought of my friend Jade, who had just turned eighteen. Jade is like a sister to me, which is why these thoughts really scared me so. If Jade was taken away from me, the thoughts might never go away. Jade, of course, was one of the friends who thought pepper spray would save her, so I made sure she constantly came over. Like a check up, and she did the same for me, we almost had a symbiotic relationship.

My last visit had been yesterday, so I called, hearing her perky voice, and she heard my slightly deeper voice. Which some of my partners had said was seductive, yeah right I thought to myself. After an hour of texting back and forth as her brother dropped her off, she knocks on my door. Checking the peephole, I see her face, which is practically pressed to the door. I open it, and she almost falls on top of me.

I giggle, “Well if you were this eager to come in, you know where the key is.” She laughs, and gives me a light shove, waving goodbye to her brother.

“Since I know you don’t have any good movies, I brought one myself!” She manically laughs to no one in particular and pulls out a movie with a blonde woman lifting a man with his tie. Uh oh!

“Another chick flick?” “I thought I told you those weren’t going to help you understand anything about relationships!”

“You did, but I dozed off!” She quickly slips the DVD into my player and makes me watch another boy likes girl, girl doesn’t, boy stops liking her after rejection, girl misses him liking her, they get together. All were predictable I thought, but each sappy romance seemed to keep her on the edge of her seat. I almost wanted to push her off, lightly of course. After the romance, she looks like she has tears in the corners of her eyes, I almost laugh, almost. 

“That was sad…” She wipes her eyes.

“Oh, um, yeah, sad…”

“You didn’t cry?” “Whoa!” “What are you, a Vulcan from Star Trek?”