Overseer

He woke as he always did, to the radio chattering with commercials, sunlight prodding between the heavy old curtains, an obvious – if small – manifestation of his pleasurable dreams and the familiar unease; something he could not quite place but was quite sure was justified – a presence somehow, like he wasn't quite alone. It was them, he was sure of it – it could only be them. And today, it was stronger than ever, almost buzzing and whirring around him: they knew. They knew what day it was.

He rose, stretched, picked his nose and absent-mindedly moved the contents to his mouth. Dissatisfied, his stomach growled and urged him to the kitchen for something altogether tastier and more substantial: poached egg, perhaps, or croissants. He glanced briefly at the old carriage clock next to the bed he had just left and cursed – it was later than he'd hoped and there were now only ten minutes before Mrs Jude turned up. Damn. He headed for the shower, taking a moment on his way out to straighten the picture frame that was not quite perpendicular to the door frame. Two pairs of eyes gazed, glazed, out at him, happy at that moment in the sun. He hoped they would be proud of him later.

Mrs Jude arrived as she always did, precisely on time and accompanied by a warm, hearty smell of something delicious. He padded down the stairs to find her setting down a chicken casserole and throwing open the thick drapes at the grimy sash window. He flinched as the outside poured inwards, casting judgement on the modesty of the room: a plush designer couch, his father's chair, a small nest of oak tables and a fifty-inch, LCD, 3D television. It looked gloomy outside - he started to doubt his decision.

He sat down on the expensive settee to eat the casserole while it was still warm and switched on the TV. Mrs Jude busied herself around him, trying to tidy up the uncluttered room and chiding him again, telling him how it wasn't right that a young man living alone should be so tidy and not leave the house in over a year. His parents would be disappointed, she said, that this was how he was spending his inheritance. As he focussed on the glossy, loud advert that was probably for some reality show or other, he hoped they would be proud of him later.

As neighbours go, Mrs Jude wasn't a terrible one. She was just a little too talkative. And opinionated. But she made delicious food and had apparently known his parents well before that night, so she was the closest thing he had to family now since his selfish sister had fucked off and abandoned him to have kids with some guy in a nice house. He thought it was a waste of her money, spending it on a wedding. After today he was going to buy himself an Aston Martin.

He woke up – as he always did - hours later, to the TV still squawking inanely in high-definition 3D. It only ever seemed to show him a world he didn't want to be part of; always misery and negativity and worry. He switched it off to try and enjoy some silence but he was immediately aware of that whirring again – what the Hell could it be?! He had already checked all round the house, several times, for any electrical equipment that had been left switched on and there was nothing! Yet for the majority of his housebound year, he had been haunted by these noises. He was going mad, he knew that. Mrs Jude had never heard them, even when he had tried to point them out to her. It was largely for this reason that he had come to what he believed to be the only reasonable conclusion left: it was some physical manifestation of his parents' presence, watching over him. And whether it was crazy or not, he found some comfort in feeling that little less alone. He hoped they would be proud of him soon.

'Soon' soon came and he found himself dressed – smartly so as to be respectful – and standing in front of the door, clutching a bouquet of flowers. It was now or never – do or die. His palms were clammy and his stomach was in a knot. He tried to swallow the nerves and control the tremor that had seized his hands. He tried to flatten his lame haircut but it wouldn't be tamed either. He swallowed hard and with a deep breath, wrenched the door open.

The enormity of the world engulfed him – colour and detail and the noise of idling traffic at the end of the drive attacked him, each marching towards him as if they meant to harm him. He stepped back and slammed the door, breathing heavily and sweating. He couldn't do it, it would wait - it would have to wait. But it couldn't. There is only one one year anniversary. It had to be now. It had to be now, he repeated to himself over and over as the whirring and the soft clicks rose to a clamour, roaring him on. Once again he flung the door open, this time rushing immediately forwards, placing him finally outside on the gravel driveway and beneath the heavy, grey clouds. It was done! He had done it!

He began to take in his new freedom – the ivy growing at the windows; the noise of the bird on the telegraph pole; the clatter of the buggy going along the pavement. Amazing! What a release from the confines of that cottage with it's beams and cold floors. He turned and triumphantly locked the front door, checking it a couple of times to be sure, and started off down the drive, returning to the door once or twice first just to check. The rest of his journey had never been an obstacle in his mind. He knew how to catch a bus; he knew where he was going to and why. He couldn't understand why it was simply the act of leaving the house that paralysed him so.

He was pleased to find, as he sat on the bus, that the whirring had stopped, though he was still paranoid. That guy over there... On his phone... Was he taking a picture?! No... No, why would he be? He's just texting. Everyone does that, everyone texts people. But that old man there, he definitely keeps looking over... Stop it, he told himself, and focussed on the real reason he had come today.

Approaching the bridge, he was surprised by how high it was and how little it had changed from the photographs his parents had shown him of 25 years ago. He hurried halfway and stopped next to the lamppost there, the sixth one along with a very slight inexplicable crease at the neck. This was the one in the picture; the one beneath which his parents were still very much alive, and smiling with lame hair, denim jackets and all kinds of ideas and ambitions behind their eyes in their 1984 selfie.

He laid his flowers at the foot of the post and stood at the railing, looking across at the sea on the horizon then down, at the river and the roads that flowed hundreds of feet beneath. Resentment welled in his chest: why him!? All those cars down there... All those somebody's going somewhere to do something and they'll all get there alive. How unfair that his parents had to die. He could feel himself crying, crying like a baby. His father had been right – those boys at school and Mrs Jude and his sister and everybody, they had all been right: he was weak. Weak and useless and pathetic and there was nothing left now. Money? No, it could never buy him the happiness he craved. It had certainly never made his parents any happier for having it. Wealth was of little comfort to an alcoholic, after all, nor to his terrified wife and children. No, money alone was not worth living for and nor was this facade of freedom. How was he free, he wondered. Free of a dark, memory-laden cottage to be lonelier still in the big, bad world? No. There was no point any more.

He climbed the railing and turned to face the world: he didn't want to see it coming. He closed his eyes, swallowed and opened them. He saw passing people stop, mouths agape and camera phones poised. He saw his parents rushing towards him, pale, with arms outstretched. How ironic that they should appear now, when it was all too late. He smiled, though, as the last of his fingers left the railing and imperceptibly brushed his mother's, reassured that he had been right: they had been watching over him. He hoped they would be proud of him now.

"Oh shit!" shouted someone.

"Cut!" called someone else.