The Watcher

The Watcher isn’t real. Or so they say. But I have seen him, and now he won’t let me go. You know that feeling when you turn off all the lights and are afraid something is chasing you. That is because he is. When you are all alone and you hear something that you think you shouldn’t. That is him dragging his bulbous feet across the floor. When you are by yourself and feel a soft tickling at the nape, it is his silent breath blowing down your back. But then you turn and there is nobody there. He doesn’t play by your rules. You might think that he evolved to not be seen by humans, but it was us who evolved to not see him. When The Watcher becomes the watched, his skin prickles and crisps in the worst of ways and he shrieks and gurgles until he finds you. But I have seen him, and he knows.

I was taking a mirror photo of myself with my camera, nothing special. I dropped the negative in my dark room, and for a split second, I saw him in the photo as it fell. Head on, the photo is like any other, but as soon as I saw him once, my eyes could not trick my brain any longer. His frame barely fit behind me in the mirror. His gaunt shoulders were arched down like he was trying to scrape the floor. I would estimate if his back could straighten out, it would reach almost five meters. A demented version of what a human looks like. His skin was pale to the point of being blue, and his greasy hair fell over his face in sparse strands. A third arm came out from what would be the solar plexus of a human, and in the photo, it was caressing my hair. He had no fingernails, no teeth, and he was devoid of a nose. While I was studying the photo with a sinking stomach, my neck tingled.

Looking down, I saw two lumpy pale feet the size of my right arm. Instead of stepping, they just slid until they were between my legs. And then came a loud hissing sound behind me like a pressure cooker. And I knew my time was numbered. But he isn’t fast you see, because he doesn’t ever need to be. He was between my and the door so I am hiding in the first place I can think of which is under my sink. He is only getting louder and louder. He is shrieking. He is calling my name in some distorted imitation of a human voice. I am writing this because I know he won’t fail in finding me. I have never heard of someone that actually saw him, but not because nobody ever has. At least one person needs to know he exists and live to tell others about it. I do not know if he can die. He is close. I am about to open the door to atta