Hi all, here’s a little bit of late-night paranoid insomniac fiction for you. Please wipe your shoes before entering my head.
Enjoy!
He couldn’t sleep with the light on in the flat. Unfortunately, the flat was across the road, and the tenants had moved out several weeks ago. Most likely they had simply forgotten to turn the light off in the bedroom. But what if they had done it on purpose?
What if there was someone in the flat? What if – and this might sound paranoid – but what if they hadn’t moved out at all? Perhaps they had got some kind of opaque adhesive sheets printed with an image of an empty flat, and stuck them on the windows, because they were sick of him staring at them? Perhaps a dark adhesive sheet for during the day, and a bright one for during the night. What if they had scratched off little eye-holes in the sheets, so they could watch him?
He waited at the window to see when they would swap the two sheets, but he never caught them. Perhaps they were blinds. One quick pull to swap day for night. Blink and you’d miss it. As he always did…
They must be watching very closely indeed, if they were able to anticipate his blinks. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he took a step away from his window, refusing to blink until he was out of sight.
Someone knocked at the door. When he looked through the spy-hole the man on the other side, his face distorted by the lens, looked like the neighbour who had moved out. Or one of the removal men: he definitely looked familiar. He waited for the man to go away, but of course he had a key. There were other men with him. These were the removal men.
It was time to go.
