This story came to me after noticing a painting on the wall of the Phoenix pub in Dundee of a creepy, thin-faced man in a bowler hat against this neon background. It was staring right at me from where I sat. It would be interesting to write some more encounters of people with the Watcher in the future.
It took her three weeks before she saw the Watcher and she nearly broke down crying with relief that she had at last seen it. It had carelessly opened a doorway in the middle of an empty wall across the street from her. Behind its almost-man form was an infinitely deep redness that it hurt to think about. Its bowler-hatted head sat tilted awkwardly on the too-thin neck, first to the left, then to the right but never in-between. Its simulacrum of a plain grey suit rippled liquidly from a wind she couldn’t feel. She watched it Watch her.
Passers-by looked at her strangely and some even stopped and asked if she was ok. Once any followed her gaze they soon remembered their own pressing business and left her to deal with the Watcher herself. Nobody wanted to be the first the Watcher saw after finishing with her, nobody wanted to be next to be Watched.
An elderly couple opened a window above the Watcher and pointed excitedly at her. They felt secure that it couldn’t see them but they were wrong. She had seen herself on the stream, watched along with the millions of voyeurs as every moment of her life was broadcast from impossible vantage points. It had Watched her from outside her house, walls were nothing to it. However the Watcher worked the old couple were totally wrong in thinking themselves obscured from its vision by something as petty as human senses. Although annoyed by their clear thrill at seeing the Watched One in real life she would not wish them the indignity of being Watched.
These last three weeks had been an unthinkable hell, she had thought of suicide, aided along by the knowledge of all those millions of pairs of eyes following her day and night. Many of the Watched Ones before her had taken their own lives to free themselves, she knew that people bet on whether the Watched would escape by death or a glimpse of the Watcher. Friends and family had tried at first to keep in touch, ultimately nobody but her shallowest, fame-hungry acquaintances was prepared to spend time with her while watched by millions. Still the interactions with the attention-seekers were human contact that she treasured.
Three weeks was towards the longer end of time people spent being Watched. Nothing on Kind John’s nine years of exile on an empty island. What a brave thing to do, sacrificing his own life to keep the Watcher tied up and everyone else free to enjoy their lives. It took a courage she lacked. Still it was odd for the Watcher to clumsily reveal itself as it had. Was it bored? Did it want to be seen so it could move onto a new victim?
The Watcher watched impassively as she screamed angrily at it. The Watcher watched unceasingly as she laughed relieved that her time as the Watched was ending. The Watcher watched as it stood beside her in a single step. The Watcher watched her jump back in shock. The Watcher followed her, catching up with her in a single step whenever it wanted to draw closer.
She realised the futility of trying to flee from the Watcher, yet she could not bear to be close to its sickly sweet smell of rot and nightmares. She pointed at it. Its head flickered back and forth from tilted right to tilted left and it raised its stumpy right arm and pointed its drooping middle finger at her.
Then the Watcher stopped watching and after thirty years of continuous broadcast the stream ended. She became even more renowned as the woman who was the Last Watched, she received more attention, more death threats, even cults worshipping her. Eventually she chose to escape the attention in the way she had been considering the day she’d seen the Watcher. It was nice and painless. As she drifted off to death there was just enough time to notice the Watcher step out of a doorway at the bottom of the garden.