We Watch

If walls could talk, I’d doubt they would tell stories fascinating enough to regale me. My life is simple; during my time inside the walls of home, I watch television, cook food, and sleep. My walls probably stopped watching me a long time ago and instead turned inward to the cockroaches and spiders inhabiting it. If it began talking about that, I think I’d move out.

I don’t want to know what my walls have to say about their existence, or the events happening around it. I mean, I am older than them. If anything, maybe I should be the one talking to my walls more. Give them some entertainment.

If I started doing that, I would seem crazy. Maybe one day my walls will tell stories to future tenants about how, in its youth, it protected a young woman from the cold who thanked them by going a little nuts, talking crap to them.

Well, it’s a good thing walls can’t talk.

I shift my eyes to the blank white wall, narrowing them as if to say, “I know you are watching me”. A few moments pass and I wait, giving it ample time to speak, but nothing happens. Thought as much. Even so, I can’t help but glance back at them in between ads on T.V.

* * * *

As I lock my front door to go to work, I wonder if the doors and windows are like thorns to the walls of my home. Perhaps the walls would be more comfortable without the gaps. If I had a hole in my torso, I would be pretty messed up. It’s a shame how we treat our walls. Quite inhumane, really. Should I instead live in an igloo? After all, it is like one giant wall… or is it one giant ceiling?

As I sit at my desk, I wonder if the walls at home resent me for being so boring. Do they despise me every time I shove open a stiff window and rattle its foundations? I am sure they hate the posters I stuck on them in the bedroom. Hell, I don’t even like them, I just put them there to cover up the eyes protruding from the smooth surface. Without eyes, they still see me. I sense them watching me as intently as I watch them.

My hands hover over my keyboard while I consider the hostility. It isn’t safe for me to go home. I need to make amends somehow. My work computer monitor turns off, leaving me staring at a black screen. The reflection of the wall behind me taunts me. They are everywhere, always observing. I can feel the contempt oozing from it. Can they read my mind, too? Is it spying on me to report my doings to the walls at home? The thought locks my muscles and squeezes my heart in an iron grip.

I have never considered that all walls are linked as part of a singular entity… I thought each wall in a building was collectively one being, but once the connection breaks, a new building and its network of walls is a separate entity. There is something about the imposing paleness of the wall behind me which strikes fear into me. Wide-eyed, I stare at it through my computer monitor, intimidated by its closeness, too scared to turn around to look at it, lest I give away that I know it’s watching me.

It’s too late, though. Of course it knows. The walls know everything. If they can talk, I am doomed. The walls at home know what I did. The walls at work know what I did. I can only come to one conclusion: walls can talk. If not to us, then at least to each other. Word always spreads. I can’t escape it.

* * * *

I am the last person to leave the office, and I do so with my head down, eyes trained on the coffee-stained carpet squares. The office is empty, but all eyes are on me. Eyes everywhere.

As I walk through the front foyer, I count the faux-marble tiles beneath my feet. Avoid stepping on the cracks, otherwise I might break my back. I frown. The last thing I need is for the floors to be against me, too.

It’s easy to let myself get swept along in the crowd's direction toward the nearest train station. I have done it a million times, or it feels that way.

My heart hammers in my chest as I ride on the escalator down to the lower platforms, and I sense the thing to my right. It is an off-yellow monstrosity covered in cracked tiles, with a filthy grout barely holding it all together. Its presence is all-encompassing, demanding every bit of my attention. I can see the glow of the lights on the tiles from the corners of my eyes, smell the grime that never gets cleansed, hear the rattling of the loose tiles about to break off, and I can taste blood in my mouth as memories of that day forced their way to the front of my brain.

It’s not my blood.

* * * *

There she is. She has not looked at me directly since that day, but I have seen her every day since. I have seen thousands of people every day since... Since someone died within my embrace. I helped them to the best of my ability. Without success, I tried to warn them, but dropping a tile did nothing to scare the poor thing away.

The young little dot sought safety within my space, but this woman violated my space that day. I should be used to it by now, being what I am, at a place like this. The victim arrived inebriated from her Friday night out. She made a beeline toward me, looking for a toilet to vomit over inside. I dropped a tile, but she did not understand. Inside was another fractured soul. This woman was not drunk, but she was not sane. I am familiar with drug users. They are frequent visitors, but they are not always dangerous. Some of them have beaten me, cracked my surface, exposed the plaster behind. It is okay. I will outlast them. If I can maintain my ground, sturdy and resolute while they express their emotion, then I will do so. I will do anything to help them. Some humans, however, are beyond help.

This woman is one of those kinds.

Every day she rises from platform 4, walks past me to work, then returns in the evening to descend back to platform 4. Sometimes I like to pretend that she is returning to Hell itself‌. Someone preached the Bible nearby me once, and it was delightful. I certainly learned a lot. I learned about where people like this woman belong.

Sometimes the train station safety officers arrive at the same time the woman does. I want to shout, to yell at them, to scream at them, convince them to grab this woman and lock her away from everyone else for the rest of her days… but I cannot.

If I could talk, I would destroy this woman.

How dare she walk past me every day and not even have the bravery to look at me?

After what I saw her do, I can safely say this woman is a special evil. She cannot disappear into a crowd. It is impossible for her to hide from me… from us.

We will always watch her.