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tamingthemuseTitle: Watching
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Vigilance
Warnings: None
Word Count: 546
Rating: PG
Summary: "You must watch to live. You must stare and wait and not back down."
Notes: This was written at the last minute and I was going for creepy. I doubt I succeeded.
You stare at them at the middle of the night when the sky is asleep and the only light is the glow of your alarm clock.
You stare at them as you walk down the gray sidewalk, under the gray sky toward the gaping mouth of the schoolhouse. If you keep watching them they might just decide to let you pass. They haven’t decided otherwise just yet. You don’t want to know what will happen if they do.
You’ve been watching for quite a long time now. The raccoon circles round your eyes look more like costume paint than something done naturally by a human body. Your face is beginning to grow hollow and sometimes, when you look in the mirror, you have the fleeting thought that you are starting to look like them.
That you are starting to become one of them.
But you can’t afford to give up your watch. Who knows what will happen if you do.
They are with you everywhere. They are there as you enter the supermarket, when you’re huddled behind your shopping cart for protection. They are there are there when you sit in your class and you still feel unsafe even surrounded by thirty of your peers and the sheltered walls of a classroom. You stare and you watch and you wait.
You stare at them in the dark. You can’t get up to turn on the light. If you move before day breaks you know that something terrible will happen.
You don’t know how but you simply know.
No one can see them. Not like you can. You sometimes see a person’s eyes snap to one quickly as if, just for a split second, they might have caught the movement of a shadow that wasn’t there. But that was just a trick of the light. It was just a bug flying from its place on the wall. It was just a fluttering eyelash. And they turn and they smile because nothing happened and you don’t say anything.
You have not told anyone that you can see them. They do not speak so you don’t know what they are. They are not like anything you’ve ever known another human to see so you don’t know how to describe them.
And, anyway, you don’t want to be thought of as crazy.
It’s torture, this life of watching and waiting. But being prepared is better than what would happen if you just ignore them. You are not a fatalist. You are practical. You are ready to combat the inevitable. You know that it’s coming like animals know that they must drink water to live. You must watch to live. You must stare and wait and not back down.
You stare at them out of the corner of your eye as your family has dinner. You stare at them in the darkened theatre as the light from the screen illuminates everything but them. They are in every picture that you take. You stare at them through the lens and know that no one else will see them in the deceiving Polaroid but you.
You stare at them at night as you keep the comforter snug at your ears. You keep your vigilance, you wait and you stare.
Sometimes they stare back.
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Vigilance
Warnings: None
Word Count: 546
Rating: PG
Summary: "You must watch to live. You must stare and wait and not back down."
Notes: This was written at the last minute and I was going for creepy. I doubt I succeeded.
You stare at them at the middle of the night when the sky is asleep and the only light is the glow of your alarm clock.
You stare at them as you walk down the gray sidewalk, under the gray sky toward the gaping mouth of the schoolhouse. If you keep watching them they might just decide to let you pass. They haven’t decided otherwise just yet. You don’t want to know what will happen if they do.
You’ve been watching for quite a long time now. The raccoon circles round your eyes look more like costume paint than something done naturally by a human body. Your face is beginning to grow hollow and sometimes, when you look in the mirror, you have the fleeting thought that you are starting to look like them.
That you are starting to become one of them.
But you can’t afford to give up your watch. Who knows what will happen if you do.
They are with you everywhere. They are there as you enter the supermarket, when you’re huddled behind your shopping cart for protection. They are there are there when you sit in your class and you still feel unsafe even surrounded by thirty of your peers and the sheltered walls of a classroom. You stare and you watch and you wait.
You stare at them in the dark. You can’t get up to turn on the light. If you move before day breaks you know that something terrible will happen.
You don’t know how but you simply know.
No one can see them. Not like you can. You sometimes see a person’s eyes snap to one quickly as if, just for a split second, they might have caught the movement of a shadow that wasn’t there. But that was just a trick of the light. It was just a bug flying from its place on the wall. It was just a fluttering eyelash. And they turn and they smile because nothing happened and you don’t say anything.
You have not told anyone that you can see them. They do not speak so you don’t know what they are. They are not like anything you’ve ever known another human to see so you don’t know how to describe them.
And, anyway, you don’t want to be thought of as crazy.
It’s torture, this life of watching and waiting. But being prepared is better than what would happen if you just ignore them. You are not a fatalist. You are practical. You are ready to combat the inevitable. You know that it’s coming like animals know that they must drink water to live. You must watch to live. You must stare and wait and not back down.
You stare at them out of the corner of your eye as your family has dinner. You stare at them in the darkened theatre as the light from the screen illuminates everything but them. They are in every picture that you take. You stare at them through the lens and know that no one else will see them in the deceiving Polaroid but you.
You stare at them at night as you keep the comforter snug at your ears. You keep your vigilance, you wait and you stare.
Sometimes they stare back.
