Morning all, Friday has finally arrived. No clue why this week felt longer than most, but it did. Still we have almost reached the weekend. So time to focus and clear away the last of the work week. We’ll start with the morning prompt. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
I like the character, but not sure what story to put Henry into. Yet.
Friday, April 11th: He felt like he was being watched.
He felt like he was being watched. There wasn’t anything he could point to, no observers he saw routinely, no people dipping out of sight when he turned, but there was that feeling. Henry tried to ignore it, but it was persistent. He tried telling himself it was some sort of guilty conscious, but when he sat down to actually think of it, he couldn’t name anything he would feel guilty about.
He was not the sort to participate in nefarious deeds. He didn’t join any activist groups that might be up to things that were suspect by those in charge. He didn’t even sign petitions. Hos goal was more or less to live a quiet life. He didn’t like attention and felt somehow trapped when people did notice him.
He didn’t feel the trapped feeling. No one in his world was paying him any extra attention. His boss didn’t look in his direction. He turned in his work on time and without fuss. There was nothing overly praise worthy to it nor detrimental. He strove for forgettable mediocrity and was fairly confident he achieved it. His goal in the work place was to be a forgettable cog left to work without notice or interruption.
He said good morning and good evening to his co workers when coming and going and didn’t even correct the person in the cubicle next to them when they called him Harold instead of Henry. The notice he was feeling didn’t produce the same closed in and trapped feeling that such notice always brought. It was more a watching and waiting feeling. As though a storm was deciding whether or not to rain on him or wait until he got indoors to let the droplets fall.
Except that nothing happened. He felt twitchy the longer the feeling persisted but nothing happened. The waiting feeling did not go away nor did it increase.
“Why would anyone be watching me,” he thought as he let himself into his apartment. The feeling of being watched had been particularly strong today and cause him to slip up at work a few times. He made a couple of mistakes, luckily correcting them before anyone else could notice. Henry realized he was becoming irritated with the feeling.
“I don’t do anything noteworthy,” he told his empty apartment. He hung his coat on the peg by the door. He dropped his keys into the bowl he kept beside the door and then added his wallet. He toed off his shoes and kicked them to the side, preferring to move about his apartment in his socked feet. He crossed the main open living space of his apartment. The living room was on his right, the kitchenette on his left. He went into the door opposite his front door and found himself in his bedroom. He took off his office clothes and slipped into pajama pants and a t-shirt. He dipped into the attached bathroom and splashed some water on his face hoping to scrub off the feeling of being watched.
“There is no reason for me to be watched,” he reminded himself as he toweled off his face.
He jumped when the knock sounded at the door. Henry didn’t get visitors. He didn’t really have friends. There was a group he would go out with on occasion but he lingered on the edges. They did not visit he apartment.
Ten til Midnight 