Out to Get Me

            My name is Sylvia and I’m not important at all. I’m a tiny speck of gray nothing in the infinite universe. I’m not different. I’m not special. And that’s why they’re watching me. I work as a copyeditor. I know better than to imagine that there’s anything unique about me. They must want to do studies on the ordinary. They are watching, and I can think of no other reason.

            You think I’m crazy. Don’t worry; I would think the same if I were you. But look out my window. See that traffic camera on the corner? See how it’s not actually pointing at the intersection? There’s been a camera like that near every apartment I’ve had for the last five years.

            I wake up Tuesday morning around six-thirty. It’s still dark outside, so my body clock tells me to go back to sleep. I ignore it, hauling myself out of bed to shower and pull on a gray skirt, white shirt, and matching gray jacket. My heels are moderate and practical. After catching the bus to work—I stare out the window most of the way, but don’t notice any cars following the bus—I walk up the main staircase to the elevators. The white van isn’t parked across the street from my office building, today. After a soothing morning of fact-checking for an editorial, I feel safe enough to buy myself coffee and a sandwich for lunch.

            I settle back into my desk with my pastrami on sourdough. A columnist who really should know better has made dozens of minor spelling mistakes. I frown as I fix them, but I’m glad he keeps making mistakes. It gives me something worthwhile to do. Ten hours later, I’m finally done editing my section of tomorrow’s paper. The bus is crowded on the way home, and I’m exhausted from doing what really should be the work of three people. I don’t think to check the parked cars outside until I’m in the heavy wooden door of the old Victorian house where I rent three rooms.

Flashing back to the day five years ago when I realized I really was being watched—the men in black suits with stockings over their faces, my frantic desperation—I proceed up the ancient wooden staircase to my door, looking around corners before turning them and glancing frequently behind me. The climb seems to take eons, as I freeze at every slight noise. Once, I hear whispering behind me, but when I turn it, there’s no one there. I see no signs of the unusual, but even the usual seems terrifying. A stair creaking under my weight makes me jump.

Breathing heavily, I turn the key in the lock, step inside, and quickly lock the door again. I look around the main room and conduct a rapid search of the rest of the apartment, but there’s no one there. Feeling increasingly like the innocent victim in a horror movie, I whirl around to make sure there’s no one behind me. There isn’t. I let out the breath I’ve been holding without noticing since I got inside and start to laugh. I think for a moment that maybe I should go to a therapist, but the self-doubt ebbs away quickly. I have every reason to be frightened.

Slightly calmer, I look out the window at the parked cars below. No white vans or too-clean black sedans. I’m safe now. I make a cup of tea, and put a package of frozen lasagna in the microwave. I eat dinner slowly, simultaneously reading a book I picked up free from work a few weeks ago.

Shortly after I’ve finished eating, my phone rings. I dig it out of my purse, flipping it open to see that the caller is, in fact, my mother before I accept the call.

“Hi, Mom.” My voice adopts the strange, cheerful tone associated with phone conversations. She asks if I’m doing all right. She sounds unexpectedly worried.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

Her voice, slightly static-y, asks, “How’s your job going?”

 “Work is good. I’m editing half the Features section, now,” I answer. “How are you?”

She tells me about her church in response, and how my younger brother is thinking of dropping out of college (“Yes, Mom, that’s awful. He really should stay in school”). I make the appropriate noises for a while, wondering if there’s any reason for this conversation. I like talking to my mother, but I have a very exciting evening of watching horrible reality TV planned. Mainly, I’m just not all that comfortable with phones.

It turns out there is a point to this call. “Has everything been going alright, honey?” she finally asks, after a long story about how the cat knocked over the garbage. “No more…muggers, or anything like that?”

“Yes, of course. I’m fine,” I answer, sighing. She insists on worrying about me, ever since I’ve lived on my own. She can’t accept, somehow, that I’ve grown up enough to take care of myself.

“Good.” Thus appeased, she spends another three minutes saying goodbye before finally letting me get off the phone.

Released from conversation, I turn on the television. I find myself watching a show about a roofing agency. I’m not actually sure why such a job would have its own show, but I watch anyway. It passes the time.

The roofing agency is replaced with a show about “The Tragic Trials of a Teenaged Telemarketer.” After a few minutes of it, I turn off the TV, opting instead to check my email and read a couple of blogs.

The old college friend who happens to be in town this weekend hasn’t emailed me back about hanging out. This is probably for the best, since I’m not sure I’d feel safe showing up. I’m being watched too closely, lately, for my email to be unmonitored.

Around eleven, slightly unsure what I did with my evening, I go to bed.

I wake up to my alarm clock again on Wednesday. For a moment, an irrational fear that it’s some kind of monitoring device seizes me. I smash my fist into it, deactivating it with thankfully little damage. The morning passes like yesterday, and most mornings in my life. I shrug on soft beige clothing, complimented with a hint of olive green. I’m in a good mood today.

Of course the bus is late.

No cars follow my bus, but there’s a brand new unmarked white van parked outside the office building. I turn the wrong way at the corner, circling behind the building to the alley that leads to the back steps and hoping the people in the van didn’t see me. The back door is unlocked, as I made sure it was a while ago. I use the long route to my cubicle to avoid windows, and find myself using the wrong style to format the stories I’m working on.

At lunchtime, I risk a glance through the window, keeping most of my body out of sight behind a support column. The van is still there, and I think I see a pair of binoculars pointed up toward me by the driver. I pull my head out of sight quickly, hoping I haven’t been recognized. I make my way to the kitchen attached to my floor. Leaving the building for lunch today is just too risky.

Back at my desk with a yogurt I had stored in the fridge, I settle in to reformatting the articles and correcting grammatical errors. One of the newer editors is out sick, so I’m likely be here until late evening. I don’t really mind missing the awful TV.

Finally, around seven-thirty, the section is ready for printing. I glance out the window, hoping the van’s occupants have given up on me and gone home. They haven’t. I take the back stairs again on my way out of the building, feeling only marginally safer walking alone down a dark alley than I would have been passing the van.

My night vision isn’t good enough to notice the two black-clad figures creeping toward me until they’re almost in arm’s reach. One moves to block my exit from the alley while the other grasps at my wrist. He forms words, but in my terror, I hear them as muffled bubbling noises with a distant background of screams I guess must be my own. I’m hyperventilating now, and swearing silently. The bastards must have figured out my safe route. I elbow the one grabbing me in the stomach with the full force of my desperation.

He lets go of my wrist, coughing, and I run toward the other, hoping to get past him and out of the alley. The exit is close and inviting; there’s a street light nearby. I don’t get a chance to dodge around the man in the way. He catches me, absorbing my momentum easily in powerful arms. I shove against his chest, terrified and weak like a movie heroine, and he ignores me, shifting his grip on my arms and torso to further restrain movement. My panic-flooded mind finally dredges up the classic self-defense moves of a woman being restrained. I stomp down with my heel on the inside of his foot, turning as I do so to knee him in the crotch. He lets go of me, screaming, and I run out of the alley.

The other man chases me as I turn out onto the slightly better lit street. I’m not safe yet. I put on a burst of speed, kicking off my shoes, to reach my bus stop. The man following me gives up as the bus pulls up, and, out of the corner of my eye, I see him walk back in the direction of the white van.

The bus driver gives me a hard time over the lack of shoes. I’m breathing too heavily to come up with a plausible explanation, but my breathlessness and the fear still evident in my body language tip him off that something is badly wrong. I spend the ride home trying to convince him not to call the police. Cops can’t help me now.

With relief, I note that the white van is not following my bus. Nor is it on my street when I get off. I make sure there are no other suspicious cars around before climbing the stairs to my apartment, exhausted.

I lock the door, do a quick check for strangers and collapse on the sofa. My heart is still racing and my stockings are ruined. I pull them off and sit back to think. Whoever the people are who want me as a test subject, they obviously haven’t given up. Those men didn’t even try to disguise their actions as an ordinary mugging, unlike the last time. They were trying to kidnap me, without causing me harm. If they hadn’t been afraid to hurt me, I wouldn’t have been able to get away.

I’m certain they’ll come after me again as soon as they get a chance. I’ll have to leave the city, soon. If I leave right away, though, they’ll notice. They’ll be monitoring the transport systems for at least the next few days, and probably watching for me to leave the building. I’ll stay here until I run out of food, I decide. I hate that they’ve forced me out of my job like this.

I make myself a simple dinner, watch a TV show about a rescue elephant, and go to bed early. I can’t sleep. The day is too much on my mind. My wrists are bruised, my feet are sore, and my heart still hasn’t slowed back until normal. I fade in and out of dreams about smiling men with knives, waking up, startled, to sounds that seem to come from within my apartment. After checking the locks on the door for the fifth time, I finally fall asleep.

On Thursday morning at six-thirty, having fallen asleep less than three hours previously, I slam off my alarm clock (a piece of plastic casing breaks off of it) and go back to sleep. I wake up at nine still exhausted. I get up to call my boss and tell him I’m quitting the paper. I change my mind on the way to the phone; calling now could be a serious risk to my safety, as well as making it that much harder for me to convince myself to leave. A sense of guilt and the realization that I probably have nothing to worry about send me back to the phone.

My boss picks up on the third ring.

“Sylvia, where are you?” he almost growls at me. “It turns out Jamie wasn’t just missing yesterday, he’s quitting with no notice. You’re going to be up to your eyeballs in overtime until I can hire someone else. And that’s assuming management even lets me hire someone else. I tell you, this paper is on its way to total ruin.”

I wince. I hate my boss, but I love the job. “I’m sorry, Jim. I overslept. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“You damn well better be,” he snarls.

After an uncomfortable goodbye, I close the phone and lean back so that my head hits the wall. Fuck. I’m sacrificing my personal safety for copyediting. I don’t know why I’m doing this. But copyediting has always been my contribution to the world. It makes me happy, even in times like this. An error-free paper is more important than the well-being of one individual. It’s tangible and lasting, and I’d like to think it has an impact on the future

I grab a navy outfit off a hanger, with pants I can run in and flat shoes. Five minutes later I’m out the door and at the bus stop.

I’m mildly relieved when there’s no van parked outside the building. I wouldn’t have taken the alley even if there had been, after last night. I hurry up to my floor, not caring about things like being seen in windows. I’m resigning myself to my fate. Maybe whoever it is who’s watching me will still let me copy edit once they’ve kidnapped me.

Copyediting is something I believe in, I realize, more than I believe in being afraid of whoever is watching. I have a life to live, and being afraid of what might happen isn’t something I can let get in the way of it. It occurs to me, surprisingly, that I have no proof that the two men last night were connected with the van outside my office, and that the van itself might not even have been watching me.

I hurry through work, extraordinarily busy and behind schedule, but at least I decided to come here. I’m moving on with my life. Around one in the afternoon, I decide I can spare twenty minutes to buy a croissant and a latte from the coffee shop around the corner.

I’m shaking involuntarily as I walk down the stairs, but I ignore it. This is an outdated, irrational habit. I’m not going to let it interfere anymore. I step out the front door, forcibly ignoring the shiny black car parked outside.

As I’m stepping past it, its doors open suddenly, and three men in neat black uniforms are grabbing me. I struggle, with heels and elbows, but these men are a lot more competent than the men in the alley. I hear yelled threats, garbled strings of nonsense and rage. People on the street are stopping and staring. Why aren’t they doing anything?

“—can and will be used against you in a court of law,” I catch one of the men saying. Are they cops? I twist to look at their uniforms, and yes, there are the letters SFPD. I stop struggling. The cops handcuff me and seat me in the car. Two of them move to an identical car parked down the street. I still have no idea why this is happening.

As we start driving, I start asking questions, not expecting to be answered. I’m lucky in at least that small way. The cop who handcuffed me is willing to talk.

“You’re under arrest for trespassing and assault of Hearst corporation security guards. The guards in question saw you leaving the building where you were just arrested at eight last night, through an exit that is meant to be locked at all times. They asked you to submit peacefully to a few questions, as is their procedure. When you ignored them, they moved to physically restrain you, and you resisted them, escaping by catching a convenient bus. They summarily identified you and reported your actions to us. However, due to some question of your mental state, raised by your mother five years previously, charges against you may be dropped at any point, pending treatment for any serious mental health issues experts can diagnose. You’re on your way to an institution now, for that purpose. I reiterate this out of awareness that your knowledge of objective reality may fluctuate.”

“But the men last night never said anything. They just grabbed me. Anyway, I’m a Hearst corporation employee. How can I trespass when I’m just leaving work?”

“According to company records, your shift had ended three hours previously. In any case, an employee would have had no reason to use a back exit.”
            “But that’s not my fault. I was being watched. And those men that grabbed me didn’t seem like security guards.” The ones in this car don’t seem particularly like police, either. And the story about how I’m crazy so they can lock me away from the public with an easy cover story for any tests they run just fits together too well. I can only conclude that these are the people who must have been watching me.

“You’re the ones who’ve been watching me, aren’t you?!” I yell. There’s no response from the false cops. I squirm around in the back seat, unable to move my cuffed hands enough to even unbuckle my seatbelt, much less get the door open. When they pull me out of car door outside the supposed mental health institute (and if they were police, wouldn’t they take me back to the station for processing first?) I try to run away, but find that they’re very good at restraining me. I’m led into a crisp white lobby that looks like a doctor’s office.

My police escort signs a form of some kind, while the other officer leads me to the door out of the waiting room. Desperately aware that this may be my last chance to escape, I struggle until the man holding me hits me hard across the cheek. I’m made to stand in a padded white cell while my handcuffs are removed and replaced with a straitjacket. The tests start soon after.

A few weeks of blood samples and personality quizzes later, a “doctor” tells me I have a rare form of paranoid schizophrenia and that they will have to experiment to find an effective treatment. The nurses that go out of the way to pretend they care about me talk about improvements and restoring me to a healthy life as they hand me different colored pills every day. They give me enough drugs that I can’t remember the day of the week, and treatments I’m sure were outlawed as inhumane decades ago.

The tests they run to see if the drugs are working don’t seem to be related to paranoid schizophrenia at all. I get no therapy groups, either, or social interaction, art therapy or anything associated with modern mental health treatment. I’m not allowed to call my mother. Under the guise of checking for dietary factors in my condition, they give me too little food, so that I lie awake at night, my stomach growling.

During the days, there’s nothing to do but have my blood drawn, do the same personality tests and interviews every few days and watch TV. I’ve discovered that the shows get even worse at eleven in the morning. It’s everything I lived in fear of come true. My existence has been reduced to a victim, without a will or a choice or a purpose. Worst of all, I’m sure they don’t send my letters correcting all the errors I find in the newspapers.