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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/riddleofiddle on 2024-07-15 08:53:52+00:00.

I love open floor layouts. When you grow up crammed in a small house with 3 other kids and your parents all sharing 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, you develop an appreciation for space. I like the breathing room. I like feeling like I can stretch out. It’s like the “everything the light touches” scene from The Lion King when I look at my open floor plan condo. It’s a beautiful thing. Move-in was completely painless as well, as I’m on the ground floor. I’ve got these huge glass panes on either side of the front door- it’s a real modern apartment, I’ve come a long way since my childhood- so it almost feels like the entire street, the open field and trees on the other side, everything out there is a part of my condo; it’s all my domain, my territory. Even when I’m doing chores, I genuinely feel content just looking at it all; I get to see my neighbors walking their dogs and wildlife playing in the grass.

I also harbor a great appreciation for films and television shows, so I laid out my furniture to accommodate immersion. When I’m really absorbed in a work, it’s basically the only time I don’t want to be thinking about how much I love my condo. So, across from the entrance, the TV stands against the wall, and the couch in between- facing the TV, of course. The kitchen’s off to my left. The door to my bedroom is past the dining area to my right. Because of the limited distance between my couch and my TV, my field of view is mostly taken up by the screen. The glare can get annoying on a sunny day due to the aforementioned glass panes by the entrance, but I mostly watch in the evenings so the trade-off is worth it to me. All I see is the TV.

Last night, I was watching a period piece drama that took place in 19th century England. It’s great junk food TV for when I get home from work and I don’t really want to use my brain. The camera work can be a bit lazy, but the actors look nice and the costumes are really detailed; consequently, I don’t mind when the camera lingers on a shot for a little too long. Moments like that can be immersive in their own way. I felt my eyes start to put up a fight, but there was one episode left in the season so I decided to stick it out and watch it. Midway through the episode, it happened.

I fell asleep.

It happens! I can’t always force myself awake even when I’m engaged with the story. Never one to admit defeat, I tried to rewind to where I slipped out of consciousness. My entertainment system had other plans. For some reason, I couldn’t rewind past a certain point about five minutes after I passed out. It was a dialogue scene, a medium profile shot of a girl in a frilly dress and a man in a very nice suit against a floral wallpaper. I tried mashing the button, but it I’d hit a wall in the playback. It wasn’t supposed to be doing this. The intrigue woke me up fully and I restarted the entire system. When I hit resume on the show, it put me right back at that point and the same problem happened again. I hit play to see if that would do anything, and as the characters began discussing their mutual friend, my remote stopped working entirely. There was no useful guidance to be gained from a couple Google searches, so I gave up.

I put my phone back in my pocket and looked up, only to be met with silence and both of the onscreen characters making direct eye contact with the camera, dead silent. Blank expressions. It felt like they were actually looking at me. When had they stopped talking? I hadn’t noticed. For a moment, I thought I must have accidentally paused it, but I could see them breathing. This had never happened before in the entire run of the show, I had no idea what was going on. The girl’s expression shifted slightly to this subdued sadness, almost disappointment. Like someone at a call center having to scam yet another elderly person out of their retirement. My stomach dropped. Her arm slowly raised, in fits and starts, pointing at the camera. Pointing behind me.

I felt every nerve in my body charge, a horrible pulse of the most ugly and viscous dread I have ever felt. My hands and feet felt like ice, my neck felt exposed, I was too aware of the skin on the back of my skull tightening up. I had to look.

The glass panes.

A man, standing just to the right of my door. Just outside.

His nose too high on his face. Unnaturally long philtrum. Thin, wide lips. His hands between his brow and the glass, leaning in, peering in, peeping watching looking s t a r i n g r i g h t a t m e a n d m y b o d y w a s i c e.

A sort of hyperawareness. I felt the air in my condo like it was part of my body, like my nerves extended out and beyond my form and stretched into the cavernous room, the precious space between he and I. I felt every disturbance. I could see everything, hear everything, I was so in the moment that it seemed to stretch on forever. It only lasted milliseconds before every muscle in my body contracted and I let loose from my throat a distorted white noise, a scraping or scratching scream I’ve never screamed before. I scrambled to my feet and he just watched. I looked around my apartment for something I could use to defend myself, but finding nothing I looked back to see him moving away, his legs somehow moving his torso with no sway, no bob, perfectly evenly, as if he was sliding but you could see his legs taking him, carrying him away and he didn’t break eye contact, not for a second not for a moment not for anything. I’d never wanted so badly to curl into a ball and cry and just not exist. Could I even call the cops? He didn’t commit a crime… I looked to my kitchen, finding the knives, and in my peripheral vision I saw it, his face was on my screen, two of them, imposed on the characters on my TV. Still pointing.

My head swiveling, turning like a top on a table, rotation, centrifugal force exercising slightly on my eyes and nose and the protrusion of the back of my skull, my hair pushed by the air that wanted to stay still, and he was there, just behind my couch, just feet away from me, still with his hands positioned like he was looking through glass, the door unopened, my panic gripped me and I just fell over, genuinely fainted.

Today, I awoke to my TV was missing. It was the only thing missing. The police came to my house, looked around, I told them about the man’s appearance and behavior but I left out the images I saw on my TV, the strange blurring of my reality in those moments. I don’t think it really matters, I don’t even know if it was real- maybe it was my subconscious filling in the blanks of knowing there was someone watching me, I don’t know. Is such a thing possible? Can you tell when someone’s watching you?