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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Theeaglestrikes on 2024-10-12 01:47:14+00:00.

Other than me.

On the day of the property viewing, that wasn’t the case. These streets were bustling with men, women, boys, and girls. It felt like any ordinary town. Cul-de-sacs branched off from the main strip. Cosy pockets of red-bricked homes and cobblestone streets. There was a local drinking hole named after some animal or monarch — amusing that it’s often one or the other, though I’m not calling the two things synonymous. It had every ingredient of a quintessentially-British settlement.

One month later, however, I returned to a very different place. Moving day — ‘Moving Monday’ as I called it — was overwhelming for exactly thirty-seven reasons, and the emptiness of the town didn’t make the list. My ever-growing list of things to remember.

What a waste of a day off, I thought.

Anyway, I wasn’t concerned by the lack of women. In fact, I hardly noticed the lifelessness at first. After all, I arrived a little after lunchtime on a weekday, so I assumed most people were at work.

In place of its true name, I’ll call the town ‘Propagate’. That word was written with blue paint in large, uneven capitals on a low-level wall. Several truant schoolboys sat atop that bricked partition, which separated a small, detached house from the main road. A dozen legs swinging back and forth like a row of pistons. They had an odd energy, given they were rule-breakers. An energy neither giddy nor intimidating. But the blank-eyed boys did keenly watch my car as it drove by.

That sighting was only the first oddity. There was also the young man walking the cocker spaniel. The five elderly gentlemen at the bus stop. The neighbour standing with both arms around his two sons — they watched from the front lawn as I pulled into the driveway of my new home.

As I said, I noticed the quietness, but it didn’t concern me. The lack of women might’ve triggered warning sirens in normal brains. Brains with a little common sense. But I was completely oblivious. An awe-stricken, first-time homeowner with a bulky moving van in tow.

Don’t judge me yet. I’m not, by any means, the bluntest blade in the knife block — just the least even. I was hardly surprised by the autism diagnosis in high school, as I’d always been a little rusty when it came to, as my dad called it, the ‘real world’. People and politics. The fuzziness of social science. My mind has always belonged to rigid sciences.

Let me put it this way: I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering, but I once let a tittering teenager and his pack of hooded friends ‘borrow’ my phone.

“Oh dear! Of course I’ll let you ring your mother to pick you up,” I obliviously said.

That was how I waved goodbye to my brand-new iPhone.

I’m smart-dumb or dumb-smart. Take your pick. Stephen Gawking, the trio of school bullies used to call me. It took their one collective brain cell to come up with it, but it was a good one. I’m surprised they even knew what ‘gawking’ meant.

Anyway, moving to Propagate was supposed to be a turning point. I was determined to prove everybody wrong. My friends in the city. My family back home. I wanted to show them that I wasn’t a socially-stunted egghead. I had the stuff, whatever the stuff might be. The independence and street smarts of my peers, I suppose. I turned 27 this year, so I knew it was time to make something of myself.

And that certainly happened in Propagate.

After only half an hour, the two movers had unloaded all of my belongings, and they left me alone. I heard one of them mutter about a strange look from a neighbour. Given what would follow, they were right to flee.

I spent the next few hours sorting through my belongings, but my mind soon started to wander. I needed something less mind-numbing to do, so I decided to spend the rest of my day exploring Propagate.

I took a stroll to the nearest convenience store, hoping to familiarise myself with the layout of my new hometown. And as I left suburbia behind, Propagate’s true nature revealed itself to me.

I entered a main street littered with dozens upon dozens of townsmen. Far more than there had been on my street. And there came a twisted feeling in my belly. Even an atypical mind like mine knows when it’s outnumbered.

It was an infestation of suited business types, schoolboy clusters, and dog-walkers. There was no longer any avoiding it. The fear. The feeling of eyes dancing across my flesh. And once I realised that heads were swivelling to track my movements, I scurried across the road to enter a store on my right.

Things were worse inside.

On the street, there had been options. Routes of escape. Even as an autistic woman, I’ve acquired the social skills necessary to detect when the male gaze tips from icky to sticky. When it glues so industrially to your skin that you sense impending, inescapable danger. When you realise that the watching man or men might want to do more than look.

That early evening, mere minutes before the sun merged with the horizon, I felt utterly and entirely alone. I had only an inch of daylight on my side. I didn’t feel safe.

I wasn’t safe.

And, as I said, I had hoped things would be better inside the convenience store, but they weren’t. I’d only thrust myself into a more claustrophobic arena of prowling eyes.

What terrified me so greatly was that the eyes hardly looked like eyes at all. Eyes can’t hurt you. But the town’s many sets of spheres were alive. Hundreds of spheres connected to one unified horror. And whatever thing followed me, disguised as countless pairs of pupils, it promised a nightmare.

Would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man?

That question rang in my head, and I thought about a third option. Something neither man nor beast. Whatever that thing might’ve been, I was already alone with it.

A supermarket worker, name-tag reading ‘Mike’, eyed me from a few yards away*.* He looked sick. Not sick with lust. Not even sick with a common cold. His eyes were swollen, appearing too large for the sockets in which they lived. And his skin bore stretch marks, as if bulging from the pressure of something. A terrible thing below Mike’s flesh, settling alongside his skeleton and organs.

Now, I’ve been stalked and even manhandled before. I wasn’t new to the fear of strange men. But this was something else. A scenario above the pay-grade of my primitive fear response.

Strangers were stopping in their tracks. That was what unsettled me. It was if they had been skewered by poles protruding from the ground. As if each man had been forced, by something beyond his control, to endlessly pivot. To follow me with a cutting gaze.

“Nadia?” a static female voice called.

Relief and fright simultaneously seized my body. Relief at having heard the voice of another woman, but fright at the mystery of its origin. My eyes eventually slid downwards, and I realised that I had, half-consciously, heard my phone ring several seconds earlier. Realised that I’d answered the call with a shaking thumb, though I’d barely been aware of doing so.

I was relieved to see that my screen read ‘Chloe’.

“Nadia?” my friend repeated. “Did you answer by accident? Let me talk a little louder… Nadia, I’m trapped in your pocket! Help!”

I smiled, thankful tears collecting in my eyes. With Chloe’s colourful voice to accompany me, I wasn’t alone.

Still quivering, I lifted the phone up to my ear. I didn’t want my friend to worry about me. Didn’t want her to know that I’d stumbled at the first hurdle of independence. Like nearly every other adult in the world, I had to feign normality. Putting on a brave voice took significant masking, but it was a skill that I’d mastered over the years.

“I’m here,” I said, before uttering a faux laugh. “Sorry. It must’ve been my gyatt that answered.”

Chloe snorted. “Where are you, bitch? You stood me up.”

Ah, I thought.

I’d invited my oldest, dearest friend to visit my new home after work. That was one of the thirty-seven things I was supposed to remember, but I’d entirely forgotten, as is typical of me. The serotonin overload of becoming a homeowner had wiped my brain. Happiness and fear frazzle my thoughts equally.

“You forgot, didn’t you?” asked Chloe.

“No…” I lied. “I just nipped to the supermarket to get us food and drinks.”

“A likely story,” she replied in a chipper tone. “It’s okay, Nads. I forgive you. Just bring some vino back for your dear friend, okay? She’s shivering on the porch. Talking about herself in the third-person.”

I grinned, making my way down the liquor aisle. Chloe’s distracting voice enveloped me like a warm blanket. She helped me to temporarily forget about the many watching eyes. And I soothed the remaining ache in my chest with a little sensory stimulation. Let my fingers brush against the bottles of Sauvignon blanc on the middle shelf. Let my gaze brush against the price labels beneath.

“I hear you, girl,” my friend said. “You’re drooling over the dirt-cheap brands.”

“It just seems unnecessary to buy an expensive bottle,” I pointed out. “They’re all the same, really.”

Chloe groaned and replied, “They are not all the same. Do I need to come down there and pick for us?”

No, I inwardly pleaded, tuning into my environment once more.

As much as I craved her company, I didn’t fancy the idea of doubly-hungry eyes salivating at the only signs of female life.

“I’ll buy a good one,” I promised. “See you in ten minutes or so.”

“Okay,” Chloe said. “See ya.”

I wanted t…

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