Day 5 - Fear

August was chewing on his fingernails, tucked away in his cramped one-bedroom apartment. It was usually the only place where he could find undisturbed solitude, unless there was a maintenance worker over, that was. In that case, his peace would be shattered, and by happy coincidence, one of his bathroom pipes had completely burst, being prevented from flooding the entire place only by a massive wad of cloth shoved into the fissure in the copper tube. After being left as is for several weeks, the condition of the pipe had deteriorated, until August had resigned to calling someone in to get it fixed.

Every time something needed fixing in his apartment that August couldn’t handle himself, he was struck with the irrational urge to simply leave it alone just to avoid the necessary interactions with someone else, no matter how bad the damage was. Consequently, his apartment tended to have quite a number of problems. When he finally accepted that he would have to, he was torn between hiding away in his bedroom for the entire duration of their stay and watching the worker with hawk eyes to make sure it was being done right. Whenever the worker looked around at him or his apartment with a look he couldn’t quite read, fear of judgement would seize him like a vise.

The same irrational fear of being watched and judged prevented him from doing day-to-day things such as going to the store or taking the subway. More or less anything involving being in the presence of others, really. But sometimes, even staying at home didn’t feel safe. The feeling that everything had eyes and was watching him, silently criticising him, grew stronger by the day despite his persistent efforts to be rid of them. At night, even the shadows seemed to be glaring at him with judgmental eyes. It terrified him  to the point he would frequently throw glances over his shoulder to make sure his shadow was doing nothing out of the ordinary.

Irrational? Certainly. Childish? Somewhat. Necessary? Probably not. Nonetheless, it helped August feel safe, and that was all that mattered to him. Security, a feeling of safety. He made sure, however, to be subtle in front of others, not that that was very often. Being stalked by shadows didn’t make the judgement of other human beings any less real.

August flinched away from the wall he was leaning against as he felt those watchful eyes on his back once more. Whipping around to face it, he slowly backed away, panic clouding his mind over like storm clouds milling over a sky, signalling worse things to come. “Here we go again…” he mumbled under his breath, turning away and shutting his eyes tightly.