Paranoia was not something I was prone to. Rationality dictates that most things in life don't revolve around myself. It was something I accepted; the universe was an unpredictable, meaningless sea of chaos. Yes, that belief brought me some semblance of solace, but it nevertheless seemed reasonable. If there appeared to be patterns that defied our notions of plausibility, those must be merely illusions. Misleading silhouettes projected by the narrow spotlight of our constrained perception. But when extremely unlikely events happen, where the probabilities are astronomically miniscule to the scale of observing quarks as containing universes, the line which segregates the impossible from the possible becomes hazy. Arbitrary. Any speculation about the unlikeliness of the event at hand was missing the point. It was about your belief.
The chances of seeing the same woman across two vast points in time was not at all inordinary. But for her to be wearing the same clothes and regarding me with that same inscrutable expression, it would have only been appropriate if the distance between the points in time were measured in hours, not years. And in the context of everything else that had been so unnerving and odd—the suspicious generosity that happened upon me at the perfect time, the impossible opaqueness of this group of individuals, the research itself—there was something just impossible about the situation. Something sinister. I could no longer dismiss the oddities with the belief that there were reasonable, harmless explanations for them. This naive belief that was no longer consistent with the observations needed to be discarded as if it was dangerous. Because it was dangerous. Everything appeared to line up too perfectly. Like seeing a single beacon of light in deep waters where no sunlight could possibly reach. If I heedlessly advance any further into the machinations that felt uniquely tailored to me, then I risk being tethered to whatever that awaited me at the end of the trail. It could be salvation. Or a slaughterhouse. This amorphous pattern was unmistakable. I couldn’t see the shape, but I could feel its gravity. It was slowly pulling me in.
The following day after my meeting with Irene at Smith’s Cafe, there had been a change. It felt as if the world had been taken apart piece by piece and replaced by identical looking yet sinisterly different pieces while I had slept. Every little thing was worthy of suspicion. Even the simple act of leaving my apartment became tumultuous.
“Hey, how are you?”
The gruff voice from behind made me jump. My heart pounded frantically in my chest.
“Oh! Sorry son, I didn’t mean to scare you there,” my neighbour reassured with a serving of laughter. He was a much older fellow who looked and sounded like a working class man past his prime. A worn tool that belonged in an unused cabinet at the back of a shed.
“No it’s alright,” I said in a croaky voice—the aftermath of adrenaline. “I didn’t see you.”
“I could say the same, son,” the neighbour said. “I barely see you nowadays. I mean, that’s not to say that I saw much of you before. The college’s working you hard, eh? What’s got you so busy?”
Why would he care? I wondered. Nothing I say will make sense to him. Unless he knows much more than I’m aware of. Unless—
“Sorry, I got to go,” I blurted out. “I’m late for something.”
Before I turned, I saw a bemused expression on my neighbour’s face. “Alright, then. Don’t let the old man keep you.”
As I briskly escaped my apartment, my mind tried to pass judgement on the neighbour who wore the facade of a working class everyman. I knew nothing about him. His eagerness to make small talk had always felt unnecessary yet harmless, but now it was suspect. Was he always this nosy? I asked myself, trying and failing to recall our handful of brief and unimportant conversations. How much of the quintessential working class image was real? A fitter and turner, I remembered him mentioning at some point. Such a persona would certainly be an effective deception. I reminded myself that he had been living here before I had, and that fact alone appeared incongruent with the suggestion that he was somehow a shadowy agent. Then again, Irene seemed to have been around before I had. So no conclusion could be reached. The lingering suspicion remained, like a pervasive malodour that engulfed everything in an acerbic tinge.
Reaching my office, I felt an insatiable compulsion. It overpowered whatever reservations I might have had about needing to act and feel sane. No drawer was exempt from scrutiny. The undersides of my desk and chair were checked. The furniture was shifted to reveal its dusty outlines on the floor. I ensured it. I had even poked out my head out the window to look along the exterior. Nothing peculiar turned up. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Perhaps a bug or easy to miss lens that would have justified this unshakeable feeling of being watched I had felt crescendoing over the weeks. The only bug I found was a sizable cockroach behind my cabinet, which I summarily scooped with some student’s assignment and dropped it out of my window—it was probably capable of rudimentary flight. This, however, did not dispel my discomfort. The only thing I knew for certain was that my apartment was going to turn inside out when I returned. Like an itch where the more you scratch, the worse it gets.
My compulsive preoccupations had unfortunately made me rather late to my morning lecture. So late, in fact, that only a small fraction of students were still waiting when I got there. The remaining had likely gotten the impression that I wasn’t going to come at all. I felt a little slighted. Do those students really think I’m that tardy? I thought indignantly. On the bright side, this natural selection of the cohort implied that the remaining students must have been the most dedicated. And so with a shrug, I proceeded to deliver what I could in the remaining time. It felt strange to see the mildly concerned looks a few of the students wore. They had assumed that I was late due to some personal misfortune. I supposed my face must have been flushed in my haste to make it to the lecture theatre. Of course, I didn’t explain the real reason for my lateness. They wouldn’t understand.
The rest of my day was spent in my office. I continued my crusade against the mathematical fortification from the Receiverist group. To say that I didn’t trust the shadowy group would be an understatement. I had begun to feel the inkling of peril in our murky association. However, my choice wasn’t in whether I should conduct the research or not. Of course I would. I was determined to find out whatever beauty or danger lay in the impenetrable depths. I wanted to understand why this mysterious group lusted for it, so I could in the same way. No. My real choice was in whether I would cooperate with them. Whether I would share whatever forbidden knowledge I discover. That was the only power I held over them.
That was, however, not to say I had made any progress. It would be more valid to say I had lost progress. The more time I spent on the mathematical document, the less I was sure of. Epiphanies and working theories that arose in my mind towards comprehension would inevitably prove to be momentary; they were always contradicted by a decisive placement of a symbol on a page somewhere. Early in my investigations, I was certain that there was a probabilistic element to the problem. Nondeterministic. However, a couple of days after meeting Irene, I had realised I wasn’t entirely correct. Yes, there appeared to be uncertainty. But attempting to apply standard probability theory had only led to nonsense. It dawned on me that maybe the research demanded a probability theory, but not the probability theory. An entirely new account of uncertainty was perhaps necessitated. Hence, my task seemed to have expanded by many factors as conjuring a completely new and unorthodox foundation of probability was on my plate. This was bitterly demotivating. I would need to unlearn the familiar field that I had always considered myself to be an expert in. Would such an audacious, blasphemous effort even be publishable?
An hour or two had been spent rummaging through my apartment for clues of a deep and invasive conspiracy after I returned home that night. Once again, I found nothing. This was unsurprising. What kind of a conspiracy would it be if it was that easy to verify? After all, this was the same group of people who were able to elude the omniscience of search engines—the summation of all human knowledge. My apartment had become a pigsty by the end. It was a scene that would have surely made my mother angry. Or entertained my brother. I swiftly directed my focus towards unrummaging the place.
My colleagues seemed to avoid me as much as I avoided them. The few times a day in which I left my office, I could hear their conversations dip in volume as they recognised me in the hallways of the faculty. Their gaze on the back of my head felt heavy—I wondered if they were accusing, pitiful or intentful. It had occurred to me that the way in which I had landed in the palms of the Receiverist group was almost elegant. I would have dismissed the initial email I had received if it wasn’t for its perfect alignment with the sudden jeopardy to my career. Perhaps my academic downfall had been orchestrated. That someone had their sights set on me for years, and had been slowly and deliberately manipulating the cogs in a complex system to ensure I would respond in a precise way at a precise time. Even I had to admit that seemed far-fetched, but it didn’t make me any less wary of the other inhabitants of the faculty. Peter and I had briefly locked eyes as we walked past each other in the hallway. I slightly nodded towards him in acknowledgement and he returned the gesture in the same way. It was painfully awkward. But I realised in the brief moment that, whereas I had once been so certain of the kind of man he was, I no longer carried that confidence. I wasn’t sure of the contents behind those eyes. It was no longer something I could assume of anyone else, either. And so contrary to what I had hoped, it seemed that meeting Irene had only multiplied my problems.
The cold evening breeze whistled as it scraped against my window like a dog with an itch. It was the first time since working at this institution that the building was this desolate. It was later than usual. I had thought that I whiffed the scent of an approach that would make sense of the variables. When one feels they are close to a breakthrough, it would be unconscionable to abandon their efforts for the sake of adhering to the mythical nine-to-five. Genuine inspiration is elusive. Spontaneous. Like a slippery eel, one can lose it just as swiftly as it comes. And so I had an obligation to stay in the office for as long as necessary until this inspiration played out. Unfortunately, it was a dud. After a few hours of grasping at the last ethers of the fading, erroneous inspiration, I felt a deep disappointment that seemed to have entrenched in my life over the last few weeks. There were moments in which I had sat at my chair, staring into the dusty cream-coloured wall in defeat. The wall was once white. And I was once self-assured.
The hallway was dead silent. No sounds of pacing behind closed doors. No clinking of teaspoons in ceramic mugs from the staff kitchen. It was unnerving. As I waited for the elevator, I turned back towards the direction of my office. I froze. A shadow. The shape of a man. I could barely make out the outlines in the darkness, much less the details. The figure appeared to be perfectly still, facing towards myself. As if daring me to move.
The elevator dinged, signalling its arrival. With uncoordinated, frantic movements, I threw myself into the elevator and mashed the close door button. In those few seconds, I waited with distilled fear for the figure to appear from the side of the door. And with relief, the door closed without the drama I had anticipated. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my palm. It wasn’t until a dozen seconds later that I realised with panic that the elevator wasn’t moving—I hadn’t pressed my destination. Rectifying that error, I shortly found myself at the bottom floor and briskly exited the building.
The pilgrimage back to my apartment had felt dangerous. I walked hurriedly with large paces and even larger suspicions of the other pedestrians. About a few blocks from my apartment, I saw a bald man in front of me, walking in my direction. Not wanting to draw attention, I initially had set on averting my gaze. As the man walked past a streetlight, it seemed he was staring at me. With wide, intimating eyes that never left mine as our distance shrinked. Naturally, I walked on the right side of the footpath to allow for others to walk in my opposite direction. Rather than taking my implicit invitation to walk past me, the man walked right up to me.
“Get out of my way,” he demanded with an oddly harsh yet reedy voice.
“I’m not in your—”
“Get out of my fucking way.”
He began kicking at my feet. He seemed unhinged and I wasn’t sure how he would respond to anything I might say or do. Without knowing what else to do, I cowardly walked even further to my side. It was only after that he walked past me and left me alone. I was rattled, but without dallying further I continued. I had checked over my shoulder multiple times to make sure he wasn’t following. A minute or so later, I reached my apartment.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
I wasn’t sure what any of it meant. The shadow man in the office could have been merely a trick of the light. My—undoubtedly overworked—neurons trying to identify patterns that weren’t there, much like what I was doing with the maths. The aggressive man that had bothered me on the pavement without provocation might have been just another unhinged member of society that didn’t adhere to any reason, much less conspiracies. But I couldn’t help but think that there was more to it. Was my mind conjuring up paranoid nothings, or was it trying to dismiss signs of something deeper in a desperate attempt to reach the familiar, comforting belief that the world was merely chaotic and random and devoid of frightening orchestrations?
The very next day, I experienced an unwelcome coincidence. After the events of the previous night, I had resolved to leave my office much earlier. The broad daylight would dispel shadows and discourage delinquents. Doing so would risk awkward encounters with other colleagues, but that was much preferable to being in a genuinely threatening situation. And so I left my office at a little past six, when the summer sun simultaneously scorched and watched over me. As I crossed the intersection that formally distinguished between the university grounds from the general public, I saw a woman approaching the intersection perpendicularly from my direction. She wore a navy dress, a dark floppy hat on one end and black boots on the other. The expression that regarded me behind the opaque sunglasses was all too familiar.
“You,” I said on approach. She didn’t deserve a greeting, but disappointingly my voice came out weaker than I liked. It didn’t sound as accusing as I had hoped.
“Me,” Irene said dryly.
“What are you doing here?” I asked warily.
Irene tilted her head. “That’s an interesting question. I’m enjoying the sun.”
“You’re enjoying the sun?” I parroted in disbelief.
“Sure. Or I can tell you that I’m walking somewhere. Or any number of responses that won’t satisfy you.”
“You’re good at that,” I said as I shook my head. “Being really unsatisfying.”
“I could be satisfying,” Irene said as she quirked an eyebrow in amusement. There was the slightest smirk on her lips. “But that’s neither here nor there. So tell me. How are you?”
“How am I?” I asked in puzzlement. “Good. Why do you ask?”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Irene asked in faux concern.
Perhaps this is it, I thought. Maybe I can bait her into admitting something. “How would you know?”
“It’s the expression on your face. Even before you noticed me, you were frowning. You were looking behind you every few seconds. You have eyebags the size of walnuts. You look anything but ‘good’.”
At the mention of my eyebags, my hand had instinctively jerked upwards to check before I willed it down. Irene’s gaze flicked down for a moment. I imagined there was a self-satisfied glint in her eyes. My appearance wasn’t something I normally felt insecure about, yet her words gave me the compulsion to look for the nearest reflective surface. I was reluctantly beginning to believe that perhaps there was no winning with her. This woman was just as impenetrable as the mathematical research.
“Fine,” I said petulantly. “I’m not so good. But you’re not exactly helping with how unforthcoming you are. Why can’t you just tell me the truth about what exactly it is I’m doing? Or who you people really are? I don’t trust you. I don’t feel safe around you.”
Irene looked thoughtfully. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said clinically, without an ounce of pity. No you’re not, I retorted internally. “But I’m not the only person you don’t feel safe around, am I? You seem pretty jittery around people in general.”
“Why do you keep avoiding my damn questions?” I said indignantly. “You’re always deflecting!”
Irene signed—not in annoyance, but almost as if in agreement. “I won’t deny that I am. But you know why. I already told you. I simply can’t give you any details. It’s a condition of the research. Whatever danger you seem to feel is all in your head.”
Yeah, right, I thought sardonically. Because why wouldn’t you tell me that.
“After all, we don’t need to threaten you to do the research,” she continued. “You’ll do that all on your own. Because that’s the kind of person you are, Alex. And I suppose it’s why you were determined for it.”
“You say that,” I responded with exasperation in my voice, “yet this shit is honestly beyond me. I have half a mind to just tear it all up and move on with my life.”
Irene paused for a moment. I wondered whether it was because she needed to reflect on what I said, or because she thought I did. “No you won’t,” she said almost musically. “Because the research means something to you. More than just your career.”
Before I could challenge her on what that meant, she continued in a contemplative inflection, as if she was thinking aloud. “Although, I wonder if the problem is this.” Irene waved lazily to nothing in particular. “Everything here is so pitiful. Maybe a change of scenery will do you some good. A sanctuary away from all this.”
“You mean like the countryside?”
“Sure,” Irene responded with a shrug.
“I hate the countryside,” I said earnestly. I had the displeasure of being raised in it.
“Well, this has been interesting. But I’m afraid I need to be on my way. I have more people to intimidate before I call it a day,” Irene joked wryly. Or at least I hoped she did.
In the twilight moment, I blurted out, “Will you ever tell me anything that will actually be helpful?”
Irene regarded me like I had asked a funny question. “I hope so,” she answered with a curious head tilt, before walking away.
As I resumed my journey back to the apartment, I couldn’t help but dwell on Irene’s words.
We don’t need to threaten you.
Does that mean they can? I wondered with a shudder.
And I suppose that’s why you were determined for it.
Who determined me for what? I asked, before fantasising, I would love to give them a piece of my mind.
Returning home, I took a hot shower long enough to turn my fingertips into prunes. My shower door groaned and clanked loudly as I slid it open to leave the confined cubicle. Dinner was a straightforward affair. The leftover chicken from the previous night was used in a chicken soup that took only a dozen minutes to cook and half that long to eat. Of course, all of that had been done absentmindedly. Muscles performing automated duties. My mind, however, chewed through my encounter with Irene ad nauseam. Toying with new angles and interpretations to decipher the meaning behind her words, and what motive she could have had for being there at that exact moment. Yes, it was entirely possible that she was there by coincidence. No, I refused to believe that it was. By the time I had washed the dishes, I was no longer sure whether the details I had revisited in my mind were even real or not. Was I remembering what had actually happened, or the many iterations of my impressions of what had happened? It was an endeavour with fractal complexity, and so with a sigh I pivoted to yet another labyrinthine task.
It was about an hour or two into studying the research document for the nth time that I received a phone call. As usual, my fight or flight response was triggered by the sudden bombardment of vibration and noise. Reaching for my phone, I saw that it was a number I didn’t recognise. In that instance, my mind raced. Could it be someone from the Receiverist group? I wondered. I anticipated something menacing on the other end of the line. It would fit some kind of a loose pattern I believed I was experiencing. Naturally, declining the call was not an option. I had to find out who was on the other end.
I tapped to accept the call, and asked in a wary voice, “Hello?”
“Hello sir, is this Alex Young?” a bored voice asked.
“Yes. Who is this?” There was some inexplicable way in which the caller’s Essex accent had put me at ease.
“I’m from the communications centre in HM Prison Longfield. Your mother has requested to contact you.”
I felt a slight panic that took a moment to quench. “Is it an emergency?”
“No, not at all,” the voice said. “Your mother made the request a few days ago. We only got around to processing it now due to high volumes and a temporary shortage in staffing.”
I wondered how much of that was true. This person was likely a private contractor for non-essential services in the prison whose low wage didn’t benefit from processing requests in a timely manner.
“You can put her on,” I said with a resolve that I didn’t feel.
“Of course. Before I do that, I need to let you know that you have a maximum of thirty minutes. We’ll also be monitoring the call to ensure the safety of our prisoners and yourself.”
“That’s fine,” I acknowledged.
There was a pause, before an unmistakable yet indescribable change in the static. “Alex?” The voice was familiar. I haven’t heard it in years, but it was unmistakable. I had always felt that her voice had a quality to it that I could only describe as wooden, and it seemed that this quality had only grown. The question in the utterance of my name was tentative, somewhere between cautiously hopeful and capitulating. My heart sank.
“Mother—mum?” I responded in a voice that felt like a reversion to a previous state that I had buried, and had hoped it would stay so.
“Y–yes it’s me,” my mother stammered softly. There was a mix of fear and excitement. “It’s me, Alex. It’s been so long. So long.”
There was something about the timid way she repeated herself that caught me off guard. It wasn’t something that she used to do. It made me feel a basket of things that I couldn’t—or didn’t want to—put into words.
“Yes. It has,” I said awkwardly. “How have you been?” It was a question purely out of polite habit. I wasn’t quite sure whether I wanted the answer.
“I’ve been—I’ve been, well, as good as I can be. I suppose.” It wasn’t that my mother was trying to mislead me, but she was always terrible at expressing anything other than how she felt. No, I translated for her, but there’s nothing that can be done about it, is there?
“There’s… really not much here,” she continued. “I suppose that’s a good thing. I imagined much worse. Not that it’s actually good.” I heard a soft sigh, as if it had been largely unintended. “How about yourself, Alex? How are things?”
It was the second time that day I was asked this question. “I’ve been fine. Just work is all.”
“You still at Imperial College?”
The band-aid had to be ripped off eventually. “No, I’m doing research at Miller University now. In the States.”
“The ‘States’? The United States?”
“Yeah. That one. They offered a good opportunity for me,” I said matter-of-factly.
There was a pregnant pause. “Well I’m… proud that you’ve gone so far,” my mother said with a wistful voice. “You never did seem to need any support or guidance. And I can’t do much for you from where I am, but I’m glad you sold the house to put yourself through university.”
At the mention of the house I felt yet another pang of guilt. Putting myself through school had only been one reason why I sold it. “I suppose so,” I said with a shrug. “It’s just what I had to do.”
“Alex, listen,” my mother began. I wasn’t sure whether it was something that I had inadvertently prompted, or whether she had called with this conversation in mind. “You still blame me for what happened. You do. I know it.”
“Mum I don’t want to—”
“Just listen. Please,” she pleaded. “It was my fault, I know. But you’re my son. You’re the only one I have left. Your forgiveness is the only thing that I have to live for. It’s the only thing that gets me out of bed every morning. Every day I live among some of these… deranged women. Sex traffickers. People who abuse their own children. Mental people. I’m not like them. Not at all. You know me, Alex. You know me.”
My mother’s tone crescendoed in franticness that mirrored my panic. The edges of my vision narrowed. “I’m—”
“So please,” she continued. Her voice was at once wobbly and accusatory. “Don’t abandon me. A call a year would be enough for me. It’s all I ask for. It doesn’t even need to be on my birthday. Please, son. Without you, there’s nothing left for me. Nothing.”
I could feel my hands shaking. I could barely think. My breaths were fast and shallow, and I could feel the soup I had earlier threatening to leave.
“Sorry, I need to go,” I blurted out.
“Alex—”
I ended the call and dropped my phone. With a crash, it landed on the hard floor and I realised I wasn’t at my desk. I had been pacing around my apartment as if I had been trying to find some kind of an anchor. I fell onto my bed and let out an animalistic scream that ended briefly in a violent coughing fit.
It seemed that the past was inescapable. A shadow that followed me wherever I went, always right behind me. The thought that the past determined the future frightened me, because that meant that I would be forever trapped in that day. It wasn’t that I didn’t forgive my mother. It was that I didn’t forgive myself. Forgiveness was an unattainable luxury when the fallout was uninhabitable.
My gaze fell onto the mathematical document that sat atop my desk. In a flash of pure wrath, I lunged at it. And ripped it in a swift violent motion that brought me primal satisfaction. Over, and over, and over until it fell onto the floor like patches of snow.