To be a witness

I sat at at the end of a long table, in a room bustling with people. They were each so preoccupied with stories and conversations and mounds of words and destinations that I sat ignored. Ignored but not alone. I took in the sights and sounds of my fellow person. A bubble formed around me as I watched them laugh and lean and sip coffee. Truly a fascinating sight was beheld. A spectator sat intent and staring in their midst; invisible, floating eyes in a jungle of energy. I listened to the world around me happen.


Personal information pressed into my ears with gusto, the speakers of which quite aware of my presence but seemingly lacking in care. I became an uncooperative witness. Reality was called into question. Somehow, private and personal information wafted into my brain like an unknown pleasant smell to a jogger's nostrils; without their knowledge or consent, without asking for permission. Information relayed to me unwittingly and openly. So I sat and I absorbed it. Not by choice but by necessity. Truly, I tried to maintain my own privacy. I read pages of books, ate a meal, passed the time with menial smartphone activity. But I could not push out the stimuli of neighboring person's drawl and chatter.


And as it poured in so effortlessly I grew upset. I grew tired. And I grew ever irked. I suppose some would be happy to be this broad daylight superspy, to find out the intricacies of the lives of the fellows around them. To have the insider secrets of their common peers. I loathed it to an extreme that was unjustified. The mundane happenings of these tales pushed me to block out the details in a way I had not imagined. The light had dimmed and my skin and bone began to fade. My body, it's corporeal self at least, faded into transparency, leaving behind only my cold, skeletal fingers and palms. A pair of eyes floated in empty space, stuck fast in an invisible head. I acted on instinct alone from this point forward. And not an instinct I was used to, but a new one thrust upon me by destiny. The dim light and the dull white and the hands and the eyes, all of my body, worked in unison as I commanded. First, flipping over the table, sending it's contents flying. My hands flailed about wildly in their anger, slapping off of each other as I lost control and regained it. They slapped a woman across the face. They banged doors open and shut. They clapped together haphazardly. They rotated as a feather in a gust of wind, without purpose, direction, or flightpath. Everything before me was thrown about in a flurry of open-hand slaps. Hands propelled only by thought and vengeful eyes.


Then I opened my eyes, stood up and walked out. I drove home silently and forgot the entirety of the drive itself. My carpet was never softer than this time I chose to lay on it. Curled up in the fetal position, I tried to sleep and failed. I listened to my breath and my heartbeat and I sunk deeper into the floor. I sunk so deep I entombed myself beneath the hardwood and then down, deeper, beneath dirt and grass. Here I was alone with another pair of eyes and hands that were not my own. We held our hands together, fingers interlocked, and their eyes smiled. Mine smiled, too.