The Watcher (part 1)

I went to the cinema today. I shouldn’t have, now I know, I really shouldn’t, but I did. There was a showing of an obscure art movie, the kind that only I ever bother to watch in this town, and I went to see it in an obscure art theater, the kind that only I ever visit. It was no different this time, either; the place was eerily deserted, almost completely devoid of people. I was the sole visitor for the 6 pm showing; I guess the stormy, dark weather decimated the otherwise already meager interest, exposing me to the otherworldly atmosphere of an empty theater, quite unlike anything else. If you’ve experienced it, you definitely know exactly what I’m talking about. Nobody can forget the simultaneously nostalgic and strangely unsettling backgrounds of our half-forgotten, dimly lit childhoods. This never bothered me. However, I should have simply turned around and left when I noticed the heaving, dirty pile in one of the front rows upon entering the viewing room. At first, I couldn’t quite put together what I thought I was seeing, and, after an almost imperceptible moment of hesitation, continued towards my seat near the middle of a row two-thirds of the way to the end of the auditorium. Since the room was empty (except for me and the dirty gray pile further ahead), I could have chosen any other seat to enjoy the movie from. Since the room was empty when I booked my ticket, I already had the best. Settling in, I arrived at a logical conclusion as to the nature of the pile; stray homeless seeking shelter in the theater, sneaking in when the teenage – and rather uninspired – employees weren’t looking too hard, wasn’t unheard of. They rarely caused trouble.

Indeed, now that I was listening closely, I could hear the shaky intake of ragged breaths; slow, monotonous, testimony to lungs badly damaged by cigarettes or alcohol or whatever. He was sleeping. This small theater doesn’t play half a movie’s worth of advertisements, so I expected him to be startled by the film about to begin in less than two minutes. That didn’t happen. Although sound and flashing lights soon enveloped the small auditorium, I could see no shuffling, dazed figure heading for the door to find another, currently unused viewing room. I wish I had; I so much wish I had. But something else happened.

No more than 10 minutes could have passed of the movie, otherwise quite engaging with its unique approach to camerawork and lighting, when I noticed someone staring at me. From around the second or third row, right where I suspected the sleeping hobo to lay, I could see the top of a head peeking in my direction. Colorless, matted hair, dirty forehead smudged with something dark, and gray, lifeless eyes. That was all that extended above the top of the seat. The eyes did not seem to blink. I felt that cold, surging feeling in my stomach, like an anvil dropped on my bowels, not dissimilar to how I felt upon first seeing my grandmother’s bald head after she started getting chemo. I stifled a panicked cry. We locked eyes for some unending seconds, and I was about to issue a protesting comment, when he ducked down beneath the seat’s edge, and I, unbelieving, tried shifting my focus back to the movie at hand. Quite unsuccessfully; the surreality of the situation unnerved me as much as the look of the watcher’s head. Something about it just didn’t seem right. I considered calling out, or even trying for the door in search of an employee, but for some reason didn’t.