4 Birth Months Who Have Always Felt Watched In Empty Houses

You know you’re the only person in the house. You watched everyone leave. And yet, halfway down the hall, you become oddly conscious of how you’re walking, as though someone has looked up from a chair to watch you pass. These four birth months know that feeling well, right down to the urge to look behind them when they’re almost out of the room.

February: The Window Behind You

February, you can be perfectly comfortable alone until the windows turn dark. During the afternoon, the kitchen looks out onto a fence and a few unremarkable shrubs. After sunset, you catch your own reflection reaching for a glass, and suddenly you’re aware of how much of the room someone outside could see.

You’ve had this feeling since you were young enough to be sent downstairs for something after dinner. The errand itself was easy. Coming back past the glass door required a casualness you had to rehearse. Walking too quickly would mean admitting you were scared.

Now you have your own kitchen, your own perfectly sensible explanation, and blinds you could close whenever you like. You finish filling the glass first. Apparently, even an imaginary audience mustn’t see you lose your composure.

June: The Silence After The Noise

June, the house feels emptiest just after everyone leaves. A minute ago, someone was calling upstairs for a charger while someone else held the front door open. Now the car has pulled away, and you can hear the little click the refrigerator makes. You hadn’t noticed it all afternoon.

You start doing whatever you were waiting to do in peace. Then you pause, because you have the peculiar sense that somebody is waiting for you to finish. The way a person stands in a doorway without interrupting. You turn, ready to ask what they need, and find an empty hall.

You remember this from childhood afternoons at home: turning around because you were sure someone had stopped in the doorway. Even now, after checking the empty hall, you fold the next shirt facing the door.

October: The Room You Don’t Want To Disturb

October, you agreed to water the plants. Your friend left clear instructions, the spare key works, and the house is entirely ordinary. Still, you say a small hello when you step inside.

It’s the arrangement of things that gets you. A pair of reading glasses rests open beside a chair. A slipper lies on its side. The room looks as though someone has stepped away for thirty seconds, and you feel strangely rude standing in the middle of it. You’ve been like this since childhood visits when you wandered into the front room nobody was using and immediately felt you ought to leave.

You carry the watering can past the chair, then glance back at it from the hallway. Still empty. From the kitchen, you can see just one armrest through the doorway, and somehow that’s worse than seeing the whole chair. You finish watering the plants nearest the front door. As you leave, you almost say goodbye.

December: The Walk Back Upstairs

December, you’ve always been fine going down to the basement. You can look through three boxes for the spare extension cord, read an old label, even get distracted by something you thought you’d lost. It’s turning your back on the room to go upstairs that changes everything.

With your foot on the first step, you’re suddenly conscious of all the space behind you. Nothing has moved. You haven’t heard anything. You were standing quite happily in that exact spot a moment ago. Nevertheless, the back of your neck would like you to pick up the pace.

As a kid, you took the last few stairs two at a time. These days, you manage a dignified walk, right up until you reach through the doorway for the light switch. Then comes the swift little turn, the click, the door pulled closed. Upstairs, you hand over the extension cord without mentioning how quickly you covered the last few steps.