The People-Watchers
One of my older memories is my mother giving my older brother and I each a small... figurine, for lack of a better word. Each figurine consisted of an adult seal with a smaller seal sitting on its back. They weren't sleek. Rather, they were hairy. They were covered completely in tiny hairs sticking out. They had only two parts not covered in hair. Their eyes and noses, both black. The noses were more reminiscent of a dog than a seal.
My mother bent down and told us about them solemnly. "These are people-watchers. I'm giving them to you so that you'll always be safe. There are three rules to having them. One, you must keep them on or near you almost all the time. Two, you must respect them. Three, you must thank them for their protection every once in a while."
My brother nodded and carried it upstairs carefully. I nodded as well, but unlike my brother, I was skeptical. It just seemed silly to me. What might have influenced this line of thought was that I've always had a much better relationship with my father than my mother.
I then followed my brother to the third floor. I passed his room and saw that he put his people-watchers on his bedside table. I entered my room and after a moment of debate, stuffed the figurine into the back of a shelf by the door. I could have made room in a better location but, as I said, I was skeptical.
That was around ten years ago.
Somewhat recently, my mother was hospitalised because of a severe case of pneumonia. In her stead, my father was being stricter than usual. He told me that I had to clean my room. I grumbled, but in fairness, I am not a tidy person. As I was cleaning my shelves and came across the people-watchers. I hadn't given much thought to them in years.
Due to my mother being in the hospital, I was being much more sympathetic to her. Because of that, I took the figurine and awarded it a spot on my bedside table among a cluster of owl figurines.
About a week later, I was reading in the hallway. (Sunlight streams through a window there at a certain time of the day.) My cat was laying in the sun at my feet. It was a quiet afternoon. Or at least the silence was more conspicuous; there had been much construction going on for weeks and weeks before that.
The silence was broken by the telltale sound of my dog dashing up the stairs. She ran down the hallway to greet me and as she approached she saw the cat. They have a good relationship, but that doesn't stop them from chasing each other around.
As you can guess, the cat sprang to his feet as the dog moved forward, and the dog began to chase him around the hallway. I ignored it, because they would settle down eventually and flop down next to each other. I had just resumed reading when all of a sudden I heard a clatter come from my room. I stood up, placed the book where I had been sitting, and walked into my room.
I looked around in confusion and my eyes settled upon my bedside table. Everything had been knocked off of it except for one thing- the people-watchers. I walked closer to them and something strange happened. I could swear on my life that I saw them blink. Moments after that, I heard a discordant crash from the hallway.
I returned to the hallway and saw that the cat had jumped up onto a bookshelf on the wall above the chair and caused the bookshelf to detach from the wall and crash into the chair. That occasion made me, somewhat tenuously, believe in them. So I took to carrying the figurine around with me.
One night, last week, I was taking a leisurely walk along the parkway. After it started to become a bit too dark for my taste, I began to head home. I was nearing the location of the stairway up to my street when a man on a skateboard approached me from behind. He stumbled somewhat and he grabbed me, pushing me to the ground in the process, to steady himself. Dazed, I looked up as a large limb of a nearby tree broke off. It fell and crushed the skateboarder.
Posted Aug 30, 2016, 11:22 PM UTC · edited