They Are Watching Me

Each week Chuck Wendig of Terribleminds has a Flash Fiction Challenge:
This week it is

The goal is to choose a trope from a website called tvtropes.com and write a 1000 word flash fiction piece on that trope.
For mine the random generator picked Conspiracy Theorist……

So with that in mind here is my 922 word piece.

They are watching me.

They are watching me. They sit in their little houses on stilts and pretend to be looking at the great ocean that pounds its way to shore or watching the so-called sunset over the blue waters. But I know the truth. They are watching me.

It started a long time ago. But it reached a new level a little over a year ago when I walked in to that small side-of-the-road gas station and along with a 6-pack of Budweiser bought a one-dollar lottery ticket. Imagine my surprise when I sat in my hotel room that night on the worn out green quilted sheets and watched in horror as they called my numbers.

Shit. I won the lottery. Now what am I supposed to do?

I had been running for a long time. So long I almost forgot why, but there was a reason. I just had to shake the cobwebs from my head to remember it. When I left, way back then, my wife had told me I was crazy. “There is no need to run.” She said. But I knew the truth and running was the only way to stay ahead of them.

And now, just my damn luck, the ticket I half-assed buy is the winner. Seriously what was I supposed to do now?

Part of me saw it as a sign. I was meant to have this ticket. But another part of me, the one I listened to, knew it was just another trap to try to get me. I mean what are the odds that I would win the lottery. It is not possible. It was them. They did this, to get me to come out of hiding.

My wife would have said, “How were they to know you were going to buy a ticket? Or if they knew you would be there to buy the ticket, why didn’t they just get you then?” But that would have been too easy. They wanted me to believe that something good and something amazing had happened to me.

I knew better. I was no more a winner of the lottery than I was the son of a hornet. Well, my dad was a ornery old man, but he wasn’t a hornet.

I left the “so-called” winning lottery ticket on the dresser and left that shabby hotel room in southern Georgia that night. I drove about seven hours and landed on the beach in St. Petersburg Florida. I wouldn’t make the mistake of buying a lottery ticket here in Florida. There is no way I would give them that satisfaction again.

I bet they were scurrying now. Trying to figure why I hadn’t come to cash in my winning ticket. Well the joke would be on them when the Mexican maid from the motel turned up instead of me.

But somehow they had found me again on the beach. Most days I sit alone on the dock with a fishing pole in my hand. Not really fishing, but watching my surroundings and keeping a look-out. Yesterday a family, mom, dad, and small boy child came down the pier.

“Mommy look that man is fishing,” the small one said as he trotted over to my side. “Hi.”

I eyed him, “Hi, kid.” I didn’t trust him. He had their eyes. He wasn’t a kid anymore than I was a lottery winner. But I had to pretend that I believed their con.

“You catch anything?” the small one asked.

“Not today.”

The woman stepped closer and took her son’s hand. “Honey, leave that nice man alone and let him fish.”

“But mommy,” he whined.

She took hold of him and pulled him away from me. The small one had his head turned around and stared at me as she pulled him away.

He knew. Now I would have to leave the beach too. I loved the beach. But maybe the mountains were the place to be. It would be more secluded and they couldn’t infiltrate as easily.

I had a kid, a daughter. She would probably be close to, let me think, wow I guess she would be eleven by now. I didn’t trust her either. My wife and I had to use In-Vitro. I couldn’t be positive of what had occurred behind closed doors. I suspected that they tried to infiltrate me there, with a plant within my own family. When she was born I looked in her eyes and I knew. I just knew. That is when I ran. If they could get that close then I wasn’t safe anywhere.

I would keep running until I could run no more. Until my legs gave out or my heart, I had a heart problem, as a kid they told me I may need a pacemaker when I was an adult. I knew better. There was no way they were getting their tracking device aka pacemaker inside of me.

I gathered my belongings in the small backpack, got into the old pinto, and headed down the highway north. Next stop, the foothills of the first mountains I could find. I checked my rearview mirror. There was a cop two car lengths back. That was not what worried me. It was the motorcycle that hovered behind me, with his strategically placed helmet hiding his features so I couldn’t see his eyes. He wasn’t fooling me.

I would lose him at the next rest stop. I rubbed the small knife that I carried in my pocket. He wouldn’t be a problem for long.