This is one creepy dude I’ve got

There is a feeling in the back of my neck like I’m being watched.

My cubicle sits in the middle of the office against the east wall. It is blocked from view at the door by a panel, and blocked from view at the window by another panel.

I am the only one here.

Yet the feeling persists.

I have written most everything else I must, the customers ads are on the pages, and I have to start going through the tens of thousands of words of copy people send in each week for use in our Island Time or Letters to the Editor section.

But I can’t get away from this creepy feeling that someone is watching me.

I just stuck my head out around the panel that forms the door to my cubicle and looked toward the window. There is no one standing in that window, and nothing to suggest that anyone had been standing at that window looking in at me.

Now I know there isn’t anyone playing Peeping Tom with me because I’m just a little, old, gray-haired chubby guy and I’m sure no voyeur could get kicks from that.

And if they could, I don’t want to meet them anyway.

I don’t have to look at the door because I can hear it open, or at least feel the change in air pressure in the air-conditioned office space when someone opens the door. If someone had stepped into the office while I wasn’t looking, which is always because the panel also blocks my view to the front door, I would have heard them or felt them.

But I looked anyway after a few minutes because this feeling of being watched just wouldn’t go away.

The only other time I get this creepy feeling that stands up the hair at the nape of the neck and on the arms, and the legs, and the back, and the chest…..okay, okay, I’m getting older and there’s hair everywhere.

But when I get that feeling is when my eyes have spotted that snake long before my brain registers its presence with the rest of my body.

Before I have time to react, the hair stands up and my body goes into fight or flight mode (and with a snake it would be flight except that my leaden feet are welded to the ground) and then my brain shuts down my legs. Someday I’ll have to have a talk with that brain and remind it that the chances of getting snared by a snake are slimmer if it will actually let me move.

So I got up out of the chair and walked out into the main office space…a distance of three steps.

I looked again at the front window, and again saw no one and nothing. I looked at the front door just in case, and again saw no one and nothing.

I turned to look at the rear production station even though I knew there wouldn’t be anyone sitting there because I was alone in the room.

I looked at the center production station even though I can see that one from the cubicle door. And again, nothing.

I checked Holly’s desk by the window, even though I had already looked at the window twice. Again nothing.

I actually bent down and looked under the desks to see if maybe some critter had come calling. Nope.

That left the storage area behind the cubicle. There was nothing.

So I did an extensive search for lizards. They get in here sometimes, and they hide in the most unlikely places. But there were none.

I even checked the bathroom and found nothing out of the ordinary, knowing that anything would have to pass right by me to get there.

I was stumped. But the feeling wouldn’t go away.

I went back to typing and just couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me.

So I turned around.

And there it was.

I always have a skeleton hanging around somewhere. It used to be a large inflatable guy about four feet tall, but he died some years ago. My grandchildren replaced him with a miniature rubber alien skeleton who used to ride on the wheel well of the Jeep until we got kids back in the house and they took to playing with him and wouldn’t stay in their seats, so I took him out and hung him on a hook in the cubicle I call my second home.

But now, I have a car that is solely mine. And it has a rear deck inside the vehicle.

I know what Ali wants.

He wants a seat in the back of the Corvette Holly bought me. And those lidless eyes are boring a hole in the back of my head trying to make me feel guilty for not bestowing upon him that place of honor in the new car.

One creepy little dude he is.

Tomorrow, he’ll make the transition. I’m going to set him right between the boom box speakers on the back deck and let the music rock his ears.

Until then, I hope he stops staring at me.

Please, stop.

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