A Spy

He didn't know when he suspected it. It was a creeping feeling, something that was gnawing at him day and night. He just didn't know when it had begun... this endless thing, this sense that he was being listened to. He didn't even know why he was being listened to. He just knew that he was.

Why would they listen to him? Who were they anyway? He wondered. He even began to wonder if chance meetings with seemingly random strangers were a set up. Was he paranoid? He wasn't sure. He looked suspiciously into the eyes of people who passed him indifferently.

"I believe that I'm being bugged."
"Why do you believe that?"
"I just do. I just can't prove it. Can you do something about it?"
"Why don't you just move to another apartment."
"They'll bug me there too."
He hung up the phone.

It occurred to him that they knew everything about him. He felt so naked and ashamed. What was he going to do now? Would he just kill himself? What was the point of it all if he had been exposed?

"Francis, I've been exposed."
"What do you plan to do?"
"Terminate."
"I'll meet you at the Sheraton."

Francis was his double and his lover. He had missed her so much. He wanted more than anything to see her.

"I can't do this anymore," he said, crying slowly.
"We must do it," Francis responded.
"Why?"
"It's our job. Remember that they rescued us when we were suicidal."
"I think it is "they" who are bugging my apartment."
"You don't know that."
"I don't know anything. I'm so confused. I don't even know where to start. I committed suicide, didn't I?"
"They saved you and gave you a second chance."
"To do what?"
"To fight against what you hated."
"What I hated was myself."

He loved her blue eyes and blonde hair. He had missed her so much. Looking at her beautiful face, his memories disappeared. He felt purified.

His room was very bare. He decided not to speak. He decided not to do anything but cover himself in blankets and stare at the ceiling. He wondered if there was a God and what kind of God would permit human beings to listen to him like this. His freedom, then, lay in being silent and listening to what he was saying inside. He was saying that he thought they were perverts, first class perverts who were listening to him. It was disgusting what they were doing to him, the way they were analyzing him.