The Things We Do When Nobody’s Watching

They say our truest selves emerge when no one else is around. I used to think that was poetic nonsense — until I started noticing the small things I do when I believe I’m unseen.

I check locks twice, sometimes three times, pull the curtains across to stop prying eyes from seeing in from the outside.

I scroll back through old messages from people I shouldn’t miss. I open photo folders I swore I’d deleted, hovering over images that ache more than they please. I linger on faces that once smiled for me and now belong to someone else.

The house hums at night. The fridge clicks, the floorboards sigh. My phone glows on the bedside table — my modern-day confessional. I type but never send, imagine but never act. There’s a dark comfort in knowing the screen holds all my secrets, yet will never judge me for them.

People think sin begins with action. It doesn’t. It starts with permission — the whisper that says, go on, nobody’s watching. That’s where the rot begins. Not in the body, but the thought. Not in the act, but the indulgence of imagining it.

Sometimes, I write about these private moments — small betrayals that never quite reach daylight. Readers call them fiction. I call it self-preservation.

But tonight, as the glow of the monitor reflects across my face, I wonder if I’m really alone.

Because in the dark glass of the screen, a second reflection just blinked.

–Michael (Dark fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)