“Everyone thinks that they’re the hero of their own story.”

  I’m pretty sure that at some point you would’ve heard of ‘main character syndrome’ at some point in your life. It’s usually used in reference to people who are extremely narcissistic and view themselves as the center of the universe.

  Of course, there is no ‘main character’ in real life. As difficult as it is for some people to comprehend, every single other person other than yourself has a life, goals, thoughts, and aspirations as rich if not richer than your own. There’s even a French word for the sobering realization of this fact – sonder. The word is mainly used in a negative tense, as it attempts to describe the emptiness people usually feel inside once they realize this. After all, it means that you’re not special. That you’re not a chosen one. Above all, it is an admission of your own insignificance.

  The fact that what you know of this world is but a tiniest fraction of it. That your knowledge is far more limited than you might otherwise think.

  Don't get what I mean? Imagine for a second that you were living in a simulation. Now, you may think that it's nearly impossible for a computer to possibly synthesize everything in the world going on around you, at least no modern computer could.

  Imagine the last time you walked into a library. Have you actually read every single book in there? No, leave that, have you ever even opened each book to see if there is an actual story within it? Of course not, given how such a thing isn’t even physically possible. How do you know that... each book is real; that each book actually has words in it without you opening each one? They could very well be placeholders, just there to make the world look more real with each page inside being either blank or nonsensical garbage. Maybe they’re all blank and the writing only appears once you pick one up.

  Extrapolate that to the world. Sure, there are ways of knowing about everything going around you- but how much do you actually experience?

  And that is only to speak of the collective human experience, to say even less of the vast universe and its wonders.

  In the end of course, it's only what we experience that shapes what we think of reality. We can never go inside someone else's head.

  But, my story doesn’t touch on anything that vast and grand. It’s on a much smaller scale, in a small town that you’ve never heard of.

  I didn’t relish the idea of moving there. I had been a city boy ever since I had grown up, and the thought of going somewhere with a population under twenty thousand was one that my mind simply couldn’t wrap itself around. I was so used to the sight of an unimaginably large swarm of people moving from street to street, oblivious and uncaring to my existence as much as I was to theirs as we made our way about the day.

  However, not everything in life can go the way that we want. My student loans weren’t going to pay themselves, and the pay and cost of living were low here. If I had continued to stay in New York, I would’ve only dug myself into a deeper and deeper hole of debt as time went by.

  Something felt off in my gut the moment I drove in, though I had chalked it up to the abrupt change in scenery rather than to something that I had seen or which was actually wrong with the town.

  I got my first surprise three seconds after I had parked my car and opened the door.

  As suddenly as a thunderclap, someone approached me.

  I was a bit startled, and having grown up in an area of the city which wasn’t all too safe at night, and alarm bells rang off in my head even as I was greeted not with the end of a knife, but a warm smile.

  “Hello there! Good morning, I didn’t mean to startle you – I’m sorry,” the man said.

  He was dressed up in a checkered shirt and was wearing blue shorts with sneakers. He looked like the poster child of an average suburban American dad. The kind that you might see in old brochures or in an old family sitcom. His hair line was slightly thinning, and his glasses slightly magnified his bright blue eyes, all of which painted a picture that I felt that I had seen a million times before.

  I was still rather startled but managed to get my thoughts in order. “Sorry, I didn’t see you there. It was almost like you’d popped out of the bushes.”

  “Oh, I get it, again, I’m so sorry about that,” the man said. “I really didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “It’s fine,” I replied as my heart went back down to a normal rate and rhythm. I then remembered my manners and extended my hand, introducing myself.

  “My name’s John Smith,” the man said, shaking my hand rather vigorously. I almost remarked just how… generic that name sounded. It was the name that the authorities gave to unknown victims! But, this guy had probably heard all of that a million times over at his age and I didn’t bother bringing it up. “It looks like the two of us are going to be neighbors!”

  “Yeah, I’m just about to move in here,” I told him. I had not even started lifting the first box when I had been interrupted by him.

  “Well, great to hear, nothing better than a new face, right?” he asked. “Actually, why don’t you come on over, I can introduce you to the rest of my folks!”

  I wanted to refuse in that moment as I was eager to get started on unpacking and settling into my new house, but at the same time, it seemed rude to refuse.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  As it was, I figured, I was going to be neighbors with this guy and might even need his help down the road, it would not hurt to spend five or ten minutes to get to know him.

  The houses on this street were nearly identical in the way a lot of suburban houses were – the same model with a blue roof and white building, with a small backyard and a large front yard along with a driveway just big enough for two cars.

  Now, I was sort of used to seeing stuff like that at times, but it looked like no one had gone out of their way to mark their houses out from one another. It would be normal in this kind of situation to put up some kind of decorations, or there would be some avid gardeners, heck, as much as I hated seeing them otherwise I would’ve loved to see a political sign as it would at the very least mean that there was something that distinguished one house from another.

  It would be a nightmare to take a jog around this place, I felt, as I would get lost so easily given how much everything looked identical.

  John’s family was so eager to meet me that they were standing near the door on the front lawn, as if they’d been standing there all day waiting just for me.

  His wife’s name, I kid you not, was Jane. Meaning her name was Jane Smith.

  As she introduced herself, I looked from John to Jane, thinking that one of them was going to yell out ‘April Fool’s!’

  ‘I’m being punked, aren’t I?’ was my second thought. But when neither of them clarified the misconception for an awkward ten seconds that dragged on like it was an eternity I realized that this was not a joke that they told to newcomers, no, she was being serious.

  Much like John’s counterpart, she looked the part of a stereotypical soccer mom. There was something… odd for lack of a better word, I thought, as I saw the way they smiled. I couldn’t place my finger on what it was, however.

  They didn’t say anything that was odd, or could be interpreted as weird. Their two children, Peter and Stacy, aged nine and seven, were perfectly polite. Almost a bit too polite, I remember at that age I fought constantly with my own younger brother, though I suppose things were different in front of strangers.

  Together, they formed a picturesque family, though even this was somewhat blemished by just how empty their front yard looked. It was completely barren of anything save for grass pristinely cut to the proper height. Even as I gazed up to the second floor of their house, I couldn’t see anything like stickers or decorations near the windows which I would’ve expected, especially in a house with children.

  The fact that there was nothing that made the place stand out made it stand out all the more for the lack of what one would expect. Even something as mundane as a simple lawn chair or the presence of a lawnmower would’ve made it seem far more natural.

  “Want to join us for lunch?” John offered.

  “No, thank you but I ate on my way here and I’ve got a lot of unpacking to do,” I said, declining as politely as I could. “Not to mention I need to get ready for work tomorrow.”

  “Ah, I gotchu,” John said. “But, I wouldn’t worry too much about work tomorrow. I guess things are really busy back in New York, but they’re a bit slower down here. I wouldn’t expect much from your first day at work.”

  “I… don’t recall mentioning I was from New York,” I said, perturbed.

  “Oh, I happen to know your boss, Mr. Dawkins,” John said. “He mentioned that in passing.”

  Now, I knew that I had moved to a small town, but was it really that small that word of me coming here would’ve gotten around that fast? I couldn’t be sure of that, or maybe it was just a coincidence that John here happened to know him?

  “Small world, it seems,” I said.

  “Yeah, hey- do you need help unpacking?” he asked. “We could always lend a hand.”

  “No thank you,” I said.

  “Well, if you ever need help with anything else, feel free to holler!” John said.

  “Right, well thank you and- uh, there was actually one thing I wanted to know if you could help me with,” I said.

  “Oh? What’s going on?”

  “I can’t seem to get a strong phone signal here,” I said. My phone had basically been dead ever since I’d arrived in town.

  “Yeah, that happens in some places, we’re a bit out of the way, you know?” John said, waving his hand nonchalantly. “You just learn to kind of, deal with it.”

  This seemed to be something that people here just accepted, but I could not really deal with the fact that I wouldn’t have access to the Internet 24/7. The mere concept nearly broke my mind.

  “Ah, I hope I don’t have to,” I said as I waved and then left. As I unloaded the boxes in my car, out of the corner of my eye I saw the family go back indoors.

  I sighed out of relief. That was good – a part of me was worried that they were just going to end up standing there, waiting.

  ‘You’re being ridiculous, they were just being nice,’ I told myself as I placed the last box in my new house.

  I couldn’t get a good signal in here either, but if I couldn’t get one outside of the house I didn’t know why I was expecting to get one in here.

  I didn’t have an internet provider yet, which was the first thing that I needed to handle if I couldn’t switch to a provider that would get me a good signal in these parts. It was almost as necessary as, no, perhaps in some ways even more so, then food and water.

  The interior of the house was nothing special, though it was clean which I greatly appreciated. Clearly the realtor had had it fixed up beforehand as I couldn’t find a speck of dust there.

  Given that my smartphone was about as useful as a brick, I picked up the landline, and thank goodness that worked at least so I could give my parents a call and let them know why they couldn’t reach me.

  In a strange sort of way it was almost pleasant to have a few hours with my phone not working as it wasn’t being blown up with alerts or anything like that.

  A few hours after that though the novelty wore off and I became concerned, thinking about what might be happening or what I was missing out on.

  I was mostly kept busy with unpacking so the boredom hadn’t quite set in as of yet, but in three day’s time I would rapidly lose my mind, I realized, if I had to go on like this.

  While all of this was going on, I would occasionally send out furtive glances outside my window. Some part of me expect to see John or his family staring into the house or something like that, but to my immense relief nothing like that happened.

  John did drop by in the evening, but he didn’t sneak up on me or anything and rang the doorbell, offering me a pie his wife had made as dessert. I wanted to say no but had the thing all but thrust into my arms as he waved off and went back to his house.

  Something still felt unnerving about the place, however. I lived at the far end of the street, near the woods. They were sparse enough that it wasn’t really reasonable for anything to be hidden there, and this was extremely far from the wilderness so I wasn’t concerned about things like coyotes or bears.

  However, there was still a sense of uneasiness deep within. I made sure that all the windows and doors in the house were locked, and I realized that I should’ve gotten a doorbell camera or something of the like.

  I saw one thing that stood out while I was sneaking glances out of the second floor window while getting ready for bed, on the lookout for… I don’t even know what at the time. About three streets away under a streetlight I could make out the silhouette of a man with a small dog on a leash. There was nothing abnormal about that sight in and of itself, though for some reason I noticed a distinct lack of activity on the streets even though it wasn’t that late.

  I didn’t see the people going on evening walks or maybe just chatting at some street corner – it was like the place had suddenly become quiet the moment the sun sank below the horizon. Then again, it hadn’t exactly been thriving with activity when the sun was up either.

  So, this man and his dog were basically the only people I could still see outside. That wasn’t odd in and of itself too much, it was after all, just a man taking his dog out for a walk.

  What was odd was that fifteen minutes later, I saw him, still standing there. He didn’t seem to have moved an inch, and when I looked out half an hour later, he still hadn’t moved from that spot.

  Now, he was free to stand wherever he wanted on public property I guess, but it didn’t look like he was out for a walk. Was he really just standing there, under the streetlight, admiring the scenery? Or was he waiting for someone?

  Regardless, it wasn’t like he was bothering me in any way, just something that really stood out to me.

  Nothing untoward happened overnight despite all of my misgivings, and I felt far more at ease as I walked down the steps leading to my house and into my car. It was time to focus on the reason as to why I was here – work.