By Cheryl Jeanne Saputra, Junior College 1

Scopophobia is the fear of being watched, whether in public or when you’re alone.

“Who thought this could happen to her?” 

A mother’s voice trembled as she asked the therapist, her words heavy with disbelief. Molly sat next to her, rigid, sweat pooling on her skin. Her foot tapped frantically on the floor, each tap measured, almost like she was keeping time with an invisible clock. But it wasn’t just a nervous habit. Each beat seemed to prompt her eyes to dart, scanning the room for something. Or someone. Something no one else could see.

But if she told anyone, who would believe her? A child’s imagination, they’d say. The product of an overactive mind, an innocent mind. No one would believe that a nine-year-old girl could be haunted by the feeling of eyes on her, all the time, every minute of every day. Even her friends had started to drift away, growing uncomfortable with the strange stories she told about the presence that hovered just beyond their sight. 

The disbelief was suffocating, the isolation even worse. So Molly sat there, tapping, looking, searching. Her lips barely moved as she whispered, “They’re watching.”

“They’re always watching.”

At first, it had been something she could almost ignore—just the creeping sensation of being observed. It happened at school, at home, even when she was alone in her room with the door locked. But soon, it became impossible to escape. She couldn’t focus in class, couldn’t play outside without constantly checking over her shoulder. Homework piled up untouched, and games no longer felt fun. Every moment was consumed by that tightening coil of dread in her stomach. She was a child, a book with pages still unturned, filled with the promise of stories yet to be written. But now, she felt as if her pages had been stolen, overwritten with a story she couldn’t comprehend, as if an invisible hand had gripped the pen, crafting her fate.

And that was the worst part—knowing she didn’t write it.

But one day, something strange happened. As Molly sat in the back of the classroom, her eyes fixated on the chalkboard, she heard a voice. It was faint at first, barely audible, like a whisper carried in the wind. But then it grew louder, clearer, unmistakable. It wasn’t one of her classmates. It wasn’t her teacher. It was a voice she had never heard before.

She froze, her heart pounding in her chest. She looked around…. It sounded like a hiss.

She froze, her heart pounding in her chest. She looked around the room, but no one else seemed to notice. The kids were busy scribbling in their notebooks, the teacher continued to drone on, oblivious. Yet the voice continued.

“It was coming from the walls…..”

It was coming from the walls. No—from everywhere. From nowhere.

Her breath caught in her throat, her fingers gripping the edge of the desk so hard her knuckles turned white. She stood up abruptly, her chair scraping against the floor. The entire class turned to stare at her, confused, some giggling at the sudden outburst. But Molly couldn’t see them. All she could feel were the eyes—the eyes of something far greater than a classroom full of kids. She bolted for the door. Her teacher’s calls faded into the distance as she ran down the hallway. The voice was still following her, louder and louder, echoing through her mind.

When she finally reached the schoolyard, she stopped, gasping for breath. The world spun around her, a blur of faces and places, but the voice was gone. 

Silence. 

For a moment, she allowed herself to believe it was over that maybe it had just been a figment of her imagination.

Maybe she’d finally lost it. Maybe this was the beginning of the end, the slow descent into madness she had feared for so long. But even then, standing alone in the yard, she felt their eyes on her.

She told herself it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. But deep down, she knew the truth. They were there. They had always been there.

She often wondered, in the quiet hours of the night, if she did know who was watching. She could feel their presence, cold and distant, like a gaze she couldn’t escape. And yet, it was familiar too, as if this invisible watcher had always been there, lurking in the background of her life. Sometimes, she thought she caught glimpses—a fleeting shadow in the corner of her vision, a feeling of breath on her neck when she was alone. But when she turned, there was never anyone there.

“They won’t believe me,” she whispered into the dark of her room one night, clutching her blanket tightly around her small frame. Because who would? What could she say? How could she explain that the one watching her wasn’t in the same world she was? How could she explain that this person didn’t see her from the outside, but from inside her very story?

She had tried to make sense of it, tried to piece together the fragments of her fractured reality. The presence felt real, tangible, but somehow untouchable, unreachable. Whoever—or whatever—it was, they weren’t here in the same way she was. It was as if she existed under a lens, every thought, every action recorded by someone who didn’t belong in her world. 

But, maybe Molly did know who was watching her, but that fact is useless, because all along, she knew that the person who watched her was someone she could not touch. This person is behind a screen, and perhaps someone who didn’t know. 

The person who she felt had been watching her, had actually been reading about her from the beginning.