I don't know a thing my guy

When I was a teenager, I was an asshole, I didn’t bully people or anything physical, but I was still terrible. Terrible enough to have my own gang of friends to pull pranks on people at school and outside. Some were harmless, some were pretty nasty and some got us in trouble.

This particular tale is about one of those pranks.

It began with my grandpa telling me about how you could mess with walkie talkies and get on other’s signals sometimes. It had been something he said only in passing but it stuck with me, because you see, at the time I had a little brother. who was only a few months when this all went down so naturally, he had a baby monitor.

I figured that a baby monitor is just a walkie talkie to keep in touch with your kids so I thought you could mess with the frequency and signal in the same way that you should be able to mess a walkie talkie’s up.

Being the shithead I was, I had to try. I told my friend about it, and we decided to save some money to get a high quality one, intent on messing with as many baby monitors as possible.

Weeks went by and between the three of us, we managed to buy the baby monitor.

That same night, we decided we’d try it. And we already had a perfect target; my very own house and my own parents.

Our idea was to get my little brother’s monitor. Talk through it and my parents’ and scare the hell out of them. Of course, I wasn’t planning on doing any talking, they’d notice it was me right away so instead, Hector talked. He had a naturally deep voice, and could easily make it sound deeper, it was perfect.

Before starting our new hobby, Hector cleared his throat, I hit him on the shoulder so he would hurry up, and he started, talking slowly, lowly, almost in a whisper. He pretended to be a ghost, saying some nonsense about being a previous dead owner.

And to my surprise and delight, it worked. From our chosen place to hide, we could see the lights being turned on as my parents rushed to my brother’s room.

We eventually heard an “Asshole!” and knew the prank was us so we ran, and keep doing this in other houses in the neighbourhood that we knew had recently born kids.

Some people realized it was a joke right away, others cursed us, others pleaded, others couldn’t care less.

However it went, at the time I thought of it as a lot of fun.

Until one night, I was doing pranking people on my own as Hector and Franco had grew bored with the hobby. I hadn’t though, just the opposite. I was on the habit of doing it until well past midnight, and that night, it was 1AM when I found a target.

I settled myself behind a bush, invincible for the street I hoped, and started to play with the dial, until I could find the frequency that would work for this particular house’s monitor. Eventually, I did, cleared my throat a moment and breathed into the monitor:

-I am…. watching.-

For a moment, there was no response, except for a static that was similar to the noise a blackboard makes when someone runs their fingernails through it, that is to say, it was a shit sound. But then, just when I was about to walk away annoyed, I heard a response through the device, a quiet voice, raspy, chilling and all around terrible that only said:

-No. I’m… watching you.-

I froze. My mind starting to run and telling me to look up, I did. And I saw a shadow or a silhouette up in the house’s second floor, where I assumed the baby’s room was. Some instinct inside me told me to run. And run I did, I ran faster than I thought I could but it didn’t seem to be fast enough. I could still hear breathing through the goddamn baby monitor. I passed around three people, some guy wearing a guy, some lady on a tracksuit, running (at fucking 1AM!) and a man smoking in an alley.

I thought one of them had to be the person up there in that second floor, having somehow won an advantage over me, as baby monitors, like walkie talkies have limited range which meant, that I was hearing their breathing because they were close.

But perhaps it wa only panic, as I managed to get home safely (otherwise the story would have ended there and then, eh?)

This experience alone wouldn’t have so terrible if not for what happened the next morning.

On the news, I saw while getting ready for school, that there had been a murder in my city last night. At 1AM. In the house I’d be pranking.

A murderer had chased me because I was a potential witness.

Needless to say, I never used a baby monitor to prank anyone ever again.

But today, years later I have a new, as you see, I have a kid of my own now. Everything had been going wonderfully for the last few months. Sure, the baby has cried a lot, like all babies do, but it hasn’t been a problem.

The problem is, just an hour ago I heard something from the monitor, I hope it was another dumb teenager like I was back in my day, because, see, what they said left me terrified, it was that a low, chilling, voice that said: