theme word: candescent, title: fear itself in misc. flash fiction

Reports of the disorder started bubbling up through medical journals sporadically beginning in the mid Twenty-Twenties but at first no one but cutting-edge researchers took it seriously. The whole thing seemed patently absurd, “they must be making it up for attention” most said, “not even delusionals could believe something this outlandish” but by the Twenty-Thirties it was a rampant epidemic.

Some wag eventually gave it the suitably Greco-Roman sounding term “ascopophobia” which sounded very posh and smart but the general public just called it what it actually was, the fear that you weren’t being watched, that no one other than the people who were physically near to you were ever watching you at all. Which was, of course, crazy but once people heard about it, millions started coming out of the woodwork with the same fear, the deep fear that maybe they weren’t being watched by everyone at all times. It caught on like wildfire, spreading across all the social media, countless mobiles, tablets, flat-screens and heads-up displays from London to Bangalore, nearly candescent with a torrent of claims to this newest disease, ascopophobia.

The counselors, doctors, therapists and analysts all tried to talk sense to the sufferers, they tried to reason with the panicked masses. “Of course, people are always watching you,” healers tried to reassure them, “Googleazon is always watching you through your phone and Disneyversal is always watching you through your television,” though it was to no avail, “you know the police are watching us all through the cameras on the powerlines, you know that your health insurance company is bugging the room right now to make sure you’re spending the absolute minimum on getting your head back together right now.” They’d even show them the recording equipment in the room during therapy, but they couldn’t shake the awful unnatural creepy feeling they weren’t being monitored by strangers in a darkened office building somewhere far away.

The searing fear no eyes were upon you, weren’t tracking your every meal and relationship and opinion. The lingering anxiety that they might not even be trying to predict your next purchase with your every move, it was pure madness. Victims reported it a living hell of insignificance.

Happily, by Twenty-Forty Walton-Glaxo-Kaiser developed the anti-psychotic drug Panopticol to combat the scourge, started pumping it into municipal water supplies across the developed world and incidences dropped off by ninety-five percent. Not everyone was cured, of course, and there were occasional cases of people reporting a related delusion that there were not drugs to control their minds in their tap water, still all in all, sanity prevailed and most returned to a stable reality where they were assured in the knowledge that they were always being watched by everyone.

But if you think you may be suffering from a lingering case of ascopophobia, we can assist you, in fact we’re probably already on our way. Don’t worry. The proper businessmen already know and we will soon be there to help.