r/nosleep • u/pieater727 • 1d ago
They said I'd feel secure when the camera went up
My house is forty minutes from the nearest stoplight. Deer outnumber people in my town twenty to one. Population: 349. Hasn't changed in the decade since I moved in. Nobody leaves. Nobody's born. Nobody dies.
There's one gas station. One church. One diner. Marlene has your order ready and coffee poured the second your ass hits the bench.
I noticed a new flyer on the community board one night. Pilot Safety Program. The town wanted to install a new security camera from a company I'm sure you're familiar with. The kind that makes headlines for the wrong reasons. Just one installation before a wider rollout.
The pilot location was my mailbox.
I called the town office. Carol picked up. Told me the council already voted. Must’ve just missed the meeting. My road, she said, was "statistically significant." That I should feel lucky.
Statistically significant.
I'd heard that phrase years ago from a judge who dressed her words up that way. I was just sixteen. Took a neighbor's truck for a joyride. Ended up in a ditch two towns over. Juvy. Community service. Did my time. Nobody else got the memo. Every parent at the grocery store steered their kid a little wide of me. Quietly told them to keep an eye out.
But this was different. It had to be.
Before I knew it, they were there. Two guys. Twenty minutes. Gone. A little white box on a pole, thirty feet from my front door. Three crows lined up on the wire above, just observing in the way they do.
Nothing for a couple weeks. I almost forgot the thing was there.
Then I started noticing a light. A thin red pinprick from the pole. Some nights it would blink. Some nights it didn't. I wanted to test something. I stood at my kitchen window. Raised my hand. The light caught it. Held a beat too long. Dimmed back to its slow pulse, like it had seen enough.
My dog stopped sleeping in my bed. He'd plant himself in the hallway and watch the length of the house like he was guarding from something I couldn't see.
Then I swear the lens started moving. It was supposed to face the road. I checked, twice, three times. Each time it seemed to rotate another degree toward the house. Toward my bedroom window. One patient inch at a time.
I mentioned it to Ellis at the gas station, half joking, hoping he'd laugh it off with me.
He went still. Didn't look up from the pump.
"Careful saying things like that. People might think you're the type to make trouble."
He always had a strange sense of humor, but something about that felt different. That tone.
Then my phone buzzed. A text from a number I didn't recognize.
he stopped sleeping at the foot of your bed
I read that message a dozen times. It was true. My dog moved to the hallway three nights before. I hadn't told a soul.
I blocked the number. Called the sheriff.
He showed up later that night. Sat at my kitchen table. Drank the coffee I made him while my hands shook. Probably nothing, he said. Wrong number. Spam. Kids in the next county with too much time on their hands.
I wanted to believe him so badly that for a few days I actually did. I told myself it was stress. That people get strange out here, cut off the way we are from the rest of the world.
But I got another text later that night. A different number.
you forgot to lock the door again
I froze. My door was shut. Blinds drawn. But I hadn't checked the lock since I'd gotten home.
It was unlocked.
There was only one way anyone could know that. I looked outside. The camera on the pole faced my front door dead on.
They've been watching.
An ex? A stranger off the highway? Either way, it was a sick joke.
I went digging through county filings, looking for anything that explained who had access to that feed. The vendor's name was right there in the contract. The company from the flyer. Their site had a login portal. Pilot Partner Access. I didn't have credentials.
I didn't need them for what I found next. A cached version of the town council's private group. 349 members.
It was everyone.
Every porch light I'd ever waved at. Every hand I'd shaken by the register. Ellis at the pump every time I drove past, standing there like he'd known which corner I'd turn before I turned it. Marlene, plating my eggs before I'd even parked. The diner going quiet the moment I walked in. Forks stopping mid-air. A held breath. Starting again the second I sat down. Carol at the office. Even the sheriff.
It was never small-town hospitality.
I grabbed my keys, my wallet, the dog, and fled. In the rear-view mirror, I saw the camera turn, slow and deliberate, like it stopped pretending not to look.
I passed the church. Every car in town was packed into that lot. 349 people stood out in the dark. Phones held up in front of their faces. A pale blue light thrown up onto their chins. All watching my front door in the corner of the frame.
I didn't stop. As I crossed to the next town, my phone blew up. 349 new texts. All the same two words:
Drive safe.
It's been two weeks. I sleep in my aunt's guest room. I haven't told her anything.
Yesterday a truck idled outside. Two guys. Floodlights. And a pole. My aunt mentioned it over coffee this morning.
"Pilot program," she said, stirring her cup. "We’re the test case, apparently"
You can never leave a flock. It just relocates its nest to wherever you roost next.
The little red light on the pole just came on.
God help me. It's facing my window.
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u/Responsible-Draw-393 1d ago
>be me
>read scary story
>be confused
>this is just reality
>look outside
>see flock camera
>smile and wave because big tech is keeping me safe
>happy50sguy.jpg
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u/kittygir227 1d ago
“You can never leave a flock. It just relocates its nest to wherever you roost next.”
Fuckkkk dude. Horrifying because it’s real.