Humanspotting by anonymous

Move for a new position with your company to a new town
You're the only human here
The locals are nice enough, and are very curious about you owing to the novelty of your species
Plenty of stares and you think you've seen a few groups of them taking pictures of you on their phones from afar
You didn't think humans would be this interesting to them, but whatever...
And then one day at work, on returning to your desk after lunch, you see that one of your coworkers, a snow-furred fox, has left his computer logged on
And it's on a Snoutbook community page
Called "[Town name] Humanspotting"
With the latest picture being you, just 10 minutes ago, slurping noodles at the company canteen
And you at the park feeding ducks 2 days ago
And you at the mall browsing through poorly fitting clothing made for anthros
And most concerningly, you unlocking your front door with your mailbox and address clearly visible
There's at least 140 members in the group and it's invite only
A cold sweat overcomes and you quickly rush back to your desk before your coworker comes back
What the hell is the meaning of this?
Are you being GANGSTALKED by these people?!
You start to look over your shoulder every couple of minutes
Every time you see an anthro looking in your general direction holding a phone, you start to panic and book it
A few days of this pass and you're beginning to get more and more paranoid
A few of your coworkers, the fox included, notice how skittish you've become and ask you if anything's wrong
You can't help but seethe a little as you reply to him that it's nice that he's paying SUCH CLOSE ATTENTION to you that he noticed, but that you're fine, prompting a concerned and confused head tilt from him, his ears flattening a bit as you storm away
Eventually you decide that you need to investigate this further for your own sanity
You create a fake Snoutbook profile with a clipart of a reindeer named "John Doe" and request to join the Humanspotting group
Your completely flawless plan works perfectly, you're in!
The group appears to have been formed well before you actually moved here, and it started as just candid photos of humans visiting their town
It seems benign enough, but it's still a little weird that they would find a visiting human so interesting that they would form an online interest group for when it happens...
And then an explosion of activity on the day you moved into your home, with a photo of you straining while carrying a box with the caption "BIG NEWS: LOCAL ONE?!" with the highest amount of likes of any of the posts, plenty of comments asking "WHERE", "he tall, cute hair" and "why aren't you helping him with the box you dumbfuck"
And then, the next day, a photo discreetly taken from a certain fox's desk with a view into your cubicle of you making coffee with the caption "Confirmed?!"
From there on it's an explosion of pictures of you, at least three times a day in various places, and one of them is always from the fox
This has been going on since you moved in?! It's been THREE MONTHS, don't they have anything better to do?!
You consider either confronting the fox about it directly or even reporting this to the police, but you're worried about how it cause repercussions at your job, which you can't afford to lose, or making it even harder to integrate into the community than it already is
And then it hits you, a brilliant idea!
Human celebrities back home have had to deal with the paparazzi for ages, and there's specially made flashback clothing that can make getting a good quality photo impossible
This way you can get them to FUCK OFF without making a big workplace and community drama!
It's incredibly expensive but you make the splurge, and within a week you're wearing your new anti-camera hoodie almost everywhere
It buys you piece of mind, but you start to wonder how all of the humanspotters are reacting to it, so against your better judgment you log back in to your fake account to see the reaction
Sure enough the clothing is working as intended, with anthros wondering if there's something wrong with their cameras at first until somebody realizes what you're doing, posting "guys, he's on to us, that's clothing specifically designed to ruin photos"
A smug smile reaches your lips on reading the screaming and doomposting this causes, and for the next few days life feels almost normal again
Until the next week, when you return to your office, you find your sweatshirt missing from your office chair
Panic hits you like a bucket of cold water as your frantically tear your office apart looking for it
It's not here...! And you definitely didn't wear it to the canteen, so where the hell did it go?!
Did... did one of them TAKE IT?!
Fear turns to fury as it instantly clicks who the likely culprit is:
That god damned FOX...!
The edges of your vision are stained with red hot fury as you storm over to his cubicle
He's not there, but that's fine by you
You begin tearing up his cubicle looking for your hoodie much the same as you did to your own
Aside from the typical folders full of spreadsheet and code, his office is filled with journals, prints and articles of photography, graphic design and natural life
Ripping open one of his drawers, you don't find your sweatshirt but instead an expensive camera and... a sketchbook?
It's open to a page with what appears to be a human hand drawn in various poses, including one that almost appears to be reaching out, beckoning towards the viewer, the forearm draped in what appears to be one of your favorite peacoats that you often wore to work before this whole Humanspotting thing started
Your anger fading for just an instant as you gaze at the Fox's handiwork, you fail to hear the vulpine himself arrive back at his cubicle until you hear him gasp behind you
"A-Anon...?! What do you think you're DOING?!" the fox angrily yelps out, only to be stunned when you turn to face him, red in the face and visibly quaking with anger
"WHERE DID YOU PUT IT?! IT MUST HAVE BEEN YOU! WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE?!"
Stunned and a little frightened, the fox takes a step back, his ears flattening down into his skull as he mutters out much more quietly, "w-what are y-you talking about...? What's wrong, Anon...?"
Look at him, pretending to not know when he's the one who's been taking pictures of you daily!
"My sweatshirt! You took it! All so you and your Snoutbook friends could keep STALKING ME!"
"Anon what are you talking about?! I-it's right there!"
You turn to point at your cubicle, preparing to tell the fox off that he's wrong, but your words die on your tongue when you see that the fox is actually... right?!
It's sitting on the floor between your desk and the cubicle wall, having seemingly fallen off of the back of your office chair
What?!
But... but that's... not... possible...
Y-you tore up the entire office looking for it! You're CERTAIN that it wasn't there!
You couldn't have been wrong, right?!
As you stand there feeling like you're losing your mind, the fox slowly and cautiously approaches with a look of concern on his face, gently breaking the silence
"Anon, are you doing alright...? Look, i'm sorry about our-"
But you don't hear him as your mind continues to whir in overdrive
It COULDN'T have been there all along!
H-he must have seen that you were on to him and put it back...!
When you weren't looking...!
In your distress, fight or flight kicks in, and you rush back across the office to your cubicle and quickly throw your sweatshirt back on
But even with it back on your person, you don't feel safe anymore, and you grab your keys and book it out of the office to your car, ignoring the fox's pleading of "Anon, please wait!" behind you
Everybody stares as you bolt out of the building
How many of them are in on this stupid game?!
You run out to your car and start driving higher than the speed limit back towards your home
You take an extra circuitous route around your neighborhood when a red sedan with a leopard in it almost seems to be following you, and when you arrive back home you slam and double bolt the door before shuttering all the windows
Your boss calls you minutes later asking why you left and if you're doing alright, to which you curtly and quickly reply that no, you're NOT alright and that you need to take a sick day before slamming the phone down and retreating back to your bedroom
Even behind the walls of your home, wearing your sweatshirt, you still don’t feel safe anymore…
Eventually you’ll have to come out
To face the cameras…
And the fox…
You feel physically sick from the stress
And so you languish, barely moving from under your covers for 4 days on end as you burn through each of your remaining sick days to reach the weekend, refusing to elaborate to your increasingly worried sounding boss on why
The weekend passes in a haze of malaise
You wish time would just stand still
Unable to fall asleep, you finally down half a bottle of Benadryl at 3 AM on Monday morning, feeling despair at seeing your alarm notification cheerily inform you “alarm set for 3 hours 45 minutes from now”
But your stupid nokia alarm tone isn’t what wakes you up
Instead it’s a loud thud somewhere in the distance, just loud enough to wake you from your anticholinergic coma
What is that?
You think you can hear someone yelling in between the thudding, but it’s too distant to decipher…
What time is it anyway?
…
Oh, it’s half past noon
Oh FUCK it’s half past noon…!
As if on cue, you hear an enormous slamming coming from your main foyer and countless paws thudding on your floor
”MR. ANON, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?! THIS IS A WELLNESS CHECK! WHERE ARE YOU?!”
Oh god, is this really happening?
The door to your bedroom is thrown off its hinges by the police (a K9, because of course)
The brown furred german shepherd makes eye contact after shining a flashlight through your bedroom, barking out “He’s here! He’s ok! We’re in the-“, before suddenly falling silent again
You follow the policedog’s gaze to find out what suddenly put a muzzle on him, finding that he’s staring at…
… the bottle of Benadryl, which you haphazardly tossed onto the ground that morning after downing half of it, the remainder now spilled out onto your carpeting
It takes you a second to realize how it must look to the policedog, whose eyes are now rapidly moving between you and the bottle, filled with terror
Before you can tell him it’s a misunderstanding, he’s tackled you and is screaming out to his colleagues “S-SUICIDE ATTEMPT! I NEED RESTRAINTS AND AN AMBULANCE CALLED NOW…!”
Your screams of “this is a misunderstanding” and “please stop I need my sweatshirt it keeps them from taking photos of me” and “why are you arresting ME when I’M the one being STALKED” go unanswered as you are brought in the ambulance to the town’s local ED
You’re hogtied in 4-point violent restraints in a completely barren white room as anthro nurses assure you that they aren’t there to hurt you
All the while attempting to draw blood from your forearm, one of the marveling at how “it’s so much easier when there’s no fur in the way!”
Eventually a slightly chubby golden retriever enters, you don’t even bother to register his name as he tries to introduce himself as “your” psychiatrist in a clearly very well-rehearsed script
Surprisingly he lets you do most of the talking, and you try to reason with him that you’re fine and that you weren’t attempting self-harm, just that you desperately needed to get some sleep
To which he replies, “Well that’s fine Mr. Anon, but why did you need to call off for five days in a row, anyway?”
You explain you just felt overwhelmed and needed some time off, hoping he’ll leave it at that, but of course he doesn’t: “If you say so… but what’s all this about being stalked?”
You tell him to just search for a Snoutbook group called “Humanspotting” and see for himself
But he doesn’t pull out his phone to do so, instead slowly replying after a lengthy silence “… we already searched for a group called that, Mr. Anon, and I’m afraid there isn’t one.”
There… there isn’t…
No…
No no nO NO NO NO…!
It’s just like the god damn sweatshirt in the office!
They’re trying to gaslight you…!
T-they need to look HARDER! Even if they deleted the group there should be digital fingerprints of it!
There were HUNDREDS of members, it’s impossible to completely cover up a group that big!
As you plead with the retriever in a panic, you fail to realize that you’ve raised your voice far higher than usual, and that the retriever’s face now carries a forced smile plastered over an increasingly worried expression as he slowly inches back towards the door
But then, a knock on the door, and you hear the K9 from earlier who tackled you speak quietly through the crack to the retriever
”Dr. Barkley, I’m sorry to interrupt but one of the patient’s coworkers is here to provide collateral history. He’s reporting that what he’s saying is true and we’ve confirmed that there was a “human interest” online group whose page was deleted earlier today, if you’d come look please…”
The dogtor doesn’t even look at you before slipping out of the room faster than you can say fetch
You are left in silence (still restrained, of course), as relief washes over you that finally someone will believe you
And if the police know about this, maybe some action will be taken to stop all of this!
A-and if it’s somebody from work who came in to clarify, maybe you won’t even be fired over all of this!
You strain to try to see out of the tiny square window who from work showed up to act as your savior
Only to see a pair of vulpine, snow white ears and a pair of worried amber eyes for just a split second, before they widen in realization that you’ve them and duck out sight
The fox…? It was HIM…?!