*****
A dim light was hurting his eyes, and the invisible spike driven into his head was competing with it for his attention. Thomas let one eye peel open to reveal the dancing blurs of luminescence coming from the television screen. He closed the eye and fumbled around for the remote, but his hand found his glasses first, which he ungracefully donned. After blinking several times and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he sat up and looked around for the remote, but was momentarily distracted by movement on the screen.
3-A had returned from her night shift and appeared to have been drinking a bit after work; she moved around on unsteady legs and nearly tripped over her own feet. Thomas found it endearing and retrieved his bottle of bourbon to salute her with a toast, but his actions were stopped cold as another person stumbled into the image. The other, a man who looked to be in his forties, reached out to brace himself with her shoulders, then the two laughed and began kissing passionately. Thomas felt the foul bile of jealousy welling up and grit his teeth, then proceeded with the shot of liquor.
He brought his laptop to life with the intent of cutting the video signal for the night, when the movements on the television screen took on an increased pace. Before he realized what was happening, the man's arm extended with lightning speed and impacted her chin; 3-A lurched and crumpled onto the kitchen floor. Thomas' mouth dropped open, and he blinked twice to ensure he wasn't misinterpreting what he was seeing. As he looked on in disbelief, the man grabbed a handful of her flaxen, blond hair and drug her limp body over to one of the two chairs flanking the tiny kitchen table.
The assailant exited the frame for several minutes, then returned with a disc-shaped object in one hand and what looked like a belt dangling from the other. The man patiently set about removing all of her clothes, and the thought of what might come next terrified Thomas. He watched with a morbid curiosity that was thankfully denied when the man picked up her body and placed it on one of the chairs. The man rudely snatched up a tangle of her hair, jerked her head back and stuffed a washrag into her open mouth. He then secured her in several places around her arms and legs with what Thomas now knew was a thick, gray tape.
3-A began to come back to consciousness just as the man was securing the last of several windings around her head. She began rapidly looking around the kitchen, her eyes wide with fear and confusion. Then, resigned to her situation, she stared pleadingly at her tormenter. The man seemed to take this as a cue and began lashing her with the belt all across her body, head and legs. After several agonizingly long minutes of this, the man turned to his fists, and even bit a large chunk of skin from her cheek, which he indignantly spat back at her. The grim spectacle continued to play out as the man gathered the belt around his hands and moved to stand behind the hapless woman.
He braced his stomach against the back of the chair, looped the belt around her neck and pulled it up as he leaned backwards, using the weight of his own body to assist his efforts. The poor woman's face contorted, and the rag fell out of her mouth as her tormenter tightened the makeshift noose. Within seconds her eyes began to physically bulge. Her left eye was suddenly tinted pink, and her tongue sprang from her grimacing mouth. Spasms rocked her body as her fingers knotted into fists then extended and, after a painfully long moment, fell limp.
Paralyzed by fear and shock, Thomas continued to stare at the display until the man had left the apartment. A thought begged to be heard at the edge of his mind, and he forced himself out of stasis to clumsily depress the keys of the laptop. The view on the television changed to that of each of the three hallways in turn, but the man seemed to be gone. Thomas grabbed his phone and retrieved the number for the landlord, hoping that the cameras had captured the man's face at some point. But before he initiated the call, another thought slammed into the forefront of his mind. How am I going to explain this? I'm not supposed to have access to the feeds...
Thomas dropped the phone, and his eyes began to dart around behind his glasses. His growing concern was chased away by full-blown panic as he thought of all the wiring and subverted networking equipment that led from his apartment to the others. His beady eyes opened just a bit wider as the realization hit him. There would be an investigation, and the cameras would be found...
The thought panicked him to the point that he dressed, gathered his tool belt and began the long and tedious task of disconnecting dozens of secretive conduits and tiny imaging devices. He watched carefully and noted as various subjects of his peep show departed for their daily, or nightly, obligations. He then moved in to detach his equipment and cover any signs of its existence.
For two long days he watched and worked, and each time he returned to watch, he was also forced to check on the body and ensure that it had not been discovered. Logic and necessity dictated that the cameras in 3-A would have to be saved for last. The bruises had grown black and the skin a dull gray, but at least she was slumped forward with her matted and tangled hair concealing her face. He didn't think he could handle looking at that, and he was suddenly very grateful that there was no such thing as smell-a-vision.
Late in the afternoon on the second day, the landlord was summoned by the police at the request of classmates and co-workers of 3-A, and the body was discovered. Thomas locked his door and watched through the peephole as a number of official personnel funneling into the building and up through the first stairwell grew. Normally, the extra attention wouldn't have concerned him; he had plenty of experience covering his tracks, but his activities had never been under the scrutiny of a murder investigation. A small sense of relief came to him as he watched the fish-eye view of the landlord pass by in the hallway.
Thomas suddenly felt the consequences of the preceding days exertions; his muscles began protesting his movements, and his eyelids felt as heavy the image of the dead girl weighing on his conscience. “They'll get him,” he kept telling himself, “They don't need anything from me. Surely someone saw him enter or leave the building, or at the very least, saw the couple out together.” And the more he recited it, the more it calmed him. Thomas didn't bother to disrobe or even take off his shoes or glasses, he just fell back into the familiar embrace of the abused sofa and closed his eyes. Sleep took him almost immediately.
Urgent banging snatched him from his slumber, and it took him several seconds to realize that someone was knocking. He stumbled from the couch and made his way to the door, slid his fingers under his glasses to rub his eyes and peered out of the eyepiece. Two police officers accompanying a man in a brown trench-coat waited outside, and one of the officers knocked again as he watched. Thomas took a step back and opened the door.
The middle-aged man donning the overcoat introduced himself as Detective Hornby and announced that he was conducting routine interviews with all of the tenants. “Even if you just had a bad feeling about something, it may help...” the detective trailed off as he took a closer inventory of the man in the doorway. A frown wrinkled his ample brow as he watched Thomas' eyes dart back and forth, immediately repositioning themselves whenever eye-contact was made. The detective looked over Thomas' shoulder at the mess within the domicile, then looked back at Thomas, who was now staring at the floor, “Are you alright, sir?” the detective queried.
Thomas was becoming flustered. He was socially inept and became visibly uncomfortable during the most miniscule interactions, and this direct questioning exacerbated his condition. “No... I mean, yes. I mean, no. Nothing is wrong. What do you want again?” he asked, trying to position his body to block the taller man's view of his dwelling.
Hornby asked his name and a few general questions, all the while continuing to study Thomas and his awkward behavior. His professional senses were piqued, “Okay, well thanks for your cooperation, and if you think of anything, give me a call,” the detective told him as he handed over a business card. Thomas stuffed it into the front pocket of his pants and hastily shut the door without further ceremony.
Thomas returned to couch and stared at his reflection
in the black screen of the television. He grabbed the bottle from the coffee table and took several, long pulls. He continued drinking and telling himself, “They'll catch him...” and passed out sitting upright with the bottle clinched between his pudgy legs.
The television flickered to life, and Thomas awoke to the distant sounds of a reporter discussing what details had emerged about the killing, and the words, “No suspects or leads at this time, but the investigation is ongoing...” reverberated inside of his head. He sat up and stared at the illuminated screen, quickly learning that he had once again wet himself. The television screen went black, then a bluish-white light flashed, and the image slowly revealed the interior of apartment 3-A.
“But there's no cameras anymore,” Thomas said aloud, as his forehead wrinkled. The view abruptly changed, and he was looking down into the kitchen. His heart nearly jumped into his throat when he saw the chair, with a familiar form bound to it, sitting center frame. Only this time the victim was not 3-A, it was the man who had killed her. He was nude, and his shoulder-length brown hair was slick with sweat. The clarity of the video was stunning as the man looked directly into the view of whatever device was now feeding the television.
The man's head jerked violently to one side, then he grunted and his head fell forward as blood rushed from his nose and mouth. He coughed and sprayed a fine, red mist into the air, then he seemed to stiffen. A depression appeared around the circumference of the man's neck, and his eyes abruptly rolled up into their sockets, revealing only pale orbs. The man's feet and hands twitched and contorted as his tongue jabbed out of his open mouth, then his body slackened and his head rolled to one side. Over the course of a few seconds, the screen faded to a haunting black.
Thomas suddenly felt as if ice water were trickling down the center of his back, yet his face and ears felt like they were being heated from within. Scared in place, his eyes strained to open wider as the television screen again sputtered with light, and when the image focused, it was that of an empty chair sporting shards of torn tape.
Full on fear was gripping him now, and he reached out to grab his phone while wrestling Detective Hornby's card from his pocket. Attributing the images he had seen as hallucinations brought on by pressing guilt, he mentally resolved to come clean and try to work out a deal in exchange for his contribution. “I'm just going to tell him everything, before this gets out of control,” he told himself as he dialed the number.
The call was immediately routed to the detective's voice mail, and Thomas left a generic message asking him to return the call. Anticipating the sensation of weight being removed from his shoulders, Thomas again turned to his bottle of bourbon to sooth his nerves and usher him off to sleep. He raised the bottle to his lips, but a resounding thud against the front door caused him to jerk and splash the liquid up onto his glasses.
Thomas got up and opened the door rudely, without bothering to look through the eyepiece first, but found the hallway empty. His vision suddenly jerked, and then went completely white, as a ringing filled his ears. The ringing tapered off in time with an encroaching blackness that overtook the white... and then there was nothing.