we, the damned. the voyeur.
the voyeur.
He’s been sat there for hours. What is he doing? Same as always, nothing I imagine. I wonder what’s on the telly – ooh! He’s up! Wait, no, no, just a stretch. Maybe a yawn. I’d better take note: 22:04:57 – Sub. A leans backwards in chair. Pen leaves paper, no trace left behind. Leans back forward. Pen meets paper, no productivity achieved thus. I’ll place my notepad and pencil just so – as always – for best access should anything of worth occur. The carpet looks brownish in this light, I know better though. It’s a reddish colour I think. Or maybe more a rose. The bed is too small for two people. When they sleep, they lay practically on top of one another in order to keep from falling over the edge on to that brownish carpet. Reddish, sorry. Or maybe rose. The full moon is my ally. By it I see everything. The crescent is my nemesis, pulling the light from the air and leaving my task to the light lazily drifting from some object beyond my gaze. I imagine a lamp of some sort, maybe a candle. But I’ll bet its a lamp. A tall floor standing lamp. Wood carved petals flowing from a dainty base. Disappearing in to a large fabric shade. That’ll be why its so ineffective as a lighting instrument. Or maybe a candle for that matter. Half-moon even, isn’t particularly helpful. The knock of her feet on what I gather is the wall. A green wall maybe. The soft flow of pages she turns. AGAIN! Where is my notepad? Pencil?
22:07:34 – Sub. B turns page.
22:07:37 – Sub. B turns page.
22:07:40 – Sub B. turns page.
22:07:44 – Sub B. hesitates, turns page.
The rasp of his dry pen on barren paper. The languid turn of the ceiling fan blades, pushing the dark matter around. Not that I can see a ceiling fan from this angle, nor dark matter for that matter. I am twenty-five feet away, slightly to the left of their window from where I stand at mine. Two storeys higher. Or four lifts, in scaffolding terms. It allows for sound observation of the bed, the chair, the desk, a small L-shape of floor around the near side and end of the bed. The peripheries of the circumference of light my binoculars can fathom, but any further and visual detail is lost. My blind spots are the immediate floor at the foot of the window, the wall facing me in its entirety, anything beyond the bed – although on a clear sunny day it is possible to make out the shape of what is perhaps a drawer, or door, or wardrobe – the furthest one third of the desk, below it, and anything relatively far above it. The ceiling, the left hand wall, from where I stand, and the far wall. I can see enough of the right hand side wall in order to guess at its whole. All in all I am not too far off a mental facsimile. And my work in progress, my magnum opus, is nearing completion. My research will never be done, a facsimile is just that, it lacks detail. It needs detail. But my model is nearing completion. Years and years. I’ve built it up, and only several voids remain. And when they’re filled I will have dominion over all. I’ll be the master of all I purvey. I will be immortal. 22:10:38 – Sub B. turns page. All I see, here, from my window, will be mine. To grasp, caress, support, destroy. I will be god and – 22:11:27 – Sub B. turns page. - what was I saying again? Ah yes, I will be god and everything that exists in front of my window for me to see will be mine to love or hate at turns of my own whim. The figures, now barely fleshed skeletons of paper, will be whole, and will laugh and cry for my amusement. At my command. I will be them and they will be me, for my foot to crush or lips to kiss. I will be … everything.
The Voyeur stands stiff in the window. A tall wooden stool, worn, where he repeatedly places and picks up a notepad and pencil. The room he stands in is starkly lit, with no corner obscured. As much as a corridor may be labelled a room, that is. From the light bulb hanging naked in the centre of the ceiling it is possible to denote a doorway, closed, in the wall opposite the window where the Voyeur stands. Next to the door around chest height is a white plastic square attached to the wall with three screws although there are holes for four. The lug heads are hollowed out from use and are therefore lodged for posterity’s measure. The white square harbours a switch presumably for operation of the light. Equidistant between the door and window is a low brown sofa, old yet immaculate. Opposite the sofa and centrally positioned is a television of black plastic. The floor is bare concrete. The four walls and ceiling are bare concrete. The one blind spot from the position of the filament is directly above the bulb, where it must be assumed the wire escapes through a hole in the ceiling. Observed from behind, the Voyeur is dressed in a ratty old jumper and sweat pressed corduroy trousers. His feet are bare. His hair thinning, a puff of white smoke about his skull. His arms are raised to his face holding a black object he rarely removes, at such intervals it becomes apparent it is a pair of pleather bound binoculars. Beyond the pane the night sops with water. Spreading in tides across the glass. Anything past that is obscured by streams of smog rising from cars bleating six storeys below, that is twelve lifts, in scaffolding terms, and the contrast of light to dark on either side of the window. The Voyeur leans in to the cold, pressing his body up against it to peer on through the elements.
Behind him the television softly blares, muzzled by the marching feet of crusading pleurisy. Pleut. Rain, sorry. The woman on the screen is starched and bleached, ranting on about this and that, trying to sell the viewer something useless. The news then stops for an advertising break and the lectures become more interesting. Relevant. Minutes pass, unmoving, other than the repetitive flash of colours thrown from the television. When starched and bleached returns to the screen, discussing some point of interest or other, the Voyeur reaches panicking for his notepad, pencil and the information merges as one in the maelstrom between his ears.
MINE MAN TRAPPED – WILL HE ESCAPE?
22:56:17 – Sub A. rises.
DUN DA DUN DUN DUN DA DUN DUN DUN DUN
22:56:24 – Sub A. now on bed. Sub B. laid on back. Magazine has slipped from vision.
AFTER SEVEN HOURS THE SEARCH FOR M. MINOR HAS BECOME FRAUGHT
22:56:30 – Sub A. atop Sub. B. Seem to be committing some sacral dance. Murder?
CREWS TOIL ON ENDLESSLY IN TO THE NIGHT, THE DARKNESS UPON US HERE AT THE MINE MOUTH NOT A FRACTION OF BLACKNESS IN WHICH HE CURRENTLY LANGUISHES
22:56:56 -Sub A. gazing at wall above bed. Sub B. gazing through window. Still embraced. Moving erratically.
THE MOUTH IS COLLAPSED. THE TUNNEL CUT OFF
22:57:24 – erratic movements continue. Sub B. unblinking.
IS THIS THE END FOR THE PEOPLE’S PITIED? IS IT OVER QUITE YET
22:57:52 – Sub A. disengaged. Moved to desk. Sub. B laid on stomach. Flicking pages of magazine.
IT IS NOT YET FOR US TO KNOW. ALL WE CAN DO HERE AT THE MOUTH IS DIG AND DIG DEEP AND HOPE TO FIND LIFE ON THE OTHER SIDE.
22:59:58 – Sub A. leans back. Yawn? Paper defaced. Now reads: ‘Time collapses. Linearity erodes, on the precipice where fact and fiction merge and parade under the banner of reality with a certain caprice. Here at this desk. I don’t know what time it is.’ Sub B. turns page.
The smog whips up tumult in the fathoms between the buildings. The rain, smoke and carbon dioxide fumes melt together to create a curtain through which no device may pierce. Somewhere in the dead space between walls scuffling is audible, akin to the pads of tiny feet. The Voyeur stays watching. Pushing the macula lutea. Deafening all in the push of the centralis. Looking for the subtle movements of shadow puppets. The television, the sofa, the walls, the feet dissolve. As the clouds envelop the moon and his ally is lost, his mind lingers on one purpose. His one purpose. And the walls build up brick by brick for him to one day smash down. And somewhere, close. Not too far off. A man sits blind in a cave of fossilised life.
