After making sure that the person who left it behind wasn’t in the bathroom or popping out for a smoke I picked it up. It was just lying there on the table in the middle of a bustling coffee shop; a fancy looking camcorder ripe for the taking. I wanted to make sure no one would steal it.
The thing was brand new, stickers advertising all sorts of HD capabilities and gigabyte storages were plastered on the front. The chrome on the body was spotless, the lenses crystal clear, the camera looked as if it was straight out of the box. The owner would definitely miss it.
I couldn’t go to the cops. I mean, I could, but I was too scared. How would the police react if someone like me walked in to hand in ‘lost’ property? Sure, they would probably just take it off me, congratulate me on becoming a good citizen and get the camera back to its owner. But there was a chance of them presuming that I stole it, had a change of heart and got scared of getting caught. What would they do then? There was no way I was going back to prison. The cops were out of the question.
Giving the camera to the coffee shop manager would have been stupid. Giving any lost property to any manager in this town is just generally not a good call.
Back in the day, my pal Teddy used to do weekly rounds through the local businesses where he would pick up whatever was meant to end up in the lost and found. The managers would get a kickback and all of the merchandise would disappear. Teddy would let me pick out what I wanted at a discount before he moved the stuff over to his contacts. That fat bastard sold me every nice coat I have ever owned.
There was no way I was going to let the manager line his own pockets. Teddy was gone now, but I’m sure there was someone in his stead. In a town like this, there always was. The manager was an asshole anyway, when I came in for the interview he kept on asking me about what I went in for, what prison was like and all sorts of other questions that didn’t relate to me being a potential janitor. In the end he said he didn’t think I was a good fit for the job. No way was I going to trust the guy who made me shill out bus fare just to get rejected.
I would return it on my own. There had to be something in the camera that would help me identify the owner. I stashed the camera into my nice coat and rode the bus to my grandmothers. The idea of a finder’s reward made the rejection from the job interview sting less.
After I got out I had nowhere to go. Whatever money I had made with Teddy was gone and all of the ex girlfriends were married, didn’t want anything to do with me or both. At the ripe age of thirty-four I moved back in with my grandma.
She was pushing a hundred but she still managed to have her mind completely intact. As long as I would shovel snow and be available to pick things up off of the high shelves I could stay with her. I promised her I would get out of her thinning hair soon enough but she told me not to hurry; she enjoyed the company.
The woman was an angel but for a big chunk of my childhood she spent time covering for the devil in me. I lived with her until I was able to pull enough scores to afford an apartment in the city. Whenever the police would show up at our door, searching for a fifteen-year-old-me, she would distract them for just enough time for me to be able to sneak out of the window. If I carried her around with me everywhere I’m pretty sure I would have been able to outrun the arrest warrant that landed me in prison.
The day had been exhausting, I ran through half a dozen job interviews spread throughout the town and none of them panned out. There was nothing more that I wanted to do than to crash down in my child-sized bed and sleep off the stress of the day, yet there was still the matter of the camcorder to attend to. Figuring out which button turns the thing on and which plays videos took a while but eventually some combination of presses made the camera start up. I was hoping for a person listing off their name and address with the promise of a finders fee, but instead I got Karen.
I don’t know if her name was actually Karen but there was something about her voice that just suggested it. It was the type of nasal tone that I would hear every time I was casing out suburbia for families that went out for vacation and had shit alarm systems; dozens of Karens yelling at their Joshuas and Stacies to come back inside and grab a jacket.
Karen pointed her camera at a white-sand beach resort. Waves caressed an empty coast, a glowing sunrise in the distance. The type of tranquil shot you would see on a subway advertisement.
“Wow!” She said from behind the camera “Isn’t that sunset beautiful? Isn’t that beach so gosh darn calming? What a vacation I’m having, huh? You could be here too! All you have to do is work your little butt off. Remember Rocky? He never gave up and look where he is now. Work hard and you’ll be able to afford the nicer things in life.”
The video cut out. I rolled my eyes and pressed something that looked like an arrow forward.
A wedding reception, the bride and groom straight out of a catalogue danced their first dance in a loving embrace. Around them, a family on the verge of tears: watching the lovely couple celebrate their eternal love.
“Wow!” Karen whispered “See how happy they are? See how proud the family is? What a beautiful couple, aren’t they? You could be just as adorable! All you need to do is be as honest as Washington was about the cherry tree and never let yourself give up. If you’re a good, reliable man you’ll definitely-“
The next video was a calm suburban street. It was night, but everyone seemed to still be awake, the light from their big glass windows revealed manicured lawns and the outlines of new cars.
“Wow!” I grit my teeth at the sound of her voice, “This is where I live and boy oh boy is it cozy! Everyone says ‘How do you do, neighbor?’ and we all work together as a-“
I closed the camera. Her voice was the auditory equivalent of a curb stomp. I put the camcorder on my spaceship covered bedside table and tried to come up with a way to unload the merchandise. The hippos on my curtains reminded me of Teddy.
If Teddy was still around the camera would be easy to get rid of. The lazy fuck was too out of shape to actually break into houses, but man could he get rid of stuff. Whatever I managed to grab from the houses he would fence in under a week, DVD players, TVs, jewelry, weird little statues of junk, the people that he knew had a use for everything. Too bad the people he knew lost a use for him. The one time I got to get out was for his funeral. Apparently they found him all sorts of cut up in a ditch. The mob is a scary group of people to piss off.
I got out of bed and went over to my grandma’s computer. Surely there was a way to sell stolen shit online without much of a hassle. Everything is online these days.
I used the Google to look up the model of the camera, just so I would know what I was working with. I clicked around for a while, the number that I was getting seemed unreal. If I managed to sell it for even half of what it was worth I could set myself up for at least a month, maybe two.
The number presented a problem though. If I was to get caught, this was definitely more than just petty theft. I wouldn’t just be breaking parole; I would be getting another jail sentence. The coffee shop had cameras, the manager still had my information and would remember me, there were too many possible risks.
I shut down the computer and went back to my room. For a couple of minutes I tried to peel away the Pokemon stickers I stuck to my wardrobe but the glue of the 90s held firm. I went back to the camcorder. I thought I could make out a street sign in the dark before, if I knew the neighborhood she was filming in I could bus over and ask around. Hopefully there would be a finder’s fee, maybe Karen would even give me a ride back home.
When I turned on the camcorder, however, the tranquil suburban paradise was gone. Instead there was a dusty basement.
The camera shook for a bit, as if it was being attached to a tripod. When the image stabilized a woman with the figure of someone who drives everywhere but still attends zoomba class appeared. She took a couple of steps in front of the camera and then edged over to the right to be in the center of the screen. The frame just barely covered her face.
“Good.” Karen whispered under her breath. She walked off screen. Somewhere behind the camera a door opened, you could hear whimpers. I tried to focus in on what was being said but all the pleas were drowned out by a thunderous metal scrape. The chair got pulled in front of the camera.
Karen stood next to a naked fat man with a shopping bag on his head. He was chained up on the chair, sweat dripped down towards the indentations that the chains created on his body. The bag expanded and contracted as he struggled to breathe.
“Please… Please let me go. I didn’t do anything.” He wheezed.
She shushed him. Karen shifted the chair around to make sure both her and the man were in the frame. She cleared her throat, paused for a moment and then started raving.
“Wow!” She screamed in outrage “You think it’s okay to steal? You think it’s okay to take something away from me? Do you comprehend how hard I worked to be able to afford the nice things I have? Well I tell you what buster, it’s not. If you did the crime, you deserve the punishment.”
“I didn’t steal anything! Please! Just let me go. This is all a misunderstanding!”
She faced the man for a bit, as if considering his plea, but then she tutted. “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Karen made her way back behind the camera and started fishing around in unseen drawers.
“If you were just honest, this would all go by in a jiffy, but you lie, so it won’t. If everyone was just honest we’d all be better off. See, if everyone is honest, works hard and does their best then we have a happy little community. But there’s always bad apples, aren’t there?”
Karen walked back to the man. Before he could answer her little monologue she stabbed him.
“Aw! Fuck! You bitch!” I recognized the voice, nearly dropping the camera “You stabbed me! Shit- Okay- Fuck- I stole your camera- I’m sorry, look, I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again. I promise, I swear, I swear on my daughter’s life I won’t steal anymore. Fuck- I’m sorry.”
She held the knife inside of him, sending a trail of blood down the chains that wrapped around Teddy’s body. It looked as if she was considering his plea. “You don’t have a daughter,” she finally said.
“What? I do have a daughter! She’s seven years old her name is-“
She sliced the knife back; making Teddy scream until his voice gave out.
I wanted to turn off the video but I couldn’t. Everything in my body wanted to smash the camera to pieces. There was a burning desire in me to destroy any evidence of such brutality even being possible, but I just kept on watching.
Teddy screamed. They were mostly desperate howls of pain, but words made their way in when Karen had to catch her breath. He pleaded for her to stop, he confessed to not having a daughter, to stealing her stuff, to fencing stolen goods, to every sin that he could possibly think of. Yet she just kept on tutting and cutting. There was no forgiveness.
Any notion of goodness, of justice, of peace, none of these things could coexist in a world where one human being could cause to another the pain that Karen was dragging out into the world. As she hacked on, Teddy’s screams lost in volume, he started to drift off. When he was lucid his rambling confessions would be replaced with something much simpler, a plea for death.
The floor was covered in blood and flesh, the remnants of what used to be a friend of mine sat in the chair. Karen took a step backwards to admire her work. The chain nestled in his bloody lap like a jagged blanket. She walked back to the camera.
“Wow!” she whispered as she unscrewed the camcorder from the tripod “Who knew that a life of crime could get you this kind of punishment.”
She picked up the camera and moved it towards the body. Her voice gained back its pep, “Well, you did silly! You know stealing is wrong! Can’t do the time, don’t do the crime, right?” her voice went cold, “Right?”
The shopping bag rustled with a strained breath. The video cut out.
I started to feel faint, I had to lie down on the floor so that I could fully spread out my body. The hippopotamus curtains were right above me, trying to remind me that there is a corner of the universe where cartoonists put together cute comic hippo, but my mind kept on being dragged to the butcher. For minutes I just lay there, imagining myself in Teddy’s place, feeling my own fragility. The laydown didn’t make me calmer, but it did help me regain some strength. I got up for a glass of water.
My grandma was already asleep. I poured myself a glass from the tap and tried to figure out what to do. At this point the cops were the obvious answer; there was evidence of a murder on the camera. I would come clean about picking up the camera from the coffee shop, it was, after all, with best intentions. The murder would outweigh any possibility of me being seen as a thief.
I picked up the landline, getting ready to call the police, but a glint of doubt kicked in the back of my head. What if it wasn’t Teddy? What if I had simply stumbled upon some strange amateur film-shoot? The thought of the video not being real was a balm for my soul, as soon as the idea entered my mind I calmed down. I put down the phone and went to check the video again. I shouldn’t have.
I went back into my room, sat down on my bed and popped the camera open again, hoping to scroll back through the video. Instead I stumbled upon something else.
At first the viewfinder was too dark to make anything out, but as the camera moved around I could see the outlines of a street. All the houses were dark except for one. The camera started moving towards it. A passing bus illuminated the area for a split second; a turned over lawn chair nestled on an unkempt lawn filled the frame. The camera was plunged back into darkness. It stopped and focused on the one lit up window. Karen started to zoom in.
“Wow!” she whispered, “There he is!” She zoomed in on a window with hippopotamus curtains. A grown man sat in a child’s bed staring in horror at a camcorder. I looked up into the darkness past my window; all I could see was my own terrified reflection.
I leaped to my curtains and shut them. I smashed the light switch. The night lay in still silence for a minute. Then came the knocks.
Three sharp, equally spaced knocks.
I paced around the room trying to figure out what to do.
Three sharp, equally spaced knocks.
In a panic I grabbed my chair and propped it up against my door.
Three sharp, equally spaced knocks.
I took the chair away; I thought could run out into the kitchen and call the police. This is what the police were for. But I didn’t have the chance.
A pair of shuffling footsteps went through the hallway. My grandma opened the door. Faint talking could be heard and then my grandma yelled for me. Someone was at the door asking to see me.
I stood frozen in my room. The faint talking continued. After a couple of moments my name was yelled again.
The front door closed. Two sets of footsteps entered and moved towards the kitchen. I could hear my grandma chatting away; her voice was calm and collected, as it always was when she was stalling for me. She started to pour a kettle of tea. I crawled out of the window and ran.
The GoodSnooze motel was my go-to bedroom if I had any company back in high school. For twenty bucks they would give you a room for the night and for an extra five no questions would be asked. The place hadn’t changed much over the years; it was still a hole in the wall where no one would find you.
I only had seven bucks on me but they begrudgingly took my grandma’s credit card as collateral. Room C-3, third floor, TV and a phone included. I grabbed my keys and raced upstairs. The sun was starting to peek through the fog outside.
The plan was to call my grandmother, make sure she’s okay, wait an hour until my parole officer would be available and then call her directly about the camera. I was meant to check in anyway, it would be better to talk to someone that knew me. The plan was simple; if I just stayed calm everything would work out. Except for one hitch; the phone in my room was disconnected.
This wasn’t entirely uncommon; the Snooze was infamous for shit breaking down. I got ready to go ask for another room when I heard it.
Three sharp, equally spaced knocks.
I froze, praying that it was my mind playing tricks on me.
Three sharp, equally spaced knocks.
It wasn’t. I made my way to the peephole of the room and was greeted with complete darkness.
There was something on the other side blocking the hole. I paced the room, back and forth, all the while listening to the knocks. They grew sharper with every strike. With dread I checked the camera.
The battered door of room C-3. Occasionally a terrified looking eye would stare out, directly into the lens.
I tried yelling for help out of the window, but the passing cars pay no attention to me. No one responds when I bang on the walls or stomp on the floor, the people who come here are used to a ruckus. I’ve turned on the television to drown her out and caught a glimpse of a report about a horrifying home-invasion in my neighborhood.
I’m a sniveling mess, hating myself for the moment when I laid hands on that camera. I don’t know what to do. I just want to be somewhere where I feel safe, where I won’t have to think about Teddy or Karen.
The pounding reached a point where it seemed like the door was going to give in, but then it ended. Instead, out of the hallway I heard a single sound.
"Wow!"