Beholder

Jeff’s self-made promise that he’d use his day off in pur­suit of relax­ation rather than wor­ry, frac­tured when the road­work oppo­site his apart­ment win­dow began ham­mer­ing at the side­walk again, grind­ing up the con­crete, dig­ging at what­ev­er lay in the earth.

Through a blare of dis­rupt­ed traf­fic, work­ers were yelling obscen­i­ties at each oth­er between these bouts of dag­ger-like drilling. This worked to tor­ment Jeff’s ears with the same aggres­sion that had informed their con­struc­tion since appear­ing in the street six weeks pri­or. For far longer, Jeff sus­pect­ed, than they’d need­ed to be there. Enough time for him to imag­ine they’d long since mend­ed what­ev­er need­ed fix­ing and now exist­ed sole­ly to expend their remain­ing annu­al bud­get to jus­ti­fy the fol­low­ing year’s books.

Jeff walked to the win­dow and spied three work­ers oppo­site, who stood around the vast square hole they’d made in the street. They looked down into the city’s depths below, their faces smoth­ered by a thick spool of steam that plumed upwards from the dark­ness and evap­o­rat­ed around their heads, streak­ing their faces with residue.

An attempt at self-care the day pri­or had failed him also. Jeff’s will to de-stress became quashed under a pile of chores that grew para­dox­i­cal­ly heav­ier with each task com­plet­ed. Dish­es, bills, shop­ping errands, and oth­er house­hold duties all remind­ing him of the nev­er-end­ing next. This was his own fault, he knew, because his to-do list exist­ed in his tired mem­o­ry only, rather than on the notice board Cas had stuck to their refrig­er­a­tor door for this very pur­pose. The notice board ignored by Jeff until yes­ter­day and regret­ted today. Neat and orga­nized and so very Cas-like: virtues alien to his make-up but that he adored in her, all the same.

Cas hadn’t been sur­prised by his pro­cras­ti­na­tion. In fact, she’d encour­aged it. 

“Take a cou­ple of days to your­self,” she’d told him. “You nev­er get the bal­ance quite right, so tell your boss you’re tak­ing some vaca­tion days. Those days are then yours. Besides, it’s not real­ly pro­cras­ti­nat­ing because you know we’ll get every­thing done. Take these days for you.”

And he thought he’d struck that bal­ance well today, too. He’d only spent a cou­ple of hours wrestling with their television’s mount after replac­ing a bust­ed HDMI cable that threat­ened to ruin the morn­ing. Then, he drew enough con­cen­tra­tion to read through a book chap­ter that tugged at his atten­tion. He used to love reading.

Then the damn drilling started.

The work­ers were low­er­ing some­thing into the hole now, a long cable that spun down­ward from a coil held by one of the men. This one looked up from what he was doing and saw Jeff watch­ing them.

Jeff gave him the finger. 

Then he drew the cur­tain closed, hop­ing that if the drilling resumed, the fab­ric would damp­en the noise enough to afford him a frac­tion of peace. He sank back into his chair and closed his eyes, intent on forc­ing a moment’s respite in the room’s new gloom, when Anne, his neigh­bor from three floors up, texted him.

“Something’s wrong with Tyler,” she wrote, announc­ing her con­tin­ued pres­ence in his life with­out any addi­tion­al intro­duc­tion or explanation.

“Hi, Anne. What do you mean?” Jeff replied, his ner­vous­ness at their inter­ac­tion already cop­per in his stomach.

“Can I talk to you some­where?” she texted.

Jeff fore­saw two direc­tions he could take this con­ver­sa­tion. In the first (the safest), he’d rein­force that they’d both resolved, for some time now, to end their sneak­ing indis­cre­tions into each other’s apart­ments when they found them­selves alone. They lived in the same build­ing, after all. Jeff, Anne, and their respec­tive spous­es all. And he’d remind Anne that she’d been relieved. She’d told him she’d hoped he’d call it quits on them, anyway.

And yet, Cas wasn’t here, and the remain­der of the day was his. Per­haps there was no harm in catch­ing up a lit­tle, he thought. If that’s all he did.

But in doing so, he’d ignore that the metal­lic anx­i­ety in his bel­ly was rapid­ly descend­ing down­wards and evolv­ing into excite­ment below his waist. He leaned into the for­mer thought.

“I don’t know, Anne. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We dis­cussed this and decid­ed it would be best to cool off, yeah?”

“I’m seri­ous. There’s some­thing real­ly wrong with Ti, and I don’t know what to do. Can you meet me at the diner?”

The drilling began to sound from the street again, peak­ing into an arch of white noise that buzzed through his tem­ples. His eyes were start­ing to water, an all too telling warn­ing of an approach­ing clus­ter headache. Great.

“Give me thir­ty min­utes, and I’ll meet you there.”

Red, green, and white hor­i­zon­tal stripes dec­o­rat­ed the diner’s exte­ri­or under ele­vat­ed train tracks that ran over­head. A rel­ic that remained unchanged through­out the sur­round­ing bor­ough’s gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, the place stayed a stub­born time cap­sule while evolv­ing apart­ment build­ings encroached on ware­house space elsewhere.

Jeff made it inside half an hour lat­er than he’d agreed to, half-wish­ing he’d find Anne already gone. But he saw her sit­ting alone by a table, sip­ping a cup of cof­fee, watch­ing him as he entered. He walked to the table and joined her.

“You’re wet,” she said, reach­ing out to touch the tex­ture of his sod­den coat as he sat down. “You should have brought an umbrella.”

“It’s fine. I don’t mind the rain. I only got caught in it for a minute,” he said.

“Okay. You look great, Jeff.”

“Thank you, Anne. You look good too,” he said. Except she didn’t, he saw. Her usu­al­ly buoy­ant hair hung in list­less streaks from her head, clumped togeth­er by her shoul­ders in a tan­gle. Her skin looked sal­low, her face drained of complexion. 

“I’m not sure about that. But thanks for com­ing. I need­ed to speak to some­one, and I knew I could talk to you,” she said.

“Okay. You said this was about Tyler?”

Anne didn’t answer him. Instead, she looked out of the win­dow, into the rain, towards the train sta­tion, and through it. He saw her shiv­er: an almost imper­cep­ti­ble trem­ble that ran from her shoul­ders upwards along her neck before thin­ning into a quiver that shook her low­er lip.

“Anne, did you tell him about us?” Jeff asked.

She turned to face him again. 

“No. It’s noth­ing like that,” Anne said.

A sigh escaped him before he could bot­tle his relief. Anne saw his reac­tion and chuck­led a short, bit­ter laugh.

“I’m not wor­ried about that,” she said.

“Okay. So what’s wrong? Why am I here?” Jeff asked.

“Well, I want­ed to talk to you because I know I can trust you.”

Now, it was Jeff’s turn to offer a cyn­i­cal smirk. Anne ignored it, took a sip of her cof­fee, and continued. 

“But I think I also want to hear myself say it so I know I’m not crazy. Because when I tell you, it’s going to sound like I am. I don’t think the man in my apart­ment is my husband.”

Jeff ordered a decaf to match Anne’s Amer­i­cano and enjoyed the cup’s warmth in his hands and throat as he sipped. His headache had decel­er­at­ed before crash­ing into him, the impact cush­ioned by the aspirin he’d swal­lowed when leav­ing home. He shouldn’t risk the caf­feine.  Cas had sug­gest­ed he make the switch to ease the bur­den on his con­cen­tra­tion, any­way. He’d humor Anne, rein­force their affair’s con­clu­sion, and return home to his book. 

“You know the feel­ing of being watched, yeah? Ever had that?” Anne asked.

“Sure I have.”

“Look over your shoul­der at the counter.”

Jeff peered behind him as instruct­ed. The wait­ress stood behind the grill, fac­ing him. She looked at Jeff, raised her eye­brows, lift­ed her chin, and mouthed “yeah?” in his direction.

Jeff smiled at her and shook his head to dis­miss fur­ther ser­vice. He turned back to Anne.

“What do you notice?” Anne asked.

“Eager staff?”

“Okay. She’s still watch­ing you. Turn around again. Slow­ly. Like you’re try­ing not to be noticed.”

Again, Jeff swiveled on his chair. Sure enough, the wait­ress stared at him still. He made eye con­tact with the woman a sec­ond time, then quick­ly looked away, embarrassed.

“I bet you’re going to feel her watch­ing you while we’re here,” Anne said. She was pick­ing at a nap­kin lying on the table, fid­get­ing at its paper with her fin­ger­nails.  “It will be irra­tional, and you’ll try to ignore it, but the sen­sa­tion will stay with you until we leave. Or until you find your­self look­ing at her again.” 

“So? I mean, that’s her job. She’s check­ing to see if we want to order anything.”

“There’s maybe twen­ty peo­ple here. So why is she look­ing at you?”

“She’s day­dream­ing, is all,” Jeff said.

“Right, and that’s what you’ll think. And that’s how it start­ed with Tyler. It was just a reg­u­lar evening, both of us on the couch, flick­ing through stream­ing, find­ing some­thing to binge. Then I became cer­tain, and I mean utter­ly cer­tain, that he was watch­ing me. We were both sit­ting on the couch. And from the cor­ner of my eye, I felt like I could see him star­ing at me.”

“Was he?”

“I turned to see. He just faced the television.”

 “So he hadn’t been,” Jeff said.

“Right. So I told myself I’d imag­ined it, and we watched more. Then the feel­ing came back. I was, again, com­plete­ly sure that he’d turned to face me and that he was star­ing at me. Like I could feel his eyes burn­ing into my skull.”

“Was he play­ing a trick on you?”

“That’s what I thought. I won­dered if I was being para­noid and told myself to ignore it. But the feel­ing per­sist­ed. It got stronger. He was watch­ing me and pre­tend­ing not to.”

“So what did you do?” asked Jeff.

“I kept look­ing at the TV until the feel­ing became suf­fo­cat­ing. I looked out the cor­ner of my eye again to see if I could catch him, know­ing he could see me do it. Then I couldn’t take it any­more, and I turned my head to look.” 

“And?”

“Again, he was just watch­ing TV. I was quick. I didn’t see him move his head.”

“Anne, lis­ten.”

“Then he said, ‘You look very pret­ty today, honey’.”

A loud clang of met­al clat­tered behind them as some­body in the kitchen dropped their stack of dish­es. Anne flinched at the sound, her sharp intake of breath catch­ing in her throat with an audi­ble “hic”.

“So, that does sound irra­tional. Para­noid, yes,” Jeff told her.

“I know. And that’s what Tyler said when I told him to quit it. Then that night, we were lying in bed, and I couldn’t sleep. I’d been try­ing to wean myself off late-night doom-scrolling on my phone, so I start­ed brows­ing socials. Tyler always falls asleep quick­ly. He’s usu­al­ly pret­ty tired work­ing the road­works, and he says dur­ing con­struc­tion, he needs at least eight hours of sleep. Once recent­ly, he didn’t get enough, and he fell into one of those pits. Damn machin­ery near­ly broke his leg. And he snores. Did I ever tell you that? He snores so bad­ly, sleep apnea.”

She’s afraid, Jeff thought. Ter­ri­fied, even. She pulled at a length of dirty hair as she talked and coiled it into a loop around her fin­ger. The var­nish on her nails looked chipped.

Anne con­tin­ued: “Tyler lay on his side. He start­ed snor­ing, slow and deep. I faced away from him, towards the wall, try­ing to ignore the steady drone com­ing from his pipes as he breathed. I tend to run hot while I sleep, so I had inched away from his side- we weren’t touching.

 “Then the sen­sa­tion returned. Creep­ing up on me. A cold, vul­ner­a­ble feel­ing of being seen. As I lay there, I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck, while he pre­tend­ed to be asleep. He watched me fear him in the dark. And as I lis­tened to that snor­ing, I knew it was imi­ta­tion. The sound, fake. He was wide awake. Watch­ing me.

“So I lift­ed my phone up, above my shoul­der. All the move­ment I could muster in my fear. I opened my cam­era and flipped the lens to face him.”

Anne retrieved her phone from the hand­bag rest­ing on the chair beside her. From this, she pre­sent­ed to Jeff the pic­ture she’d tak­en while her hus­band watched her. The dark­ness of the room lit by the light of the device’s screen. The large man’s head pressed against his pil­low, his arm splayed at an awk­ward angle by his chest. His open mouth, his tongue lolling flat on his low­er lip.

Tyler’s eyes stared wide and straight ahead, inch­es away from the lens. They were gaw­ping at the back of Anne’s head.

Anne placed the phone on the table. Through the win­dow, through the rain, an ambu­lance turned onto the street. A siren rose in pitch as it neared, block­ing out Anne’s con­tin­ued urgency with its own scream­ing agency. Jeff held up his hand in a halt­ing motion, and Anne paused her nar­ra­tion as it passed. The vehi­cle banked onto Jeff’s own street now, wheels carv­ing into the gut­ter where a spray of water streaked upwards into the air. One of the work­ers, who still loi­tered on Jeff’s street, caught the full force of the spray. He stood there unmov­ing, drenched head to foot in rain­fall as the ambu­lance sped by.

He remained still in the rain, unfazed by the water drip­ping from his soaked fig­ure. He faced the din­er. He was watch­ing Jeff.

Jeff looked away and back to Anne.

“Okay, you’ve not told me any­thing that’s alarm­ing me here,” he said, “I get that the pic­ture is unnerv­ing, but he has trou­ble sleep­ing. You just said so. Cas talks in hers’. I used to sleep­walk as a kid.”

“Yeah. So I made a video of what hap­pened next. Watch.”

Anne wield­ed the phone towards Jeff like she wagged an accusato­ry fin­ger. Jeff received it and pressed play on the clip presented.

In the video, Anne climbed their building’s stairs. She approached her apart­ment door through a first-per­son per­spec­tive along her dark­ened landing.

“For a few days there, the ‘watch­ing’ ceased,” she nar­rat­ed to Jeff. “No more creep­ing feel­ing. My wor­ry that I’d see him quick­ly look­ing else­where when I looked up like he was dar­ing me to catch him, that went away. Then, this hap­pened. Last week.”

Anne opened her apart­ment door and walked through her hall­way (where, months pri­or, Jeff had gripped her against the wall before they both real­ized they’d left her door unlocked and ajar in their haste). She approached the liv­ing room. With pur­pose­ful, slow pre­ci­sion and as if she moved on tip­toe, she inched the cam­era through the open door­way to peep at what lay beyond.

Tyler’s head faced her, spy­ing on her as he focused into view. The rest of him sat on the couch toward their TV and away. But his angle was wrong because his face craned on his shoul­ders as far as his neck should stretch, more than nine­ty degrees. Ten­dons bulged from under the thick fat of his chin, taught like over-tuned gui­tar strings wound to snap with the slight­est vibra­tion. His neck twist­ed on its axis to its lim­it, like his spine was a corkscrew, his bones ready to crack and sev­er his nerves at the root. And because he could turn no fur­ther, his eyes glared from their cor­ners and Anne’s way. Red blood­lines lanced toward his black pupils, ready to pop out of their sock­ets under the strain.

“Did you buy eggs?” Tyler mouthed.

Now Anne walked into the room, her cam­era still trained on her hus­band. As she advanced, his head slow­ly turned like a mount­ed secu­ri­ty sys­tem track­ing an ani­mal’s move­ment. The bulging car­ti­lage relaxed, but his unblink­ing gaze remained trained on her still. As Anne paced on the floor between the couch and the wall, his head con­tin­ued to turn, his stare unbro­ken, back and forth, back and forth.

“What the hell?” Jeff said.

“Fast for­ward to a minute thir­ty,” Anne said. 

Jeff scrubbed through the clip. Anne retreat­ed from her hus­band in inverse steps, creep­ing back­ward around the door and away. Still, Tyler craned his neck to watch her as far as his frame would allow, while the rest of him faced away in some bizarre pre­tense of con­tin­ued tele­vi­sion viewing.

Anne snatched her cell from Jef­f’s fingers.

“You see?” she asked.

“So what did you do?” Jeff asked.

“I went back out to get eggs. When I returned thir­ty min­utes lat­er, he did exact­ly the same thing. His stare fol­lowed me every­where I went. I thought his head was going to pop off his shoul­ders. And he kept star­ing when­ev­er I left the room. And I know full well that when I left the apart­ment, no mat­ter where I went, he would be turned to face me. Star­ing at me through the fuck­ing walls.”

“Did you con­front him about this?” Jeff asked.

“Yes! He denied any­thing was wrong.”

“He’s gaslight­ing you. That’s how gaslight­ing works. It makes you ques­tion your­self until you won­der if you’re crazy.”

Anne held the phone out to Jeff again, reveal­ing anoth­er pic­ture. In the image, Tyler sat on the couch to Anne’s left, who’d tak­en the snap­shot at his side, the cam­era held at head height. A bright flash exposed Tyler’s form in the dark as he sat at rapt atten­tion, his face upturned and fac­ing their tele­vi­sion screen. Jeff saw the out­line of his nose as Tyler’s grin lift­ed the flesh of his cheek at the noise and images deliv­ered his way. His sin­gle eye, vis­i­ble in the profile.

“I took this yes­ter­day,” Anne said.

Tyler’s gaze pierced through the dim in Anne’s direc­tion. But his eye­ball had rotat­ed fur­ther than it should, the orbit impos­si­ble in Tyler’s head. Like his optic nerve had been sev­ered, free­ing his sight to cir­cle detached around his skull. The brown of his iris half obscured by the skin where his eye­lids met at the seams. His black pupil sliced in two by the cor­ner of the sock­et where bones fused togeth­er in the middle. 

Watch­ing her, still. Stretched fur­ther than biol­o­gy could pos­si­bly allow.

“How many fin­gers am I hold­ing up, Ti?” Anne asked her husband.

“Three,” Tyler replied.

“And how about now?” she asked.

“You are hold­ing two fin­gers on one hand and five on the oth­er,” Tyler said. Each word was a lull lay­ered atop the sharp jack­ham­mer that railed out­side on the street. His voice list­less, a steady monot­o­ne bereft of flair.

“Look who I bumped into. Who am I with, Tyler?”

“Why, it’s Jeff. Hel­lo, Jeff. What brings you all the way up here?”

 Tyler sat in the mid­dle of the couple’s liv­ing room, slumped in an arm­chair, his hand clutch­ing an open beer bot­tle. He faced away from his wife and her vis­i­tor towards the open win­dow. Jeff looked at the back of Tyler’s head as the man spoke, at the rolls of loose flesh loop­ing around his neck.

How is he doing this? Jeff wondered.

“Is every­thing okay, Tyler?” he asked. “Anne tells me you’ve not been feel­ing well.”

“I’m fine,” Tyler replied, the word “fine” drip­ping from his mouth like melt­ed rub­ber. “Can I offer you a beer?” Tyler said.

Anne elbowed Jeff’s side. 

“Fol­low me,” she whis­pered, “and stop when I do.”

She shuf­fled around Tyler’s chair in small move­ments, keep­ing her sight peeled on her hus­band as she moved. Jeff fol­lowed in her foot­steps. As they cir­cled the seat­ed man, Jeff saw Tyler’s eyes, glazed white: his iris­es and pupils miss­ing from their flesh. Reveal­ing two sunken cir­cles in his skull like hol­low moons, lanced with lines of blood­shot red. 

Then, as Jeff walked to face him, the detail slid out from the cor­ner of Tyler’s sock­ets, track­ing Anne from left to right, gen­tly rotat­ing from where they’d been hid­ing in the back of his head.

“Those road­works are crazy, huh? I’m glad I don’t need to work them any­more,” Tyler said. He didn’t blink. Nor did his expres­sion leave Anne’s as he spoke.

Anne placed her hand on Jeff’s shoulder.

“Stop here, and watch,” she said. Jeff remained where he was while Anne com­plet­ed her pace around her hus­band, until she stopped behind the back of the chair.

Tyler’s gaze fol­lowed her as she moved. His left pupil slipped past his tear duct, his right dis­ap­pear­ing too: both shrink­ing like black stars engulfed by a pass­ing eclipse until only his whites remained. Gaw­ping emp­ty and upwards up at Jeff from Tyler’s sweat­ing head.

“Tyler, how many fin­gers am I hold­ing up?” Jeff asked. He held his hand in front of him and held out his index finger.

“How should I know?” Tyler replied, in that same drunk­en-sound­ing pitch as before. “I can’t see you.”

He’s watch­ing her through the back of his skull, Jeff thought.

Then, Tyler said: “You look very pret­ty today, dear.”

Anne’s com­po­sure broke. She whim­pered, retreat­ed to the liv­ing room’s door­way, and stood quiv­er­ing under its frame.

Jeff walked around the unmov­ing man and clutched her arm.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But you’re right, something’s very wrong here. He needs a doc­tor at least.”

But his words were inter­rupt­ed by the shock that now over­whelmed Anne’s face, and the shrill gasp ris­ing from her mouth to answer the wet “slurp” com­ing from behind them. Anne looked past Jeff towards her hus­band: the man no longer star­ing her way.

Tyler had turned in his chair to face them, his smile now a grin that stretched across his heavy jowls, ser­rat­ing his face like a knife slashed across thin paper.

He was look­ing at Jeff.

Tyler start­ed to laugh, his jaw swing­ing open and closed like a trap­door caught in the periph­ery of a tor­na­do. From deep with­in his gul­let, Jeff saw the writhing move­ment of a thou­sand threads that coiled and danced along the back of Tyler’s throat.

One of these grey lines now slid over Tyler’s lips, twitch­ing in the exposed air. It lanced down­ward along the sick man’s body, slick and wet, glanc­ing along the arm of the chair before drip­ping onto the floor between them. 

And still he looked at Jeff. 

A sec­ond grey worm fol­lowed, then a third, each flex­ing and reach­ing from Tyler’s open mouth, wrench­ing his lips agog as they moved.

Jeff saw into the man’s eyes again. His blood­shot lines were moving.

As the near­est thread reached Anne’s foot, its clawed, oily tip stretch­ing towards her ankle, Jeff ran. Leav­ing her to scream “Don’t leave me!” as he fled.

Hav­ing returned to his apart­ment, Jeff stared through his liv­ing room win­dow at the work­ers, who still sur­round­ed their pit, pulling their coil of rope free from the sub­ter­ranean depths of New York City.

Psy­chos, Jeff thought. Anne and Tyler both. He should nev­er have become involved with that woman. How was he sup­posed to know he shared a build­ing with a pair of lunatics?

His phone buzzed alert. Jeff lift­ed it from the windowsill.

“Thanks for com­ing to see me today,” Anne had writ­ten. Then a pho­to­graph appeared in the mes­sage his­to­ry as her self­ie grinned up at him from his cracked, black screen. Rivers of flu­id wet­ting her cheeks. Her pupils gaz­ing up at him through smeared mas­cara and mat­ted eye­lash­es, pricked in strings of crimson.

Jeff looked out the win­dow. The road­crew looked back.