I’m trying to get the key into the lock on my front door without looking when the wind blows my hair over my shoulder into my face. I glance over at the front entrance, then roll my eyes preemptively.
It’s Todd, looking more irate than usual and—I note with a cheerful kind of curiosity—like someone kicked his ass. He’s got a giant purple bruise stretching across the front of his neck, and he seems sort of… beaten. Like, he usually holds his head high and postures when he walks, but now he’s slouching and subdued, almost as if he took a blow to the ego as well as the throat.
Dios,I hope that’s what happened. Just because I would never do it myself doesn’t stop me from wishing someone else would. It’d be a long time coming for someone who doesn’t think before he speaks but likes to run his mouth.
“You know, they really recommend you start slow with the auto-erotic asphyxiation,” I muse, lips twitching as I try to straight-face this one. “It’s dangerous. You could hurt yourself.”
He limps slowly past me, giving me the stink eye. I can’t see why he’d be limping from here, so it feels… performative. Especially after he says in a hoarse voice, “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You mean your dad?”
“Yeah,” he shoots back, oblivious to the implied insult. Of course, his dad is a lawyer.
I chuckle, unperturbed but curious. “Why, is he hot? You looking for a new stepmom? Careful, young man, or I’ll send you to bed without supper.” I wag my finger.
He scoffs, infusing the sound with as much disgust as he’s physically able, then wincing and grabbing his Adam’s apple like it hurt. “You think you can hide behind your big, scary boyfriend? He can’t just go aroundassaultingpeople for no fucking reason. I hope he’s got deep pockets, because they think my larynx is going to need surgery.”
“My what?” I repeat, stuck a few sentences behind.
“Don’t play dumb, you fucking bitch. It’s all on video,” he hisses, pointing to the security cameras in the corners of the hallway’s ceiling.
“Management doesn’t pay for those to work, Todd,” I inform him with a small laugh. “It’s security theater, meant to deter people just by having them there, like thatGuard on Dutysign—have you ever seen a security guard here?”
He blanches and turns his accusatory stare to the cameras. “W-well… Uh… I’ve got a witness, too. Proof.”
“Of,” I prompt, waving my hand in aget to itmotion.
“Your boyfriend, threatening and attacking me.”
I open my mouth, then snap it shut. Clearly, Todd suffered some brain damage and is confused. It’s really not nice to kick someone when they’re down. “Right. Well, good luck with the lawsuit. I’ll be sure to tell myboyfriendto watch who he throat-punches next time. I don’t think your brain can really afford to be cut off from oxygen again.” I turn the key and slip inside.
“We’re gonna have his ass deported,” Todd growls after me.
“You do that,” I chuckle, making a mental note to check the camera feeds I just told him didn’t work. Well, I was tricky with my words—I didn’t say they don’t work; I implied it by saying that our building doesn’t pay for them.
Management may not care about the cameras, but after Mrs. Louis upstairs got mugged on her way in one day, and burst into tears at her mailbox telling me that the leasing company essentially told her to buck up, I do. I couldn’t stand the look on her face—like she was afraid to leave the house. Even after I explained that I’ve been personally paying for and monitoring them ever since, she still insists on using an old-school camera with an actual dinosaur VHS tape recorder to capture the street view “just in case.” I humored her.
What can I say? I’m a prickly bitch, but I do have a heart. And she takes care of my cat for me on the rare occasions when I go away.
If someone assaulted Todd… I kinda want to see that. Then pop some popcorn, pull it up on my TV and watch it over and over. Maybe in slow-mo with a theatric sports-announcer type voiceover.
I put away my groceries, feed Some Bills, and head into my bedroom. Wearing an anticipatory smile, I sit at my computer and pull up the historical feed from the hallway camera. The service I use saves 30 days of footage before it overwrites itself, so I should be able to find the scene I want—but I’m not sitting here and manually running through it. I write a quick program to scan for Todd’s face, then isolate and highlight all of his comings and goings for the last few days. Once the program is done, I’ve got a few condensed minutes of the most boring short film ever:There and Back Again and Again,Todd’s Hallway Journeys. But it’s missing something.
I sit back and scowl. Why does it jump from him being fine to him leaving his apartment with that huge bruise? Where’s the in-between? He didn’t just imply it happened in the hallway, he straight up said it did—this camera should have the perfect view. It’s the one hepointedat.
First, I check my code. Nope, it’s fine.
Then, assuming the program just missed the event because Todd’s face was turned away or something, I pull the footage from the time between his last healthy appearance and his first injured one, and watch it frame for frame on 10x fast forward.
Huh. Nothing.
Now I’m intrigued. I slow it down, assuming human error this time.
That’s when I see it—a timestamp jump. This footage is missing an hour. I never would have noticed speeding through it. With a frown, I check my calendar and see that it was a visiting day with Abuela. I wasn’t here.
A chill sweeps up my spine, and goosebumps rise to the surface of my skin, lifting the dark hairs on my forearms as I connect the dots. Time is missing from security cameras in my apartment building when I wasn’t home, and Todd assumed the guy who beat him up was someone I knew… Was someone in my apartment? Nothing is missing or moved, so it almost feels silly to think it, but now I can’t help but wonder.
My heartbeat thuds steadily and loudly in my ears as I check all my internal security from that time. Since I wasn’t home and Some Bills was sleeping, it’s hard to tell if the cameras are looped. But the security system… Someone disarmed it using a system override codeIdidn’t even know at a timestamp that couldn’t have been me…
