The voyeur

The room is a mess of scattered aspirations and food, the moon shines its fractured light through the shades onto a closed door.

Pale tendrils clutch the cold pistol. Oily prints stain its metal.

His hands stink of sweat and ozone. He is a shaken aspen tree in the wind, scars litter his alabaster skin as he leans against the locked threshold.

He is alone in suffering but not in the room.

Across from him, the voyeur smells of damp ivy and appears just as wiry. Dressed in an old pair of jeans and a tweed jacket. He speaks as if he is an old friend; Are you going to do it? You may not die, and your disfigurement would be a fate worse than any death; that is unless you are not so vain?

The pale man stares like a kicked dog, unstable and unspeaking.

Let me take your life, this way it will not fail. Must you be so greedy as to play the martyr, the savior and the murderer? Let me have a turn my friend.

The words crawl up the walls of the pale man’s mind, the vein on his forehead swells. The stranger watches, a strange stillness.

The constant humming of the old air conditioning system fills the silence.

“My mind is overgrown with cruel thoughts, my love has died, I can no longer abide with it.” says the pale man

“Or perhaps your mind is empty and you can’t abide with yourself.” the voyeur retorts

“But I can’t remember what I’ve done and what I haven’t, whenever I attempt to sleep the theater plays all the horrors to which I’ve borne witness.” the pale man cries

Have you ever considered this just to be a consequence of your diligence? Aren’t you so gifted to recall every moment your eyes have seen?

The stranger implores

I won’t have this any longer. Says the pale man

How ungrateful. Scoffs the stranger

The pale man jolts, his finger tightens around the trigger, but like hands on a locked door there is no movement. The safety has been left on.

The voyeur extends his palm.

Hollowed and exhausted the pistol is handed over.

With smooth and surgical diligence the magazine is removed and is placed with the pistol on the countertop.

The voyeur turns around and looks at the ground; without a change in facial expression he reaches down and grabs something.

It’s a blackened casing, empty and discarded. His eyes sweep the room, briefly pausing on the door and he gives the pale man a knowing look.