On Tape
Rose was going insane. She was sure of it. She’d always been a bit scattered with her possessions, but never to this extent.
By Thursday of the previous week she’d run out of tupperware lunches. She should have had at least one lunch left over by the end of the work week, since she skipped work the day of the funeral, but they were all gone come Thursday morning. And they hadn’t simply run out. No, they’d disappeared.
Rose didn’t recall eating the food she’d prepared. And she had no clue what she’d done with the tupperware, seeing as they weren’t at work or anywhere at home. So, the only logical conclusion would be that she was going insane. In fact, by Wednesday of the following week, Rose was half-ready to admit herself to an institution.
But there was work to be done, so Rose pushed on, even when each day there was something new out of place in the studio. A towel missing here, a pencil moved there. They were small things, but Rose couldn’t recall moving them. She’d been so scattered since last Tuesday.
There were so many thoughts in her head lately that she was having trouble sleeping. The previous night she hadn’t fallen asleep until the sun was starting to rise. She’d woken a little after 4pm and resolved to go into the studio, despite the work day being nearly over. She needed something constant, something reliable, and work was that thing for her.
Rose arrived at the studio a bit after 5 o’clock and set herself up at an easel. She didn’t have much energy, so an afternoon spent retouching a small landscape painting sounded ideal.
Rose reached her paint-stained fingers for the tiny brush she used for detailing and came up empty. Still grasping at air, she looked up from the painting. The brush she needed, the one with thin bristles and a chipped green handle, wasn’t in its place.
She groaned and set her palette down on the paint cart. Rose gripped fistfuls of her hair, smearing conservation paint into it. Her eyes watered, and not from the sting of her scalp.
A couple deep breaths kept the tears at bay.
The clock on the far wall read 10:32pm. She’d been at it too long. The silence of the studio suddenly came into sharp focus.
Rose left the painting on its easel and went to the kitchen. Washing the paint from her fingers was grounding. The scratch of nails on skin brought her mind into focus. Rose spent longer than she should have hunched over the sink, scrubbing at paint that wasn’t there. When her fingers were red and throbbing, Rose shut off the tap and opened the fridge.
Empty.
It was fucking empty. Only a jar of fish gelatin sat on the middle shelf, mocking her.
She’d brought five lunches—five. She was sure of it. She’d counted them. They should be here. Her tupperware should be here—it sure as hell wasn’t at home. She’d counted the ones at home too.
Hot tears fell down her face. Rose slammed the fridge door. “Fuck!” She smacked her fists against the counter. “Fuck, fuck, fucking stupid fuck!”
Rose slid down to the floor and cried, face buried in her knees, head cradled beneath her arms. Her body trembled. Loud, bitter sobs poured from her mouth.
It felt like forever until her shaking and crying finally stopped. Her eyes felt itchy. She couldn’t get a breath in through her nose. Her head fell back against the wall and she gulped in lungfuls of air past dry lips.
A steady red blinking in the corner of the ceiling drew her into a trance. For a heavy, quiet moment, Rose’s mind was perfectly blank. And then realization dawned.
The cameras.
Rose scrambled up on shaky limbs and stumbled to the little shoebox of an office at the back of the studio. The computer was slow to start up and she clicked the mouse a million too many times. Finally, the screen lit up and Rose opened her security monitoring system. Everything looked alright on the live feed, nothing out of place.
She clicked on the kitchen cam and started the playback from a week ago, last Tuesday night. The feed started playing from midnight and Rose set it to fast forward through the night hours. She needed to see what she’d done with the tupperware.
Rose rubbed a fist against her dry eyes. She nearly missed the flash of black in the video.
She slammed the space bar. The video stopped. A streak of black sat frozen at the bottom corner of the screen. The time stamp read 3:25am.
Rose sank further into the computer chair. There was definitely something on the video. A quiet part of her mind whispered to shut off the computer, to not look. If she didn’t look then it wouldn’t be real, and she’d just go on believing herself to be insane.
The cursor quivered over the rewind button before Rose clicked it. The feed jumped back five minutes and resumed play at normal speed.
For a couple minutes the screen showed the same shot of an empty kitchen. Rose might’ve thought the video was frozen if the progress bar wasn’t moving. But then she saw movement.
At 3:23am a dark figure, hunched in over itself, slid into the very edge of the frame. He stood stock-still, as if waiting. A minute passed. He moved. The man dashed over to the sink and drank directly from the faucet, the angle and his long hair hid his face from the camera.
Bone-deep fear seized Rose. Her breath stuttered. She watched the grainy video of a man—a stranger—sneaking around her studio in the middle of the night, and she suddenly felt so small, so alone. Rose didn’t dare blink as the video kept rolling.
He drank for a while, his shoulders moving up and down as he gulped the water. He was dressed all in black, blending almost seamlessly into the shadows of the dark kitchen. A strip of lighter-colored fabric was wrapped around his chest and his right shoulder. Rose watched as he shut off the tap with his left hand and pulled open the fridge.
The sudden light was startling. It illuminated the man enough for Rose to see that his clothes, no, his uniform, was torn in places. He wore a form-fitting suit, with straps and pockets everywhere. Either he was some kind of military or a cosplayer gone stray. He crouched in front of the refrigerator, his movements were smooth, swift.
A silly part of Rose’s brain remarked that he might be a good dancer, seeing how light he was on his feet. Her eyes landed on the beige cloth wrapped around his chest. She might be insane, but it looked like a strip of Belgian linen that she kept in the storage room. The man reached a gloved hand into the fridge and pulled out two of her tupperware lunches. He stood, shut the fridge with his foot, and stalked out of the kitchen.
Rose sat limp in her chair and stared blankly at the screen in front of her. The feed was still, though it was still rolling. She couldn’t wrap her head around it. Who was he? Why was he here? Was he still here?
With quivering fingers, Rose clicked forward to the next night, Wednesday. It took a while to find the right time stamp, but there he was, at 3:02am, sneaking into her kitchen again for a drink of water and a meal. Rose clicked forward. On Thursday night he came and went again. He drank from the sink for a long time before opening the fridge. He left the kitchen empty handed. The fridge has been empty by Thursday morning. A pang of guilt twisted her stomach. She clicked forward to the next day.
On Friday night he came again, drinking water, opening the fridge, and shutting it quickly, seeing as there wasn’t any food left. On Saturday night he didn’t come out at all. Rose’s heart stuttered in her chest, thinking that maybe he’d left the studio. But on Sunday night he was back. He drank from the tap far longer than usual. Rose watched him turn off the tap and lean against the counter. His hair, overgrown and limp with dirt, hung down around his face. His shoulders quivered. He stayed there a while. Rose held her breath, waiting for him to move. When he did, it seemed slower than before.
The man crouched in front of the fridge, peering at the empty shelves. He reached inside and pulled out the only thing in the fridge: the jar of fish gelatin. He clamped the jar between his body and right arm, using his left hand to open the lid, which he tossed aside.
Come to think of it, Rose hadn’t seen him move his right arm at all on the video feed. A bolt of cold panic shot up her spine. Was he injured?
She watched him lift the jar to his nose and recoil quickly at the smell. Rose would have laughed under any other circumstance. The man shook his head, like he was trying to shake the smell right out of his nose. But he scooped up some gelatin on his fingers and brought it to his mouth. Rose’s heart squeezed. He ate a couple more scoops of the gelatin before screwing the lid back onto the jar and replacing it in the fridge. He took a moment to wash his hands before leaving of the kitchen.
Hot tears raced down Rose’s cheeks. She couldn’t swallow the lump in her throat. Her fear was a distant emotion now, replaced almost completely by a deep, aching sadness. She yanked a tissue from a box on the desk and blew her nose. Against all logic and reason and self-preservational instincts, Rose’s heart ached for the man hiding in her studio.
Wiping her tears away on her cardigan sleeve, Rose clicked forward to the next night, Monday. He came to the kitchen like usual, this time taking a meal. But that’s not what Rose wanted to see. When he left the kitchen she switched over to the main studio room camera.
He walked through the room quickly, stopping only once to stare at the empty easel and gingerly roll the end of a small paintbrush between his fingers. Rose watched him pluck the brush from the paint cart and tuck it into the recesses of his tactical suit. He didn’t touch anything else, none of the expensive equipment sitting out in the open or the countless artworks throughout the studio. A meal and an old paintbrush, that’s all he’d taken.
Rose cried harder. Past her tears she saw him disappear into the storage room.
Before rational thinking could sway her, Rose sprung out of her seat and hurried out of the office, through the studio, and to the storage room.
The doorknob squeaked when she turned it. Rose cringed at the echo of it in the otherwise quiet studio. Her breaths were shaky as she stepped into the storage room and shut the door behind her. She definitely wasn’t thinking rationally. In fact, Rose wagered that now she was insane for another reason entirely.
Rose couldn't hear anything past the rush of blood in her ears and her own frantic breaths coming and going. She tried to step lightly, though her shaky knees made it difficult. Her quivering fingers dragged across the steel beams of each storage rack she passed. She risked a glance at the long bit of space between each rack, gasping in a breath each time she came up empty.
Rose came to the last two racks at the far end of the room. Her lungs burned, she couldn’t muster the courage to draw a breath. Rose’s sweaty fingers wrapped around the steel beam of a rack and she forced herself, after counting to three in her head, to peek into the space between the racks.
Empty.
Rose’s stomach dropped. Her lungs finally filled with air. But there was no relief.
Her hand slid across the metal as she walked down the narrow space between storage racks. Bolts of linen and mylar lay strewn across the racks. Rose came to the end of the row, having encountered nothing and no one but the brick wall in front of her now. She dragged a sweaty palm over the bricks. The scratch of stone on her flesh brought a shred of clarity. She laid her forehead against the brick wall and just breathed.
“You’re losing it, Rose,” she mumbled to herself.
Maybe he’d left. Surely he hadn’t intended to squat in her studio forever. He must have moved on. A tear slipped off her cheek and for a moment Rose was glad to be alone, glad she could feel the fullness of her disappointment and not feel inclined to chastise herself for feeling that way just yet.
In the morning she’d realize how foolish she was being, how dangerous her actions could have been if the man was still here. In the morning clarity and reason would come again. But for now Rose laid her forehead against the brick and cried.
Past her sobs, Rose almost didn’t hear the scuff of boots on tile behind her. Almost.