Invitation Only

Being paid for this had seemed like a good idea at the time. They still joked about it down the social club, but it was a well-rehearsed quip that not only bored Dave, it hurt him. 

Getting paid to watch TV!

That’s a cushy number, innit Dave!

Jammy bastard! You landed on yer feet, or should I say arse!

He’d heard it all before and so many times he’d smiled his way through it, because time was that he’d thought the same and that was why he was sat in front of a bank of TVs on a chair grown increasingly uncomfortable in tune with his own growing discomfort. A discomfort not only with this job, but the entirety of his drab existence. 

That was the problem with jobs. They not only got in the way of living life, but they also had this nasty habit of blighting every aspect of it. Everything always revolved around the job. More so when you worked nights. Between working and sleeping, Dave had very little in the way of an actual life. The truth of it was that he’d had very little that he could call a life prior to taking this job, but back then it was down to a lack of funds. Dave had bought into the capitalist dream and secured a deal that entailed him sitting watching screens in return for much needed funds. 

What could be better than that?

This wasn’t just the deal of the decade, it was the feckin’ deal of the century. Dave was an expert in the field of screen watching. Sit him on a sofa and provide him with a family bag of cheesy Wotsits and a two litre bottle of coke and he was as happy as Larry. It didn’t even need to be proper coke or Wotsits. As long as the coke was wet and fizzy and the snack was crunchy and cheesy then he was neck and neck with the fabled Larry when it came to the race of life. Only now, he wanted to stop the race and Larry could win for all he cared.

In the beginning, he’d lapped his plum job up. He entertained fantasy after fantasy as he sat there with his fizzy drink and cheesy snack. He even smiled as he marvelled at his luck at not only discovering this job, but successfully securing it. Initially, he loved the faux leather office chair, the chair leant itself well to some of his fantasies, such as being the chief baddie in a Bond movie. They always had lots of screens so they could watch their despicable plots unfold right up until the penultimate stage of their diabolical strategy to subjugate the world. He even stroked an imaginary cat and talked to it, punctuating their chat with a deep and mildly disconcerting laugh that he perfected over a period of six months before he tired of it and moved on to something less tedious.

The problem was that essentially, this was about as boring as it got. His entire life was now not only being lived in Boredville, it entailed staring at static images of it, and he had no means or motivation to move away from the place. Even when he had a pulse of something like energy, he’d leave work and trudge through the early morning gloom of the town centre cupping his hand around that flame of hope, but then he’d clamber onboard his dreary and depressing bus home and all around him would be people staring into screens. He’d once heard that some fast food chains and chocolate manufacturers allowed employees to eat their product free of charge and that this was a cynical ploy because after the first few weeks the employees tired of that product and after a while they loathed it. A case of people wanting what they could not have, but resenting what they had in abundance, when there’s biscuits in the barrel, what’s the fun in biscuits?

All the same, Dave had lasted the best part of three years in this job and these days, that was almost long enough to earn a few drinks at a cheap pub rounded off with a presentation of an engraved gold watch. Three long years that had taken their parasitic toll.

If someone had told him that he’d get to a point where he was just going through the motions and struggling to take note of anything whatsoever, he’d have laughed in their face and shouted, “he’s had enough to drink this one! Stop serving him beer!” But now that impossible eventuality had come to pass. He was right there, he knew it. He knew it as he stared at all of the screens and had to rub life into his eyes. Eyes that were no longer working.

No, that wasn’t right. His eyes worked fine. He knew they were providing him with images, but his brain was frozen, or not connected, or numb. He couldn’t read the screens anymore and the more he tried the worse he got. He started at the top and started to work his way down and then he’d experience this awful feeling of frustration interlaced with a growing sadness and despair.

“You loser!” he whispered the words, too afraid to admit them out loud. 

Why was he struggling with this most basic of tasks? Looking at things. All animals did this. They had to in order to read their environment, mitigate threats and find opportunities for food and shelter. He felt like he was receding. Not falling apart exactly, more like sinking into a substance that stole his energy from him and reduced his movement in tiny increments that all added up to this awful state of helpless hopelessness.

He managed to muster up enough energy to swivel on his torture chair and turn his back on the screens. Once he was away from them he leant forward with his head in his hands. He stifled a sob that came from nowhere and nearly got the better of him.

“Fuck my life,” he groaned, “what the hell is wrong with me?”

He took a deep breath and looked up at the closed door. No one ever came through that door. He was the only one that used it. This room was a cell and right now he was considering his escape. But he was shit out of options. Where would he go and what would he do? If this was the only option three years ago, it certainly was the only option now. He had nothing else. 

He was nothing else.

He turned back around. He had to keep going. He was responsible for being the eyes of this town. Nothing of note ever happened on his watch, but if he were guilty of a dereliction of his duty, that would be the precise timing of a cataclysm that he could have averted. Dave believed very firmly in sod’s law and in addition to that he was a fully paid up member of the victim’s club. Dave knew he was one of life’s victims, if he’d had any doubt on that score, all he had to do was look at the entry on his birth certificate for place of birth. Everyone born in this town was a victim. This town was in a blind spot at the bar of life, no one here got served. Not ever.

Before looking back up at the screens he took a big swig of his cheap bottle of coke. A consoling thought floated through his ailing mind and reminded him that he had not resorted to spiking that bottle with vodka. That was something. He conveniently overlooked his drinking outside of work. He lived in a constant hangover these days, even when he was at the social.

Burping, he grabbed a fist of his orange coated snack of choice and crushed the contents of his fist into his mouth. Fuelling the machine after a quick break and hoping that the glitch affecting it would go away of its own accord.

His eyes focused. A good start. Now it was his mind’s turn. His brain had to engage and allow him to process what it was that he was seeing. It didn’t help that he was essentially watching paint dry. Not for the first time did he wonder at why they didn’t have software that at least prompted him when it spotted motion. Not that any of the waifs and strays wandering the streets this late at night were at all interesting.

Another thing he got asked at the social was whether he had any footage of you know. He’d learnt to smile enigmatically and say “not for the likes of you.” The truth was that he’d never seen anything that remotely resembled a couple having a knee trembler down a back alley. Not a sausage on that front. Not a sausage, a cream horn or a ring donut. That drew the semblance of a smile as he thought about the various food items that could evoke mildly sordid thoughts. He thought the aubergine emoji was a crap representation, but maybe there was more to it than he knew. That was possible. There was a lot that Dave did not know, including why he bothered.

“Beer money,” he reminded himself, burping again before grabbing more snack to munch.

Now he was scanning the screens, looking at them afresh reminded him why he’d lost the will to live.

The same.

All the same.

He scanned randomly, albeit starting from the left. Some habits died hard and you had to try to kill them in the first place. Dave had never bothered. His eyes were already glazing over. This was torture. Something about the absence of choice and the incessant scenes he had to cast his eyes over. That was at least part of it. Maybe it was all of it. Maybe Dave was built all wrong for something like this. A job like this would suit an obsessive. Someone who gave a shit about the detail and whether it was still there or not.

Movement!

“Hu-fecking-rah,” said Dave in an unexpectant monotone.

But then he perked up. His whole demeanour changed. He was a changed man. If only it would last, he thought to himself as he watched a woman in a black dress leading an older guy by the hand. The resolution on these cameras was not great, but Dave saw well enough, and he saw that the woman was dressed well and approaching beautiful if she wasn’t there already, whereas the man was grey. Not just his hair and the mist of beard that was likely the result of laziness as opposed to fashion. This guy’s clothes and his demeanour was in a different class to the woman’s. In fact, he wasn’t grey, he was beige. 

The mismatch was almost shocking. She wasn’t just out of his league, they were playing different sports. This was a travesty of an encounter, Dave entertained by his unhappiness with this unfolding scene.

“No way!” he gasped as she pulled Beige Bloke into an alley and behind a large metal wheelie bin.

No way covered two bases. The first was that this shouldn’t be happening and if it ever did, then it should happen to Dave, not that old sod. The second was that these two thought they could escape the gaze of Dave’s CCTV, for now that something interesting was actually happening it was Dave’s CCTV. This was the perk of the job he’d waited three long years for, but never actually thought would occur.

Things like this didn’t happen to people like Dave, and testament to that was Dave sitting in the confines of this windowless room and spectating as that beige git got the spoils. Life really wasn’t fair and worse still, no one would believe what it was that Dave had seen.

Three years and no plan for this eventuality, but he did have the presence of mind to take his phone out and start videoing the screen. He smiled at that. Maybe he wasn’t a complete loser after all. There was probably a way to take a copy of the CCTV footage, but Dave would not go there. He’d get caught and his paw marks would be all over his misdeed.

He was recording and found himself doing what all phone users do. He was watching the image on his phone. An image of an image. He resented some of what he was observing. It should be him there amongst those drab images of a forgotten town. He was just as beige as that man. That was what living here did to a person. As he thought about the unfairness of the situation he realised that the woman wasn’t just out of that bloke’s league, she was out of everyone’s league. Everyone here anyway.

She did not belong.

She was also very much in control. Dave was sure that that guy could not believe his luck. Dave certainly couldn’t. She pushed Mr Beige against the wall and kissed him. She kissed him like she meant it and she didn’t give a shit whether he did or not. She was all that counted right now and that came through loud and clear. Dave was now incredibly attentive. He’d never seen anything like this and something cold slithered through his mind and made him shudder. He’d seen plenty of images that looked like this, but there was something otherly about this tableau. Now Dave wasn’t just attentive, he was enraptured. A mouse staring up at the predatory snake.

It was obvious what was happening and Dave was right there with the guy. Right there as that woman took charge. Right there as Beige Bloke lost it completely. 

“No!” Dave gasped the word and it felt too loud. Too intrusive, as though she might hear him as he watched something he was not supposed to.

The man shuddered and bucked thanks to the woman’s touch, she leant forward and what at first seemed to be a kiss turned out to be nothing of the sort. The guy was struggling now, but even as he pushed at her and tried to use the wall to lever himself forward, she stayed firm. Dave had thought she was kissing that guy’s mouth at first, but as he fought against her it became obvious that her mouth was on his neck and somehow Dave knew that she was biting down. Biting down and feeding.

Dave watched the two of them. The way the woman had the man pinned and how the man moved against her. When the guy weakened his struggle didn’t ebb completely away, instead there was a subtle transformation. An acceptance. Half way through, he stopped trying to push her away and instead he pulled her closer into an intimate embrace. His mouth was moving, but Dave had no audio. All the same, he knew the guy was encouraging her. Urging her on. They slipped downwards so the guy was seated, but continued to move against each other. Then Beige Bloke was bucking under the woman. Not struggling, quite the opposite. He was in the throes of pleasure, which as they subsided saw him slip away into unconsciousness, and more likely a state beyond unconsciousness.

“No way!” Dave whispered it, but the woman looked up all the same. She looked up as though they were in the same room and for a terrifying moment it seemed they were. She looked right at Dave and he knew that she saw him and she saw him well. Her gaze was powerful and intense and Dave could not look away. Totally engaged with a screen that he’d struggled to see earlier that very night. They remained locked in that gaze for an age and then she seemed to dissolve and blow away down the alley. If it were not for the movement of swift, dark shadow moving across the screens, Dave would have thought her disappeared, but that was not the case. That was far from the case.

With her gone. He closed his eyes as though to reset his confused mind. When he opened them, he looked back up at the screens and was discomfited by his desire to see her again. He had wanted to see her image on those screens yet again. Was this what it was to be bewitched?

He remembered his phone and the footage he’d been taking. He opened it and opened the photo app. The video was there. He’d half expected it not to be. With a shaking hand he opened it and watched.

He was watching a copy of the same old screen he’d watched thousands of times before. Of the woman, there was no sign. Neither was there an image of the man she had enthralled and taken down that alley to feed upon. Now in a frantic and desperate state, he looked back up at the screen he’d recorded. The screen of the alley and the bin. Of the prone man, there was also no sign. 

“No!” he gasped, “this isn’t possible!”

He didn’t want this. He wanted more. Now he knew, he deserved more! This wasn’t fair. He wanted her to exist. He wanted to watch that footage again. He…

Do you want me?

They were not spoken words. Or if they were, Dave did not know where he had heard them coming from. His phone? All he knew was that for the first time in a long time he’d been interested in something and that was almost like living. And something like living was preferable to the sad and tawdry existence he’d been eking out.

“Yes,” he said hesitantly into the room that had become his cell.

Then he turned the crappy chair to the closed door and awaited the knock. A knock that never materialised.

Because he’d already invited her in.