The Curtain Twitcher

Mr Wittering lives with his poor and unfortunate dog. The unloved pet has had to put up with the bitter man’s grumpiness and general lack of empathy for anyone else since it was the runt of an unlucky litter of even unluckier puppies. Mr Wittering is not a pleasant man and he thrives upon gossip, scandal, and complaints of any kind. He prefers his gossip as juicy as a peach, as scandalous as a tabloid expose, as spreadable as butter on freshly baked bread, and as local as possible. Whether it be an embarrassing ailment, a misguided liaison, or merely a stumble on the pavement, Mr Wittering would somehow always be the first to know about it. And if there was one thing Mr Wittering didn’t mind sharing, it was the misfortunes, trials, and tribulations that beset his neighbors.

One day, Fate decides to teach him a lesson and it all starts on this particular morning.

The radio alarm goes off the same as ever, just as the local news begins. Something horrendous has happened close by. The terrible event has shaken the community to the bone. Unfortunately for Mr Wittering, a pneumatic drill stops and starts outside his bedroom window, drowning out any and all pertinent points in the news bulletin with the rack-rack-rack of concrete being broken, leaving poor Mr Wittering, and us along with him, with nothing but tantalizing adjectives. What “heart breaking” event has occurred? Also, whose heart has been broken? And where has all this “personal devastation” taken place exactly?

Frustrated and fuming, Mr Wittering climbs out of bed and starts his day, spewing spiteful speculation about the half-heard news at the dog. He checks his diary. His appointment at the barbers is later that day. He goes through his morning routine while complaining to the dog about the recent outrages he has overheard. Seldom is there proof for any of these outrages, but he never lets that stop him from passing judgment upon all and sundry, while the poor dog endures the toxic discourse of its master with doleful eyes and silent tail tucked between its legs, always unsure what it has done to upset the hand that feeds it.

Mr Wittering heads out for the bus stop after breakfast, where he finds Mr Khan and Mr Simpson muttering to one-another. He stands as close as he possibly can to the two men and strains to listen in on their mumbled conversation. They appear to be discussing the news item he missed out on that morning.

Fate intervenes yet again however, and Mr Wittering is teased with snippets of information, tiny bits of bait stuck onto a barbed hook, enticing him in, but the second an important fact is being uttered a dog barks nearby, accompanied by the angry yells and shouts from a tired man, who is demanding, “will someone shut that damn dog up”.

Disgruntled by his eavesdropping failure, Mr Wittering moves closer instead to two young girls who are having a conversation about the same shocking news. The cruel joke being played upon Mr Wittering continues however, and he is unable to pick out any details from what the two girls are discussing. The reason this time is the person standing closest to Mr Wittering, the person who is talking on his mobile phone to someone about the hot topic of the moment. Mr Wittering now finds himself caught between the teasing parts of three separate voices combined and still as much in the dark as to what has taken place as he was when the news woke him up that morning.

The nightmare continues at the barbers, where Mr Wittering can hear one of the barbers discussing the subject that seems to be on everybody’s lips this morning with his colleague and their respective customers. Every time anyone comes up with something specific however, all Mr Wittering can hear is the snipping of scissors or the loud cough of another customer, or the screeching breaks and honking horns and revving engines of the traffic outside, or a particular loud part of a song playing on the radio.

Mr Wittering eventually snaps and leaps up out of his seat and dashes out of the barbers, yelling at everyone to stop this cruel joke they’re all playing on him. We don’t see the reactions of the barbers and their customers to Mr Wittering’s abrupt and eruptive departure. Mr Wittering doesn’t get the bus home from the barbers either. Instead he staggers and yells his way all the way home, where he barricades himself in and stands guard at the window, peeking through the closed curtains, muttering to himself about how the whole world can go to hell with its secrets and its whispers and its disruptions. He ignores the dog at his feet. It is whining for its food, but he is passed caring about dinner for the dog, or for himself for that matter. Instead, he stands there at the window, stands and stares at every passer-by. A torrent of hate and intolerance pours from his mouth like a flooded sewer whenever someone spots him peeking out from behind his curtain.

Hours pass him by, shadows fall and grow long and dismal, and still he stands at the window uttering his hateful rhetoric.

Days go by and the radio alarm goes off once again in the bedroom. It is the same news story we heard on that earlier fateful morning, only this time the bed is empty and there is no pneumatic drill to prevent us from learning about the poor man who was discovered lying dead on his living room floor. Initial reports suggest that the man has been dead for a number of days. The man’s body was discovered after one of his neighbors reported an offensive smell and the persistent barking coming from the dead man’s house to the police. The dead man’s dog was found lying by the side of its master’s prone body, licking its lips. Police say they have not ruled out foul play.